Happiness!

Genre: Fantasy
Age Appropriate: All Ages
Emotional Response: Ha! Nice!
Notable Features: magic students, non-magic students, high school drama
Language: Japanese
Length: 1 season, 12 episodes
Overall Recommendation: Pretty Good

"I am the embodiment of epic fail." - Shinya

Early in the semester the School of Magic had a mysterious explosion and now all of the magic students have to attend classes with the non-magic students. This explosive situation has brought two groups of friends together in an adventure of magical proportions (haha). Yuuma, a young high school student, has two other best friends - Hachi and Jun. Hachi is a fluty wishful-ladies man, and Jun is adorable and loves to wear cute clothes. This would be less amusing if Jun weren't a guy just like the rest of them.

The female protagonist of the story is Haruhi, a young lady-magic student desperately hoping to meet the boy who saved her so many years ago. She also brings a nice friend to the table - Anri. Anri-san is known as the magic school troublemaker for her awful attempts at magic that always start excellent and end with disaster. As a young girl Haruhi played with Sumomo, Yuuma's younger sister, who becomes part of the cast of characters, including their mother.

Between the young students there is drama surrounding typical high school relationships and the role that magic plays between the two potential lovebirds (Yuuma and Haruhi, of course). Yuuma has an extreme dislike of magic, and Haruhi is the star of the magic school. The students all develop some fun friendships with interesting episodes about how everyone has become included in their group of friends. These friendships will play a significant role in the resolution of the series conflict.

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It was pretty good. Happiness! was a lot closer to what I had wanted when I started with Shuffle!. It's fun, and peppy, and the students have a nice friendship going on. There weren't any tummy-hurting comedic moments, but it was still nice to just chill with. If it had been in English, I wouldn't have minded just using it as something in the background while lazying around the house. I'm glad I watched it.

I would recommend this for just about anyone looking for something stress-free. Despite a few innuendoes here and there, there are no bars I would set against any age watching this. No nudity, no swearing, no blood...all around wholesome fun. There is one episode full of bikini fan service, but it didn't particularly bother me. There isn't much in the review portion because I simply don't have much to say about it. I'm sure it has a little bit to do with the fact that it was only 12 episodes. I just think it was pretty good, in general. Nothing outstanding, but hey, why not?

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1, 2, 3, 4: Master of Martial Hearts