Kobato Episode One: Wishful Girl

I should preface this review by saying that I'm a huge fan of CLAMP. Something about their stories and characters tug at my heartstrings like no other, and they've never done a series that I haven't liked. I haven't yet had the chance to read the Kobato manga, so right now I'm going into this one fresh and unaware.

Kobato is about a mysterious girl who came to Earth to fulfill an equally mysterious wish- all we know is that she has somewhere she wants to go. To make her wish come true, she must heal 100 broken hearts and collect their fragments.

The opening has Kobato's teacher- a stuffed dog named Ioryogi who feels like a deeper voiced version of Kero from Card Captor Sakura- testing Kobato to see if she has the common sense required to handle living in our world. Kobato is throughly hopeless, but I'm sure you all can still figure out what the outcome of the test will be. The fun is in seeing how she pulls it off.

I loved this episode, but Kobato is most definitely not for everyone. So far the show appears to be toothache inducingly sweet, and those with a low tolerance for incompetent heroines will quickly find themselves irritated with the show's title character. However, if you're like me and don't mind your anime slightly saccharine, or if you want to see what secrets and twists CLAMP has up their sleeves, this is definitely one to watch.

Rating: 90/100