a.k.a. Itsudatte My Santa
Director: Noriyoshi Nakamura
Screenplay: Koichi Taki and Shoichi Sato
Based on the manga by Ken Akamatsu
Voice Cast: Aya Hirano as Mai; Jun Kamei as Santa; Tomo Sakurai as Noël-sensei; Yu Kobayashi as Sharry; Yukari Tamura as Maimai
Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles
We did it! The pile of saury has 30% of full power!
Christmas is found in a lot of anime, usually themed episodes1, but actual Christmas themed anime is rare. Based on a one volume creation by Ken Akamatsu, who would later create Love Hina (1998) a year later from this manga, arguably his most famous creation for how popular it was including its anime adaptations, Always My Santa is a rare festive anime, two OVA episodes, although it is not one that is talked of greatly. I am surprised, by how I had a very negative reaction to this OVA when I first ever saw it years ago, that it is not as bad as I remember it, but it is still not that good, just rushed and average.
Premise wise, a male protagonist christened Santa and born on Christmas Eve would have an axe to grind in terms of hating the holiday, especially as his parents, being war photographers, never were around when he was a child for his birthday/Christmas Eve. The premise, to be honest, is not different from the slightest from a Christmas movie from the West in where this will go, where he will learn the true happiness of the season in a very syrupy and sentimental way. The difference here is that, alongside cramming a whole narrative into one twenty or so minute episode, a sexier Santa Claus in a girl called Mai from a country of Santa Claus is here to help him find his Christmas spirit.
One has no time to breath for a prologue as, set up why he hates Christmas, Santa is already pestered by a girl named Mai coming up to him, randomly as a stranger, asking him to spend the night with her in a crowded public square and then hitting him with a fan when everyone else around them thinks this is lewder then she realised as a suggestion. Being dragged off by two policemen, she claims to be Santa Claus and have happiness granting powers, although there is a lot of evidence to prove this, despite most of the premise for this episode being that he does not believe in the reality of Santa Claus. When she can produce giant piles of raw fish from the air, and summoning trucks of saury fish proves a good crowd control technique against a male gang you have accidentally antagonised, by causing their cake to fall on concrete, she is definitely not bluffing about the powers. She is not exactly a character, immediately, easy to engage with in terms of a hyperactive female caricature you barely get fleshed out, especially as this is the type of comedy where male characters will be beaten up not for being actual perverts, but presumption of in spite of doing nothing wrong, like accidentally seeing someone naked rather than being a letch trying to.
Lore wise, I will give this title credit for some logic, as in a world you have an entire magical country of Santa Claus, taught the magic craft to deliver presents around the world in their own districts. It is a premise you can make a whole manga series or a television series, playful and silly if you wished to expand the content out. This is as much an excuse though for a sexy female Santa, with Mai even having a magical girl transformation sequence, with nudity, where the thin brunette character with a high voice even gets blonder, fuller figured and with a deep voice, even her magical plush reindeer Pedro getting beefed up as an actual giant flying one. Again, this is not a character you can really latch onto, especially because of the slight length of this series, when (in mind to the source material only being one volume) this is still an interesting premise but none of these two episodes cover the intricacy of a Santa Claus student learning her craft and becoming a Claus. That would be the one thing that I would rather have for these two episodes over what we actually got, the only really interesting aspect of her character being that, not that adept at her craft, she can only conjure things beginning with the letter "S". Likewise, her brethren, introduced fully in the second episode, are one note female archetypes, and Santa himself is a bland and meek male protagonist as I have found in other anime.
The first episode also hurdles along so fast I cannot help but imagine the practice (and hard work) to speak this fast in high pitched voices as for Aya Hirano as Mai2, the intensity realised as much as in how relentless this first episode was despite nothing actually happening. For the second episode, we manage to cram in the beach episode...even though it is a Christmas themed show. Now, having the premise of a person who works on Christmas Eve and following them all year is actually interesting, but here particularly that is not the thing of interest, more an excuse of drawn characters in bikinis. The second episode also attempts to cram a romantic drama in little time. In the first episode, Santa and Mai have only just met but you get the breakup and drama, followed by the reconciliation, in a rushed time. The second has you, for a character in Mai you have not really be accustomed to, meant to feel tragedy as she has to leave Santa eventually to go back home in little time.
This presents the real problem with Always My Santa, even recreating the same jokes again in the second episode (including Mai being dragged away by the police), that it is not an ambitious title in its humour or story, just a manic batch of jokes and emotions which you do not have the investment in. [Major Spoiler] It even pulls the rug under you by showing Mai will not be going back to her homeland in the post-credits stinger. [Spoilers End]. It says a lot that the end preview to a third episode that never happened, The Third Christmas, is funnier than most of the series as it involves a giant reindeer robot fighting a monster in a Japanese cityscape.
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1) Aragami SS (2010), as an unconventional multiple narrative romantic comedy, made Christmas an integral part of its multiple stories, usually ending at that part of the year for the protagonists on Christmas Day or so in all the narratives. Individual episodes for different series and franchises have done this too: for me, growing up with Chrono Crusade (2003-4) as a gateway anime means I saw its Christmas themed episode, whilst a very unconventional spin was when the first 1999 season of The Big O, a Batman-inspired giant robo story in a dystopian city, had a Christmas episode of its own.
2) Aya Hirano was still early in her anime voice acting career here, only a year off from playing the titular figure of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (2006), a phenomenon back in the 2000s anime fandom. That said, with a career also in music, voice acting for other mediums like video games, and even theatrical work in the likes of Spamalot and Les Misérables, I will actually view her work here as the one great thing to take away as it showed her talent.