Sleep Is For the Weak

PG-13/16 for violence, sexuality, and a few other dark issues like child slavery; surprisingly informative Wikipedia page

Review for episodes 1-4:

The Earl and the Fairy sucks. Although I love the idea of a shoujo built like a fairytale in Victorian England, the plot is a convoluted mess, the Earl is a lame love interest, the storytelling is jarring and has no concept of SCENE TRANSITIONS (seriously), and the fight scene at the beginning of episode 4 is, without a doubt, the worst fight scene I’ve ever seen animated. And I watched every single episode of Weiss Kreuz ever made. I wish the Earl and the Fairy creators had taken a step back and realized that the premise had all the girl crack they needed – hot boys in suits, pretty dresses, fairies, danger, VICTORIAN ENGLAND – and not added sparklies whenever a hot boy punches someone, a contrived and syrupy interest between lead boy –> lead girl, unnecessary murder or talk of murder to show how “bad boy” the bad boy is, etc. If you have what girls need, DON’T ADD THE CHEAP STUFF. It’s like making a New York cheesecake and then smearing bubblegum on it. You screwed up, the Earl and the Fairy. You screwed up bad.

Review for episodes 5-12:

The Earl and the Fairy is awesome. Despite having four bishounen in the core adventuring group of six, they each have a distinctive place in the story, and not all of them as love interests for the female lead. It’s a refreshing change from harem-style casts where everyone wants the main girl/boy for no apparent reason. The female lead is also a badass academic (YES) who has more important things to do than fall for the Earl’s advances (YESYES) and the Earl’s ridiculous flattery becomes a source of almost self-parody, since he can’t turn off the “your eyes are like a sea after a storm” bullshit and thus is never taken seriously even when he’s being dead serious (YESYESYES). The dichotomy of the real world and the Realms of Myth get really entertaining, and lead to great scenes including a sea horse turning into a bishounen to attend a human party and then not understanding why you can’t flip up a girl’s hoop skirt to see what she’s storing under it. The plot and premise are still pretty confusing/awkward, but the character dynamics are great and draw attention away from the plot and storytelling weaknesses (which aren’t much worse than anything else based off a series of novels that incorporate a huge amount of Western fairy mythology and, I’m sure, author-original stuff). Oh, and there’s no cheap fangirling crap – it’s just pure, inherent girly goodness. If you took shoujo, fairytales, and a Jane Austen novel and popped them in a blender, you’d get the Earl and the Fairy. Also, for seiyuu geekery – the older, more established bishounen in this show (the Earl, the sea horse, even the cat) are voiced by actors who made their money as hot bishounen property ten years ago (Hikaru Midorikawa, Takehito Koyasu, Yuuki Hiro) and the younger, greener bishounen in the show (the painter, the killer butler, the crazy bad guy) are voiced by the actors who are the current hit bishounen properties (Hiroshi Kamiya, Tomokazu Sugita, Mamoru Miyano). And I think the casting director did that on purpose, which is totally awesome.

Educated impression: If you think my review has multiple personality disorder, I dare you to watch episodes 4 and 5 back-to-back. It’s like they fired the first staff and hired an entirely new one over the course of a week. Watching the Earl and the Fairy is like watching someone transition from an awkward, misguided teenage stage to an adult who looks back on that time and winces. (No offense to our many teenage readers who don’t do the embarrassing crap some of us did.) (Lianne)

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