AKA: 輪廻のラグランジェ 鴨川デイズ, Rinne no Lagrange: Kamogawa Days

Genre: Slice-of-life drama with science-fiction elements

Length: OAV, 43 minutes

Distributor: TBA (the rest of this franchise is licensed by Viz, but I don't know if this one has been included with the TV series)

Content Rating: 13+ (light fan service, adult themes)

Related Series: Lagrange: The Flower of Rin-ne seasons 1 and 2

Also Recommended: Battle Athletes Victory, Bodacious Space Pirates, Macross Frontier

Notes: Based on the ongoing manga of the same name written by Shotaro Suga and illustrated by Kimitake Yoshioka, published in Young Gangan. This OVA comes chronologically between the first and second seasons and was released along with a PS3 game as a promotion of the second season.

Rating:

Lagrange: The Flower of Rin-ne: Kamogawa Days

Synopsis

Madoka returns to her daily life in Kamogawa and thinks of Lan and Muginami, her Jersey Club compatriots and dear friends who have returned to space. Lan and Muginami are also thinking of Madoka and independently discover that in deep space, a perfect replica of a certain once-sleepy seaside town is the newest attraction in the Polyhedron star system.

Review

Usually promo OVAs are snapshot previews of a franchise taken in the lowest quality imaginable, but since there'd already been a full season of Lagrange released by the time this came out, what we get instead is a slightly longer than usual episode, featuring the daily lives of Madoka, Lan, and Muginami in between their grand adventures together. Of course, even light-years apart, they are already by this point spiritually inseparable, so what we get is a cute, if not altogether deep affirmation of their mutual affection, as Lan and Muginami team up to get Madoka a present, while Madoka is of course busy energetically doing whatever the Jersey Club does.

There's really not much of a plot to consider here: without the action of the first season or the space opera plot of the second season, it's just pretty much watching the seasons go by in Kamogawa. There's no antagonist -- we get to see the three erstwhile Kiss pilots (Izo, Kirius, and Array) hang out as waiters at Madoka's uncle's place -- and we hardly even see the Vox units (and not in action, at that). Everything else is essentially in a holding pattern, and while there's a few hints dropped at future plotlines, that's not really the point of this episode.

Unlike most promo OVAs, Kamogawa Days looks and feels precisely like the show it's augmenting; while there aren't any "high animation" moments like the actual TV series, the setting and backgrounds remain as fresh as ever, especially given the change of seasons portrayed here, and the animation never looks substandard, a nice change of pace from the norm for this format.

And really, that's all I can say : this light, relaxed interlude doesn't detract from the story, but neither does it add very much, beyond maybe a couple of warm, fuzzy, cute moments between a special trio of characters whose mutual bond spans the cosmos. But honestly : that's really all this episode needed to do and expecting any more of it would be rather silly.

Intended primarily for Lagrange fanatics, this chapter is really for completists only, but it doesn't do anything outright wrong, either, unlike most promo OVAs. — Carlos/Giancarla Ross

Recommended Audience: Not a whole lot of content issues here - no action whatsoever, and maybe a little bit of fan service. Madoka, Lan, and Muginami get emotional about each other, but nothing too crazy. Given the advisories for the rest of the series, probably safest to remain at teens and above.