Title: Ground Control to Psychoelectric Girl standard edition

Director: Akiyuki Shinbo

Studio: Shaft

Written By: Ayana Yuniko

Created By: Hitoma Iruma

U. S. Distributor: NIS America

U. S. Re-release: Dec. 9th, 2014

Format: DVD / Blu-ray / 13 Episodes / 333 minutes

Genre: Harem, Sci Fi, Comedy, Absurdity

Age Rating: TV 13

Overall Personal Rating: A-

Synopsis:

Makoto Niwa just moved to the city to live with his aunt Meme after his parents were reassigned to work overseas. He is perfectly fine with that, saying it will give him the chance to live the dream life of an adolescent boy. He keeps track of the things he does by assigning “points” to them – positive or negative – and adds them up on a regular basis to grade his adolescent life. And then, he discovers Meme has a secret daughter (and self-proclaimed alien) named Erio. He finds her rolling around by the front door of Meme’s house wrapped up in a futon. It is then he realizes that his dream adolescent life will not come true, and begins a life of experiences that are out of this world.

Commentary:

Ground Control to Psychoelectric Girl stands out as one of those anime that has a rather simple plot and then turns it on its ear. Basically you have a high school boy coming to live with his aunt and her high school age daughter, to attend high school in the big city. Throw in an aunt who loves to play with Makoto’s head, constantly coming on to him, and then you have Erio who is very cute and believes she is an alien, tending to spend her time rolled up in a futon. This makes things awkward and maybe a little uncomfortable for Makoto, but he takes it with a calm stride and ends up taking on the role of the only responsible one in the house. At the same time, attracting some of the strangest girls in school.

With all the craziness going on in the series there is a simple backbone to the story that keeps it both easy to watch and  to connect to the characters that make up this odd group. Even though it may not be as strange as Arakawa Under the Bridge it still takes on a quirkiness that stays with it all the way through. This off balance plot line helps to show how well it was written. If the story was just strange it would have failed after just a few episodes, but because of the strong concept by Hitoma Iruma and script writing of Ayana Yuniko things go well and you just want to keep watching.

Overall Grade: A-

At its core, Ground Control to Psychoelectric Girl, is a silly harem that follows the older harem stories like Love Hina and Ai Yori Aoshi. Over the last five years or so most of the harem series have been all about silly battle concepts like Sekirei or Is This a Zombie?. It is nice to see one come back and the silly comedy that includes strange women and a rather simple high school story line.

If you didn’t get a chance to pick up Ground Control to Psychoelectric Girl when it was released in a premium set then now is the time to get it as the standard edition. Thanks, NIS America for keeping this series alive.