In fact I'm going to be hunting down the manga as soon as I finish this post.
No need to hunt it - it is hosted on BakaBT. Just don't forget to get the uncensoring pack in addition to the main release.
Yup, the first thing I did was to see if Baka had the Manga. As to where I get the uncensoring pack, I have no idea.
If I really need to have have it for whatever reason, I'll get hold of it.
Anyway, I've finished watching Narutaru, so here is a review of it.
I plan on reading the manga as well, so I'll add a review of that to this post when I've finished it.
Narutaru starts out all sunshine and lollipops, with our heroine, Shiina, visiting her grandparents.
However, it doesn't stay that way.
Shiina decides to swim out to a "Torii" in the ocean and almost drowns in the process.
She, recovers and goes back to the 'scene of the crime' or the beach near it at any rate and meets a star shaped creature, which she names 'Hoshimaru'.
After learning how to 'ride' Hoshimaru, she sees a 'Dragon' with a girl riding it.
So begins Shiina's adventures in the anime.
Along the way, Shiina meets up with Akira, a shy girl, who has a few.....issues.
Eventually, Akira shows Shiina her dragonet and it seems that it is linked to her in a way that is causing some of her..... issues.
Having made friends with Akira, Shiina takes her to a favorite place, a hill overlooking the airport where her father works as a pilot.
As the anime continues, we discover some background for Shiina and Akira.
Her parents are separated and Shiina lives with her father, doing the cooking and cleaning that her mother would normally do.
Shiina's mother works for a defense contractor of some sort. She knows that there is something out there and she is looking for them.
I get the distinct feeling that Shiina may have been a 'mistake'.
Akira's parents on the other hand, are still together. They run a small restaurant and expect Akira to help them with it, but her.... issues interfere with that.
I pity the parents in this anime, they are having a hard time of it, but despite everything, it obvious that they love their children, except for Shiina's mother that is.
As you watch more of this anime, we get to meet other people who have dragonets and they aren't all nice. In fact some of them are quite nasty.
Towards the end, we meet a girl called Hiroko, who is being bullied at school.
What the bullies don't know is that Hiroko has a dragonet and when they push her too far one night, it's too much for Hiroko.
She sets her dragonet on a path of terrible vengeance.
The anime ends, with Shiina now out of her girlish pigtails, in a highschool uniform, seemingly happy.....
Narutaru, while not on the level of 'Elfin Lied' for goriness and mayhem, is still pretty dark.
The animation is pretty average, but it is well done.
There are several story 'arcs' in the anime overall, but they are all tied together well.
More to come once I've read the Manga.
I wonder where it can go after that ending?
Edit: As promised, my view on the Manga.
The anime follows the manga fairly closely, right up until the last episode of the anime which has been changed a bit to give the anime a reasonably 'solid' ending at that point.
However, the Narutaru the Manga gets a little more interesting from there.
We follow Shiina's father to Russia of all places.
Shiina has stayed behind in Japan, but has convinced her father to take her 'backpack' with him. As we know, this backpack is in fact Hoshimaru.
The manga covers many more adventures of various types, with the various characters.
We find out what happend to one of the characters early in the anime after he has a fight with Shiina and Akira and it's not pretty.
The US armed forces get involved in an incident in Japan and nuclear weapons are used.
Shiina dies...... and comes back to life near her Grandparents house and discovers that she had/has a sister.
Then it starts to get WEIRD!
A lot of things happen and Shiina somehow becomes a person with a very powerful Dragonet under her control.
It all ends up in a world wide apocalypse of massive proportions.
I probably need to re-read the manga over again to get a good grip on it, but I have the basics down I think.
I can see why they didn't do a second season, the manga is pretty graphic and that is without applying the de-censoring pack.
