Anime Review: Ginaban Kaleidoscope

I apologize for my lateness, my preparations to move in to URI ate up most of my time and I was unable to write until now.  So without further ado we move on to the business at hand.  Ginban Kaleidoscope follows Sakurano Tazusa, a teenage champion figure skater who is competing to represent Japan in the Olympics.  However she often falls at critical moments in her routine which has put her selection in question.  One day she awakens to find herself haunted by the ghost of Pete Pumps, a young Canadian stunt pilot who died in a crash and now much haunt Sakurano for 100 days.  The story follows the two of them as they adapt to their new connection and they work together to improve Sakurano's performance. 






The best part of this series is the relationship between the two main characters.  Since Pete is haunting Sakurano's body he shares all of her senses which leads to some amusing outcomes.  Sakurano takes up changing while blindfolded to prevent Pete from seeing her and accuses of being the worst kind of man as a result.  The best part of this connection however is that Pete hates tomatoes which Sakurano uses to punish Pete regularly.  This binge eating of tomatoes leads her family and friends to question her sanity and is a unique running gag. 

No I'm too cute to eat!

The other thing that makes this how unique is that it features a large number of foreign characters which if memory serves gives us the opportunity to her a great number of terrible accents.  Beyond this the show discusses a few of the details of figure skating and stunt piloting.  The skating routines are quite well animated and are set to music giving them an AMV type feel. 

Overall the show is good, it is a bit short and lacking in depth but is an amusing romance.  I would recommend the show to anyone who wants to watch a short happy romance.  The series is also a passable sports anime which could serve as an introduction to see if you enjoy that genre.