NieA_7
Mayuki is a lot like many of the members of the Bethel Anime Club: smart, earnest, desperately overworked from schoolwork and several part-time jobs, and dirt-poor. She has to rent out a room in the bath-house her family used to own, horde every single yen she’s got, and make meals with actual meat a once-a-month treat. And since the rest of the country is in the middle of a big depression, things are not looking up (thus the show’s subtitle: “Domestic Poor Animation”).
Unfortunately, unlike (most) contemporary university students, Mayuki woke up one morning to discover herself saddled with NieA, a small, rude, loud, lazy, perverse, destructive, cloying, obstinate, annoying, indiscriminate, unsanitary, manipulative, capricious, merciless, immature, selfish, egotistical, exasperating, food-obsessed, pig-headed, nerve-grating, closet-dwelling, free-loading, cat-biting, trash-UFO-constructing “Under Seven”-class alien. (She’s a lot like a cat: “independant” yet always demanding things, only “nice” when Mayuki doesn’t want her to be, and constantly bringing in bizarre “gifts” that no one would ever desire.) You see, in Mayuki’s world the Visitors from Space came some time ago, but it didn’t do us much good since they were interstellar refugees and—honestly—we didn’t want ‘em. They settled in nonetheless and have organized themselves into a hierarchy based on the size of their antanae (NieA has none at all) with Ones at the top and “Under Sevens” so low they don’t even count. (They also have developed a strange obsession with India, but that’s another story.) Mayuki and NieA live in Enohana, where the mothership still looms in the distance, firmly embedded in the earth.
NieA_7 is about friendship, the power of love, and the ability of the imagination to—never mind, that’s something else. No, NieA_7 is about a shy girl desperately trying to deal with the fact that if the schoolwork doesn’t kill her, the insane alien roommate, man-eating plants, pyromaniac bath-stoker, UFO-obsessed best friend, big-headed pervert-alien, or ever-present threat of starvation will. And to top it all off this dreadheaded boy has started following her around… maaaaan, life really is complicated for an alien-infested student just trying to make her way…
NieA_7 is 13 episodes and was created by ABe Yoshitoshi, the god-like genius behind Haibane Renmei.