I suppose I should do a Christmas review and something I missed the last two years is Itsudatte My Santa.
Santa has an unfortunate fate, no not the actual Santa Claus this is a young man in Japan who is called Santa because he was born on Christmas Eve, this led to some unfortunate teasing and worst, his parents were never around at Christmas or his Birthday so he's never really enjoyed the event until Mai a trainee Santa Claus, arrives to cheer him up, but her magic only lets her conjure up things that start with the Japanese sound "San", during a rather turbulent Christmas Eve the two fall in love and Santa activates Mai's true form which is a rather busty blonde girl. During the night of delivering presents, Santa discovers the true meaning of his birthright. The second episode is a Beach Episode and that's pretty much it.
Well, it's Ken Akamatsu, I'd be worried if there wasn't at least one moment of ecchiness but it does seem rather left field for a short OVA about Christmas, but I can get behind the silliness that's on offer especially when Mai has a Reindeer named Pedro and some of the situations they do get into are hilarious but it is a typical Ken Akamatsu story and the sad thing is, he never really had the time to develop the story more on the Anime side, in it's current form it doesn't really offer enough to really showcase the romance side of things and overall it just feels bland.
Even the animation just gives the feeling of it appearing in a Love Hina episode rather than a different story altogether.
Dub is passable but no where near the standard of the sub.
Final Verdict: It's fine, it's not groundbreaking, it's hardly going to reach the same levels as other Christmas specials and I dare say that Ken Akamatsu has written better Christmas Specials in his bigger works, but it's cheap entertainment and it does it's job.
