Potemayo

Potemayo:  B+

So, I mentioned in my FLCL review that it wasn't just weird a Japanese thing that don't make any sense.

Potemayo is.

Sunao is a young man in middle school (he's about 13 or 14) who finds a strangely adorable creature in his refrigerator, which he names Potemayo (a portmanteau of 'Potato' and 'Mayonnaise'), on account of what he was going to the fridge for when he found her.  Not long after, another creature like Potemayo comes out of his fridge, which, through a series of circumstances involving Potemayo chasing a bird and a number of Sunao's classmates chasing Potemayo, is named Guchuko.

Adorable hilarity ensues.  There's really not much more to describe.

Potemayo is a audacious comedy, but it would be misleading to say that most of the humor comes from the possibly alien creatures, in many episodes they are more or less set-dressing and we're really here to watch the insanity that is the characters in Sunao's class (and, indeed, Sunao himself, who is uncannily stoic).

Indeed, it's a difficult series to criticize.  It's funny, it's short and the few serious moments it takes manage to work remarkably well.  I only give it a B+ rather than an A because, well, it IS a weird Japanese series, and it's a little bit inaccessible to western audiences purely because we'll be inclined to assume we're not getting something, or that this is just because it's Japanese, rather than that the series is just reveling in its own absurdity, and the absurdity of the relatively believable people it portrays.

If you're looking for series that won't go taxing your sanity or will treat the idea of alien creatures arriving on earth with anything like gravity or realism, this is not the show for you.  But if you can handle some light and fluffy, incredibly adorable and occasionally extremely sharp comedy that is laughing at itself as much as you should be laughing at it, check out Potemayo.