Mari-Kari

Recently I have been re-watching the tv show Charmed. The show ended with 8 seasons in 2006 and they are now making comic books as a Season 9 (no doubt influenced by Buffy's success in the comic book medium). So anyways I decided to see what the actresses of Charmed (Shannen Doherty, Holly Marie Combs, Alyssa Milano, and Rose McGowan) were up to recently and found a "cute" (I use cute for lack of a better word) show called Mari-Kari which features Shannen Doherty. Mari-Kari is an animated series on FEARnet which is supposedly anime and in it, Shannen voices both Mari and Kari.

Here's how FEARnet describes the whole idea of Mari-Kari:
"Mari and Kari are identical twins. They're best friends and never apart. Mari is the liveliest girl you'll ever meet. Kari is too. Her problem: she's dead. From there it just gets weird.

Mari-Kari centers around a grade school girl and her super-spooky, revenge minded wraith-of-a sister. Calamity and hilarity are hard-wired in. Set in the ordinary world of Mari, viewers see how her supernatural sisterly bond affects her life at home, at school, on the bus, at the mall - and how her life and her sister's lack of one makes them a very scary pair. Theirs is a relationship that has dire affects for anyone who tries to get in the middle of it. A cast of unforgettable characters round out the Mari/Kari duel, from Shari - the Perez Hilton of Gilles de Rais Elementary to Larry - a lovable dead kid who lives in the shed behind Mari and Kari's house.

Mari-Kari begins with Mari as she returns to school after the recent and unexplained death of her sister, Kari. The annual Sadie Hawkins dance is quickly approaching, and in a loose nod to Steven King's Carrie, we will see Mari get picked on and ostracized - not because she's a freak - but because she's just too darn sweet. A hilarious mix of karma and carnage ensues as Kari unleashes her wrath on the shallow, narcissistic and unsuspecting students who torment sweet Mari."

It's interesting how Shannen can get such a good range because Mari and Kari are two very different characters. The introduction of Larry (who is also dead) in episode 4 is interesting because it's obvious that Kari has a crush on him. When Kari says "You're a boy right?" Larry answers, "Actually, I'm an unholy demon, banished to this dimension, to gather and devour souls for my master Beelzebub, but I used to be a boy." Humor added to gore (a lot of gore) makes for a pretty entertaining show.

The episodes are short and sweet and are free online. If you want to watch it you can go to the main page for Mari-Kari on FEARnet here. Two new episodes come out every Thursday and there are four episodes so far. Apparently there's only going to be eight episodes in each season, but I definitely hope it will be several seasons long.