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This time, we visit the 兎山商店街!

Tamako Market is KyoAni's latest creation after last season's wonderful Chu2. Bright colours and cheerful cast of characters make this series easily the happiest one this season. Like the others, I'll be rating it on a scale of 10 under various categories.

Think of Dera as Keroro. They're not exactly the same, but more or less end up in a similar situation. I consider the day to day happenings of the shopping arcade as a secondary string, that is almost always at the forefront of the story, while Dera's story to be the main string flapping around somewhere in the back. Giving this one a 6 not because it's a bad story (it's not great though) but rather because the story isn't a major focus of the series. 

Being a Kyoto Animation produced series, we're to expect a certain level of quality, and this one delivers to us KyoAni as usual. Vivid colours and great animation all around. Character designs are...typical of KyoAni at this point to be honest. Tamako's design is often said to be half way between Asuza, Mio (K-ON!) and Chitanda (Hyouka). Initially, they bugged me a bit because of how similar the designs are to previous characters, but as you stick with the series, the characters grow on you and you stop seeing other characters. I don't think I've seen any major flaws in the art or animation (as in oddly animated scenes) so far, and the art has stayed consistent throughout.

Characters: 7/10

Characters are where this one shines. The almost sickeningly upbeat and cheerful Tamako is your necessary air headed protagonist, much like Yui (K-ON!) but less so. Tamako's got a better head on her shoulder and is a lot more tolerable than the latter mentioned. My favourite character so far is the obnoxious talking bird, Dera. Without him, the show would be just another moe slice of life, something that's been run into the ground and beat with a stick more often than it should. Unlike the other characters, where we more or less see one side of them (Tamako's cheerful, air headedness, Mochizou's shyness, etc.), we've seen that Dera wears more than one hat in the series. He's one of the more comical characters (I'd say the only one who's actually funny), but he's perceptive and has a serious side. The characters don't really develop much (if at all, though some have more than others), but then again, the type of series it is doesn't really call for a lot of character development.

As for my least favourite character, it'd be Tamako's dad. God damn, I can't bring myself to like him. It's not because he's mean or anything, it's his freaking tsundere-ness. No. Just no.

An enjoyable series for sure. It's bright atmosphere makes this one always fun to watch and hasn't had a time where it drags on and on. The characters are fun, though I wish some of them could develop a bit. I'm looking at you Mochizou. Shiori's fine around Tamako, so why can't you? I'm looking forward to how this one plays out with the bird's story and the shopping arcade. I have two ideas on how it'll go, and both end with 'life in the shopping arcade go on as usual'.

Image by スカイ

This time we look at the 4th season of Minami-ke!

Minami-ke is an interesting series in that it's 4 seasons have been produced by different studios: Daume (first), asread (2, 3) and feel. (4). This kind of results in seasons having very different looks, the most radical being the jump between 1 and 2, where values dropped like a hot potato. In terms of seasons in ranking, not counting the current as it's still on going, it'd go 1st, 3rd and 2nd. Anywho, like the Maoyu review, this one will be using the same system.

Story in Minami-ke has always been the everyday life of the sisters, and I can't accurately remember if Chiaki's blurb before the opening sequence was used in the previous seasons as well, but that more or less accurately sums up what the series is. Light hearted and almost always funny, it's a series that's always been a blast to watch. The comedy isn't dumb slapstick comedy, and some of the jokes don't grow old. 

Art & Animation: 8/10

There's not much to say about this catergory. feel.'s character designs feel a lot closer to the ones Daume used in their season (more on that in overall), and it's animated well. It's hard to talk about the art and animation in this one because it hasn't really differed too much between seasons. Season 2 really dropped, but the 3rd was a step or two up from that (still not 1st level) and I feel that this 4th is right back to the level where the series started.

Characters: 7.5/10

The charcters haven't changed. They've stayed fairly consistent throughout the three previous seasons and haven't changed so far. We've learned a few new things about characters, mainly about Touma (I think she's the only one to really get anything new). Mako-chan is back in full force, and so is Hosaka, who's been toned down a little bit from his grand delusions of the first season. 

There is a new character, Miyuki, who joins Kana's merry band of friends at school, bringing the girl's middle school group to 4. She is,however, a minor character and hasn't had a lot of screentime since her debut, and I'm hoping she doesn't get forgotten.

7.5 is what this one gets. It's a fun series to watch on downtime as it's light and doesn't make you cringe at hit or miss humour. Characters return from previous season virtually unchanged, along with the art and feel of the first season making the 'ただいま' part of it's title rather fitting.

Now, let's talk about how this first season showing up in the series. Right from the opening theme, the series calls back to it's origin, using parts of the 1st season's opening theme in the song. The character designs are closer to those of the 1st season, and I remember the first season being noticeably 'cleaner' than the second and third. Call it rose-tinted lenses for the first season, but there's not denying that the first season was superior to both the second and third.

Image by Koma Kiri Aoko

It's been a long time since I've last posted on this. I'll try posting a few reviews over the next few weeks of series I'm watching right now and maybe games I've been playing.




I'll be rating the series I review over the course of the next few weeks on a scale of 10 under the following catergories:

• Story
• Art / Animation
• Characters
• Overall Entertainment

I'll give my two cents about the series, a rating and that'll be the review. I'll try to keep them short and sweet. Don't expect too many negative comments; I only watch what I like.

Story: 7~8/10

Maoyu is often compared to Spice and Wolf due to it's staff and general content, though the compairson is rather unfair. Maoyu's story is considerably more vast than Spice and Wolf's, which (I've gathered from the two anime series) focused a lot on the economics of the world, as well as the growth of the two characters. Maoyu on the otherhand, is a story encompassing an entire world - almost two. It's essentially what might happen if you were to travel back into the 1300s (or around there) and spread the ideals of the Enlightenment 400 years earlier.

 

The story is well written, which is why it might surprise many that the novel series has it's origins from 2ch. The anime skipped over some smaller plot details, and in turn also created a bit of a loose plot threads, which may or may not impact a future event, coming in a few episodes or so. An example from a more recent episode is the Dragon Princess. The staff skipped over the Dragon King battle in which the whole situation with the Dragon Princess comes up, making her first full appearance rather abrupt.

Art / Animation: 7/10

Animation wise, this series is fine. I've got no problems as to how it's animated. There really isn't much to blow a budget on, considering that in the last 5 episodes, we've been given 1 brief 'battle', which wasn't shown (flash of light), and a large navel failure (release the krakens) that wasn't exactly action heavy. I'm hoping that they'll pull out all the stops for the upcoming Aurora Island campaign because that campaign is mighty impressive.

Other than characters, the rest of the picture (backgrounds and most inanimate objects) have a washed down water colour look to them. It's a little bit jarring to see it contrasted with the sharpness of the characters.

Characters: 8/10

I've included character design in this one too because I'm not too fond of them. I'll acknowledge that I'm quite biased in this, as I'm coming from Ishida Akira's "Kotowaru" manga adaptation, and those designs were quite amazing. If these designs do one thing well, it's making the characters much more generic than Ishida's designs do. The generic names really benefit from the even more generic designs. Overall generic-ness of over 9000. The Demon Queen doesn't really look like a demon queen at all though. Looks like she could've been plucked straight out of the frontier village. The Dragon Princess really took a fall in design, though the embers on her breath wagging tail are a nice touch.

Anywho, personal biases out of the way, this one gets an 8 because the characters, while based in generic tropes, all have their own personalities and don't feel cookie cutter. I wish they had a little bit of focus on the Noble students though, as I feel that the growth in those three characters really personifies the growth of the Winter Kingdom.

Overall Entertainment: (7.5~) 8/10

Giving this one an overal 8. It's certainly something I look forward to every week and usually alway a fun and interesting watch. A few problems with skipping material, but overall it's a solid series. Anime-Only viewers won't have the same problems with it as I did but you'll probably notice some of the dropped plot details if you pay enough attention.