I tend to find Slice of life shows very hard to review; they tend to have very little plot (with no guarantee for humor). This one is no different – This anime talks about the story of 3 girls and what happens “when nothing is happening.” But despite its first episode being only ~ 4 minutes long ( With its OP and ED, mind you.) , I thought this one was really very refreshing and deserves a watch for fans who are into the slice of life genre.
Summary:
The first episode of this show really feels more of a teaser rather than a full episode – showing a vignette of a day of Ayuko (one of the main characters) before her 1st day of school. She traverses around the neighbourhood, looks around at the shops and eats ice-cream in front of a desserts shop. A small comedic scene occurs as a orange haired girl ( presumably Sayaka from the OP) bumps into her and dropping her scoop of ice cream while messing around with her own friend, the yellow hair-ed girl Saki. Sayaka hastily switches the Ice cream cone in Ayuko's hand with Saki's Taiyaki before running off the screen, Saki chases her orange haired friend as Ayuko takes a bite into the Taiyaki, not knowing that it's..rather special.
Review:
I tend to have very little tolerance for OPs – and for a good 70% of the shows I've watched I really tend not to watch OPs. But this one had a wacky and frenetic OP ( which really reminded me of Nichijou and Hyadain) that really made me watch the whole thing. You could see from the OP that The artwork really had a very relaxed and “yukkuri-ish” feeling to it despite the very upbeat OP song, with a fair mixture of sketchy lines artwork mixed around especially in the background.
Alright, I'll admit that the ‘Kani' ( crab in Japanese) and ‘ Fuwa Kani Furai' ( lit. trans: really soft fried crab) in the OP partly made me fell in love with it too. ふわ蟹フライ！
Dialogues and speeches were kept to a very minimum in this episode but what was absolutely breathtaking and awesome was the background art of the whole town as Ayuko walked around it, along the shopping streets and such. The seeming slow and quiet pace of the show was really relaxing and sets an atmosphere similar to Sketchbook ~Full Colours~ and gave me a lot of time to observe the beautiful scenes of the town in itself. The rather sketchy and hand drawn background made it feel was if I was looking at a few art masterpieces rather than an animated episode in itself. It also did a very good job on capturing the small small nuances and things in life while it was at it – and gave Ayuko's day a very colorful and wonderful feel.
The scene at the end was rather comedic and very cute. Rather good way to end the show, but it really left me hanging. Come on, 2 minutes was really way too short — Even Penguin Musume had 5 at least?
Priceless look after figuring out that the Taiyaki she got was extra Spicy ( Geki Karai). I wonder if there's really a “Spicy Taiyaki” though. Hmm.. :3