Tamako Market Review

Full Review

Pro: Colorful fluid Kyoto Animation, Cute music

Con: Story and characters are not really worth their screentime

Final Thoughts: Tamako Market has been one of the latest moe/slice of life Kyoto has marketed and dished out after the famous K-On!. Despite my first impressions I tried to look past all the fluffy moe-fanservice and looked at it as a new idea once the curtains opened, and for what I got it was just ok. Tamako Market is a very cute fluffy anime + a hilarious talking bird. If K-On! had no music, not completely school based, with a talking bird it would probably turn out something like this. I am not saying that is a bad thing, because the show does go in directions not commonly taken such as adding a magical element in this case a talking bird to the mix. (plus K-On! was a decent anime in it's own right) Overall some people who are a big fan of moe and lack of intense story will enjoy this one way or another. With the upcoming focused romance movie in April, I can only hope it will save the series as it's own entity of what this could have been.

Story: What this suffered from I'm afraid is a little lack of focus. One minute I thought it was gonna be only about Tamako and her day to day interactions, then it became a person in the market back-story, then a...bride ceremony and then back to moe fluffy goodness. The ending felt forced and would have held up better if the "story" did not go all over the place and actually got us to care for these characters more. No star for this one.

Characters: Now as for characters: Tamako is nothing too special in my opinion a cute hardworking slightly ditsy girl, nothing that we haven't seen before *ahem* Yui *ahem*. The boy/love (Mochizo?) interest is much appreciated since we did not see any in K-On!, but what makes this show is the bird, Dela MochiYucky to be exact. (I mean he is even in the title in the title sequence) Without him the show would be like K-On! without nothing much to look forward to and be too slow. He helps add some milk to the coffee (no pun intended ;). Midori, (Tamako's friend) is a bit annoying mainly because her character does not really go anywhere or at least Kyoto decides not to tell us where she stands. I found myself confused with her because she was hard to figure out. Does she like Tamako in a romantic sense? Some scenes would suggest yes to this, but in a way I think she realizes she can't win and ends up being a little creepily overprotective of her to vent all that energy. Almost everyone gets an episode dedicated to them if I can remember it was Tamako, Chio, Shiori, Tamako's sister, Tamako's Dad, and Mochizo and Midori. Overall though Tamako is not as likable as she could be and Dela is the only one holding it up so no star for this one.

Art: The easter egg/pastel colors and flawless animation style also add a nice touch to the overall show. Obliviously it gets a star here.

Sound: The music was very upbeat and entertaining. The little classic Kyoto band sequence is heard in episode 9 and is a cute love song. (Darn you Kyoto, I can't bring myself to hate it.) The opening is what you would expect from Disney if it could swallow sugar plum pie and Blossom from the powerpuff girls (everything nice). Surprisingly I found that even though the ending theme has better animation, I found myself more willing to listen to the opening. Even so I think it did what it needed to do so it gets a star.

Final Score: 2 stars

Recommendations:

Hyouka/K-On!/Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-Kun

#tamakomarket #review #2stars #winter #2013