Guest Writer – First Impressions of Ichigo Mashimaro

This series is categorized as comedy/slice of life. The 4 friends, Chika, Miu, Matsuri, and Ana, are 11 or 12. Chika’s older sister, Nobue, is 20. While it’s easy to dismiss series of this type as fluff or “fuwa fuwa”, this series has a slightly dark undertone that makes it very worth watching.

The animation style is the first noticeable difference. Missing in this series is the “chibi” tone in many slice of life series that focus on the trials and tribulations of a group of silly girls. The colors are muted, almost watercolor, rather than lush bright pinks and blues. Also, the lines are limp and long, not rounded and light, like in the characters of Azumanga Daioh. The washed out colors also give a feeling of malaise. These girls are funny, interesting, and complex, but they are not bright, bouncy, or cheery.

Also, the tension between two of the girls, Ana and Miu, is also very unusual for this kind of girl clique. It starts traditionally enough when Ana can’t decide how best to make friends beings a girl of English descent. Figuring out how to be accepted and make friends is a pretty common issue facing characters in young girl slice-of-life series. Things become more complicated when Miu makes Ana the butt of her slightly scathing humor, becoming relentless when she sees how she can really push Ana’s emotional buttons. Ana becomes very close to Matsuri, and joins the group, but the tension is still present several episodes after Ana joins the group. Miu makes Ana cry by making fun of her name, and then attempts to pull up her skirt and embarrass her while the girls play doctor’s office. They seem to be part of the same group of friends but there is no acceptance despite differences, as usually is shown in animes with groups of diverse friends.

The ennui is most evident in the older sister, Nobue. She is a college junior with a smoking and drinking problem. She spends most of her days slumped at her desk in a pile of empty beer cans and overflowing ashtrays. Her employment status is always up for debate, and there are no details offered about her career ambitions or goals. She seems to be the adult figure for these girls, even though she is usually trying to shake the girls up for a loan to buy more cigarettes. Oddly, the only pep she shows is when she produces odd costumes to dress up the more gullible girls, such as a cat costume or nurses outfits. The girls are appropriately uncomfortable but forgive her once she joins in her games of imagination. She very closely resembles her sister, Chika, making it easy to assume that this is the future awaiting these girls. Episode 1, Birthday, shows Nobue as entirely alone and unrecognized on her birthday except for the girls. Nobue’s presence in this story really sets the tone as dark rather than just bored.

In general, there is a sense of “what’s the point?” and a bit of dark humor. This is a refreshing twist and if the general feeling of hopelessness is directly addressed, it’ll be an extremely interesting to see how it is resolved.

-S.G.

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Steelbound here …

I saved, what I thought, was the most interesting piece for last.  I know at one point this series was licensed for America but my sister had mentioned how almost all anime do not end happily  and I thought that I must broaden her horizons and decided to include Ichigo Mashimaro. When I gave the various series to my sister to watch I didn’t tell her anything about the series in question which included what I thought about them so  that I wouldn’t influence what she wrote.  I didn’t tell her this is on my top 10 favorites list for being a relaxing, mood-lifting series with some great comedy mixed in. So you can imagine my surprise when I first read this – there’s nothing about dark about Ichigo Mashimaro! However, thinking about it more, I see this interpretation of Ichigo Mashimaro as at least wroth a deeper look; though, I’m not the one with an English degree 🙂 .

This the last post that my sister wrote-up; I’m hoping she’ll write more in the future because  I think she has an interesting and somewhat unique frame of reference in reviewing anime. I’m sure it’ll help convince her if she’d see some nice spoiler-free comments from people wanting more (and I’m not just saying this because it’s nice to have someone else write quality material for my blog 🙂 ).