Review for Tamako Market

Introduction

Kyoto Animation is always a studio to keep an eye on. The quality of their animation, coupled with the nature of their stories makes every new series a potential delight to uncover. But it has to be said that they hit a high watermark when they made K-On!, its sequel and the movie. For a while back there, fans were looking at every new show to come out of KyoAni to see if it would be the next K-On! Slice of life was ‘the’ genre of the moment, and K-On!’s combination of trivial, feel-good hi-jinks and quirky but memorable characters seemed a recipe for success. So when Tamako Market came out with the familiar formula, it was quickly labelled as such. But that burden of expectation is unfair, and the internet soon resonated with the sound of thousands of fans deflating. You’re never going to get another K-On! But after four years, it’s worth taking a second look at Tamako Market, as there is a lot to appreciate about this series. After all, it did do well enough to warrant a spin-off feature film.


Tamako Kitashirakawa has a great life in the Usagiyama Shopping Arcade. She has her friends Kanna and Midori, and she knows everything there is to know about mochi, the sweet delicacy that her father’s shop specialises in. It would be peaceful and idyllic, except for the rival mochi shop across the street, and the gentle antagonism between the owners. It can’t be too antagonistic, as Mochizo Oji, the son of the rival shop owner has been Tamako’s friend since childhood, although while he has recently been developing feelings for her beyond friendship, Tamako remains characteristically dense to all matters of love. Things seem to be staying that way, until the day a talking bird named Dera arrives on the arcade. This egotistical avian is no simple parrot though; he’s on a search for a potential bride for his distant nation’s prince, but once he gets a taste of mochi, he decides to grace Tamako with his presence for the foreseeable future. Things are about to get a whole lot more eventful...


Disc 1
1. That Girl’s the Cute Daughter of a Mochi Shop Owner
2. The Love-in-Bloom Valentine’s
3. Hot Hot Hot Over That Cool Girl
4. A Small Love Has Bloomed
5. We Spent a Night Together
6. It’s Chilled Even My Spine
7. That Girl’s Become a Bride
8. I Won’t Let You Call Me a Chicken
9. I Will Sing Love’s Song

Disc 2
10. Flowers Bloom on that Girl’s Baton
11. I Never Thought That Girl Would be a Princess
12. This Year, Too, Has Come to a Close

Picture

Tamako Market gets a 1.78:1 widescreen 1080p transfer, and stop me if you’ve heard me bleating on before about pristine presentations of anime in high definition. We have great detail, great colours, and no issues with compression or digital banding, just as it should be. That’s exactly what a Kyoto Animation production needs of course, as you have the detailed, lush world design, and quirky and memorable characters as well. The animation really deserves it too, detailed, smooth, with a discerned eye on character and individuality. This a joy to watch simply from an animation perspective, while KyoAni add delightful little touches like jump cuts, and deliberately allowing the focus to drift in certain scenes, all to really make the cinematography come to life.

Sound

You have the choice between PCM 2.0 Stereo English and Japanese, and you can choose from English subtitles or a signs only track from the main menu, but the audio and subtitles will remain locked during playback. The subtitles too are of a legible white font. The Japanese audio is the way to go here, as Tamako Market’s dub from Sentai is not one of their better ones (it isn’t helped by the constant puns and wordplay in the Japanese which don’t translate well to the English). The characters are all individual and quirky, and the voice performances have to reflect that. The dialogue is clear throughout, the stereo gives the show room to breathe, and there’s an extra emphasis on music in terms of the story. It all comes across without problem on this Blu-ray, while the subtitles are timed accurately and are free of typos.

Extras

You get 2 discs in a BD Amaray with one disc on a central hinged panel. You get some more artwork and an episode listing on the inner sleeve. You can guess by the differences in presentation that this title has been re-authored for the Region B market by Hanabee, and one thing that has been stripped is the translated English credit scroll at the end of each episode. You’ll have to adjourn to the ANN Encyclopaedia to find out who’s in the cast.


The discs present their content with static menus.

The extras on disc 2 comprise 3:07 of Web Previews, the textless credits (Worth it for the opening on this show), and trailers for Beyond the Boundary, Aldnoah.Zero, and Chaika the Coffin Princess.

Conclusion

I love Tamako Market. It’s fun, it’s quirky, it’s silly, and it’s full of colourful, delightful characters. There’s always someone that you can latch onto in this show, someone you’ll be simpatico with. When you take into account the sense of humour, the quality of the animation, the sheer, slice-of-life perfection of it, you can easily see how Tamako Market was touted as the successor to K-On!, the next show for fans to engage with. Here’s the thing. K-On! made it look effortless, you just saw the elegant swan of a brilliant show, and you didn’t see the creators paddling furiously beneath the surface. Tamako Market on the other hand just tries too hard, and it’s obvious about it. You can see it wanting desperately to be the next K-On! in the way that its characters act and interact, and by simple virtue of this, it can never be the next K-On!


The story centres on the Usagiyama Shopping Arcade, a collection of small independent shops of the sort that really don’t exist anymore. Tamako is the central character, the daughter of a mochi shop owner, and who loves everything about the sweet delicacies, but is dense to pretty much everything else, especially love. That makes things hard for neighbour and childhood friend Mochizo, son of a rival mochi shop owner, who has long nursed a crush on Tamako. Into this setting comes Dera, an egotistical, opinionated, and outspoken parrot who is on a mission to find a bride for his homeland’s prince. Sneezing is a sign of affection for him, so Tamako’s sneeze makes him thing that she’s taken with him, and by the time he gets addicted to mochi, it’s too late. He’s moved in.


Tamako is part of the baton twirling club at school, along with her best friends Midori and Kanna. Midori is probably the most down to earth of the characters, sees things without a ‘weird’ filter, but Kanna makes up for that in being the strangest of the girls, soft spoken and with a gift for DIY. She’s also allergic to birds, which makes for an interesting first meeting with Dera. They soon make friends with a shy, quiet badminton club member named Shiori. As Dera’s been putting on the pounds eating mochi, he soon transforms into an almost flightless bird, so it’s good that Shiori’s a dab hand with her racquet.


Tamako also has a younger sister, Anko, who wants to be called An, and she has her own love issues with a boy at her school, a storyline that also plays out here. Halfway through the show, Choi shows up from Dera’s island, a young fortune-teller (the bird is key to her fortunetelling) and the girl who sent Dera on the mission in the first place. She’s looking to see what is taking Dera so long, and is shocked to see him living the easy life, gorging on mochi. Of course there are the various shop owners and colourful characters in the shopping arcade as well, it’s a veritable parade of diversity (as you can see in the opening credits).


The show unfolds over the space of a year, a calendar of episodes, and there is plenty going on, Tamako getting the Valentines spirit into the arcade, trying to find out what song she’s been humming since childhood, various festivals, a school trip to the beach, a haunted house in the shopping district to drum up customers, Dera’s exercise regime and so on. There is a lot of variety and colour to each of the episodes, and it is very enjoyable to watch.


There might be a little too much variety in actual fact, as Tamako Market suffers both from character overload, and from a lack of focus in the story it wants to tell. K-On! had the three years of high school Light Music Club to work with, and it became an examination of friendship in school. But while love is an aspect of Tamako Market, particularly with Mochizo’s crush on Tamako, and with the prince looking for a bride, it never really feels central to the show. In that respect Tamako Market is the textbook ‘cute girls doing cute things’ show. It’s not supposed to satisfy or offer a strong emotional connection to the viewer, it’s just there to entertain, and to make you feel good in twenty minute chunks.


Still, it did manage a feature film sequel called Tamako Love Story, which apparently does offer a stronger narrative for the characters. It’s due out this month in the US, and hopefully a Region B friendly release will subsequently follow. Tamako Market is really quite good. It’s a lot of fun, very entertaining, and with a host of colourful characters. It’s got a delightful sense of humour, and is one of those shows that warm the cockles. Just don’t make the mistake of comparing it to K-On! as it’s not in the same league.