Based on a 4-panel comic about a girl named Yuno who enters high school in pursuit of an art degree and lives at the Hidamari apartments with other students.

Episode Summary

A multitude of factors seem to have contributed to Yuno almost being late for her high school entrance exam, but her mother’s help allows her to get there on time, albeit with the wrong pencil box, one with a kneaded eraser instead of a regular one (tragic!). After the test is over, she realizes that her mother waited for her all day. She finds out later that she made it into school, and leaves to live closer to school by herself. She’s greeted by her neighbor, Miyako, who expects soba for whatever reason.

Over soba, they make their introductions, and Yuno finds out that Miyako is in the same department. Miyako, after providing Yuno with various nicknames, explains the facts about their apartment building. Then they go to visit some of the other residents, and Yuno doesn’t return until much later. Miyako, whose water has been turned off, steals a bath in Yuno’s apartment.

Thoughts

The slice-of-life genre is always such a problem for me because the summaries tend to be so bland and miss out on a lot of the charm these shows can have. Essentially, not a whole lot really happens in this episode, at least as far as compelling pieces of plot go. Yuno gets into school and meets her new neighbors, most of whom are definitely on the eccentric side. Hiro worries about her weight a bit, and Sae is a novelist on a deadline. And of course Miyako is humorously-irresponsible and a mooch to boot. These are character archetypes that tend to show up in shows of this nature, and the “plot”, at least what little there is, doesn’t differ much from any other school slice-of-life show. So where does the charm come in?

In this show’s case, the animation and style is waaaay beyond what it needs to be, and the effort makes even the most boring conversations fun to watch. There’s a lot of soft pastel colorwork in the show, but it’s punctuated by elements that suggest the idea of being inside a comic strip, like the use of colored screentones as shading. The character designs are also quite unusual, so any time one of the characters makes a funny face, it’s extremely distinctive. Sprinkled throughout the scenes are uses of real-life items. In one scene, the characters are having tea and their teapot is a real teapot. Most of the time these things are quite subtle, but they add to the style this show has.

The pacing is also quite fast, if that’s believable. Each scene is titled like it would be as a comic strip, and this splits up the action quite a bit. Pacing is a problem that a lot of slice-of-life shows have, which makes them seem more boring than they really are. This show escapes that for the most part because the gags come quickly and then it’s off to another subject. I think this was an intelligent choice on the part of the creators. However, some of the gags fall a bit flat if you don’t have much experience with Japanese culture, so be warned.

I admittedly didn’t have much prior interest in this show because I mistakenly thought it was more of a “loli” sort of series, but now I can tell that it’s not, the character designs are just a bit deceptive. I know slice-of-life isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but for those who enjoy the genre, this is definitely something to try out.

Pros

• Visually-appealing animation style
• Good pacing for the genre

Cons

• If you dislike slice-of-life, this won’t change your mind
• Some knowledge of Japanese culture required

By Jessi – 09/01/08