This anime features super pretty dessert and cute shoujo girls. That’s all you need to know.

I’m already at a relative loss of how to blog this episode (so uh yeah, to get it said right off the bat, I can’t imagine blogging this weekly). All I can really say is that I am so happy that it exists.

I’ve missed anime like this so much. Big shoujo anime eyes, impossible shoujo anime hairstyle, ah~ I love it. So instead of doing a proper review or telling you much about the series I just go on about shoujo. But what does it really matter? Come on you know if this series is for you or not just by the promo image.

To be related to the anime I will be posting captioned images that give a basic five sentence summary of the plot. Like so:

Feel free to ignore the rest of this stuff.

Right away I do want to say that this anime reminded me of moe’s original origin with the first three winners of SaiMoe being from a shoujo series. And with good reason. Dojikko especially comes to mind as being a main trait for most shoujo heroines at the beginning of their series. Though like I said, at the beginning. They usually get better.

Which may be why so many people are under the impression that Kobato is a shoujo since…well she’s still clumsy but she gets a lot smarter as time goes by.

But oh my, would you look at that. I totally just let Kobato butt right in. (Expect this all season guys. Basically think of Kobato as being Nagisa and you should get used to it faster. )

Really though Yumeiro Patissiere doesn’t remind me much of the manga that’s been a hit in scanlations recently. Kimi ni Todoke, Arisa, Watashi ni xx Shinasai, and Momo I all hear about on a regular basis from blogs and on twitter. I’ve read them all and I believe all of them run in Nakayoshi which is right along the same lines as Ribon, but they’re not really…well you know. They’re all good, but they aren’t ultra-shoujo. If you know what I mean. (You probably don’t)

Yumeiro Patissiere is ultra-shoujo. It is so incredibly cute. Now I can’t say what the manga is like because I’ve never read it. Never even looked through it. Almost bought the manga the two times I was in New York City at Kinokuniya, but I couldn’t read it so…you know.

But the anime is getting the classic ultra-shoujo anime adaptation. There’s a girl, with a dream, she’ll go to a school for the dream and there’s going to be a lot of fillers and a big cast that I’m told includes filler characters who will have cut&paste personalities.

And you know what? I will fucking love it. Because I haven’t read the manga and because I started off on shows like this. When I first experienced the fandom online this sort of anime and manga is what I fell for. Lots of mahou shoujo because it is so prone to this, but other stuff too. And I love it.

Went into Shugo Chara! expecting ultra-shoujo, but ended up with fangirling heaven of a different kind. Which is fine. Since I loved it so much for so long. Just…you know…anytime it went in a cute direction it was more, “bleh” than “yay” because I read the manga. Though Shugo Chara! is missing the whole ultra-shoujo look too because Peach-Pit aren’t shoujo manga-ka. Like CLAMP, they didn’t do Ultra-Shoujo either when they had CCS in Nakayoshi (even less so since the anime series couldn’t fit in sparkles at all. Sure made up for it with sakura petals though).

Gokujou! Mecha Motte Iinchou probably would have classified as ultra-shoujo, but you know…3D…that kinda sucked. I saw a more recent episode that was not 3D and it made me want to cry. (If you did that in the first place I wouldn’t have been having withdrawals for so long!!)

But this…this is even more perfect than Mecha Motte Iinchou could have been. Because it includes one of the cutest things a shoujo girl can do…make pastries! YES! This is very true. Cakes and other cute and frilly looking desserts are a common occurrence in manga illustrations even if they have nothing to do with the series. It just looks pretty.

And strawberries? Psh, we don’t even have to mention them. If you haven’t seen them in an illustration for shoujo manga, then you aren’t reading shoujo manga.

So look right here, we have a girl, named Icihigo who loves desserts (oh yeah she also eats as much of them as she can, but doesn’t eat impossible piles of food so half and half on that shoujo heroine quality) and wants to become a patissiere. And the anime takes it to the best possible place by spending more effort on animating the food than anything else.

*kira**kira*

Ah~ So pretty that I think I’ll go blind.

Then we also have cute mascot characters and we’re going to get three boys later on at the new school, and the crying looks so pretty, and all plot points involve feelings and sentimental-ness, and…ah~ It’s all so great.

Icihigo herself is really what sells the anime to me though. She has all of those incredibly obvious faults and stuff, but it doesn’t matter because she’s a good person as we see when she’s with her little sister. Now there are cold-hearted anime fans so this can be either hit and miss, but for me I always love it.

It’s a really simple character trait. Making some kind, energetic, honest, and just all around decent. Some people would go all, “rawr Mary-Sue” but those people are bitches. (Oh, I said it. ) Who obviously never really learned the full meaning of Mary-Sue (not “perfect” but more like “obvious author insert or intended to let the audience think of themselves as an insert or both” which is why Mary-Sue originated in fanfiction and is most rampant in said fanfiction).

Just because a girl is cute and energetic and ends up helping everyone and being great at what she originally was clumsy with doesn’t mean we have to label her as something. She’s already got a label, “the classic shoujo heroine”. I mean no one goes around picking on shounen leads the same way when they fail at life and then still end up beating almost all of their enemies…or going into emo-meltdown when they don’t. Okay we pick on them, but we don’t add extra labels to them. It just remains a part of the genre. Love it or hate it.

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You may notice I didn’t talk a lot specifically about Yumeiro Patissiere, but I really didn’t have to. By it being best described as “young shoujo” everyone will already know if they want to give it a chance. I mean all of the knowledge is there already. A vast majority of guys won’t like it young or old, and apparently most girls will get tired of it as they get older.

Most girls doesn’t include me of course though. I’m 19 and still going strong. I just eventually get bored with fillers sometimes.

But generally cynical people should know to stay away. I mean eating a certain cake has the feeling of first love. So corny! (but you know I love it)

However, there is a downside even for people who want to watch it. It probably won’t get fansubbed. Or if it does it will be fansubbed very, very slowly. Which is really what kills this sort of anime in the English-speaking fandom. Because it’s mostly younger, newer female fans that will want to watch it and unless they learned Japanese someplace else they won’t know enough from picking up a bit from watching tons of subtitled series, even then you don’t get a lot so only something like this is possible to understand.

So to the newer fangirls who want to watch something cute, I’d especially recommend this knowing how much I loved this sort of series when I was younger, except you know…the fansub dilemma. (Makes me sad for younger fangirls since I can relate so well)

But in general it just depends on whether you like this sort of shoujo. It’s adorable, it’s light-hearted, it’s fun, it’s cute, and uh…very, very cute.

I’m going to watch it as long as I can but fillers combined with raws makes me iffy on how long I’ll last especially when there’s so much else in this season I like. And as I said, blogging this seems really unlikely. (Uh, right after so much of Shugo Chara? I can’t handle that much filler.)

In: First Impressions | tags: as expected, bishies, cute~!, sparkles, ultra shoujo. | #