Nobue Ito was just your ordinary sixteen year old girl going to high school with her friends enjoying her fleeting youth while looking excitedly towards the future... About four years ago. Now at the tender age of 20 shes commuting to university while living at home with her parents wistful for the youth she took for granted. On the one hand shes living a privileged comfortable life wanting for nothing but a steady supply of cigarettes that in such a tough job market she can only barely afford. On the other hand her social life is almost nonexistent as the only people she regularly hangs out with anymore are her responsible stalwart twelve year old sister Chika and her gaggle of prepubescent friends. This includes the bookish space cadet Matsuri the neighborhood troublemaker Miu and Ana a pretentious white girl whos having trouble fitting in. With no other prospects to occupy her time Nobue has become the defacto babysitter for these four as well as mentor referee and even occasional antagonist as she bears witness to the trials whimsies and adventures that shes grown out of as she protects these four precious marshmallows. For Strawberry Marshmallow were returning to studio Daume which I have to say is one of the odder anime studios Ive ever dived into. Ive reviewed a few of their titles before but suffice to say when you put Le Portrait de Petit Cossette Please Twins and Shiki right next to each other they look absolutely nothing like each other nor do they look anything like Strawberry Marshmallow. Its hard to say anything definitive about a studio thats been dead since 2011 but from what I can tell they probably were the type of studio that gave their directors the freedom and resources to achieve whatever their visions might have been for better or worse of course. Because of that I guess it shouldnt be surprising that the directors name is a lot more telling. Strawberry Marshmallow was directed by Takuya Sato a man whose name has been attached in some way or another to some huge titles. Not only did he perform storyboard screenplay and series composition work on shows like Trigun Serial Experiments Lain and Princess Tutu but hes done almost nothing but work as lead director ever since his 2011 effort on a little known indie title called motherfucking SteinsGate. Strawberry Marshmallow wasnt his first lead directing job... It was his second after NieA 7... But his resume up to that point reads like someone whos taking as many jobs as he can to absorb as much information as he can and it shows in the final product because Strawberry Marshmallow is incredibly well directed. It doesnt look like it had a massive budget to work with but the material also wasnt too demanding as its a slice of life show with a lot of dialogue so it really doesnt feel like they ever had to cut any serious corners with the animation and as a result the movement of the characters always feels articulate and seamless. The color palette is very soft and watercolory... Bright but in a way that never stands out lending it an aesthetic thats consistently easy on the eyes especially in the way it translates to nearly every single background environment thats ever featured on screen. Its a very warm welcoming aesthetic able to tug at your nostalgia without ever feeling manipulative or dishonest in its attempts. The character designs seem fairly common at first... Bodies that are more or less anatomically feasible with cartoonishly round faces for the sake of their enhanced range of expression hairstyles that are distinctive and yet simplistic enough to seem realistic... But there are two details that set Strawberry Marshmallows cast apart from similar ensembles. First simple enough this is one of the rare shows where characters wear different things every day and they even take this a step further than usual by not assigning the characters any school uniform... This is practically unheard of when you think about just how much money a production company can save by sticking to one or two outfit designs through a shows run time. The other detail is in the characters height. You can tell a lot about the intentions of an anime based on how tall their child characters are... The smaller they are the harder youre being manipulated with one example being the twelve year olds who look like six year olds in Your Lie in April... But despite most of the main cast being eleven to twelve years old in this theyre all designed at a realistic height. The english dub was an early Geneon effort and they turned to their Blue Water group for this one. All in all there were only about a dozen people in the cast five in the main cast with the rest taking multiple characters apiece out of the side cast. For the five featured stars Geneon made an interesting decision here choosing to cast actual child actors as the four prepubescent leads and for child actors they all portray their characters in a pretty spoton manner. Kylie Beaven is especially noteworthy for her ultraprecious take on the slow Matsuri which is kind of a shame because she and Wendy MorrisonChika never really stuck to voice acting after this show. Katie Rowan did a fine job capturing Anas highborn melancholy and she managed to land a few decent jobs up to 2012 including the lead role in Full Moon wo Sagashite. Caitlynne Medrek only had to be bratty as Miu but she still found ways to make the character complex so it makes sense that shes been working steadily even as late as last year. Finally Carol Anne Day has just a deep and rough enough voice to round out the cast as the long suffering but still perfectly game for anything Nobue. Its a really strong dub overall despite the mistakes you open yourself up to whenever you hire the underage for acting jobs but there is one thing kind of wrong with it. Ana Coppolas entire gimmick is that shes an English girl by birth but has spent so much time in Japan that she doesnt remember English very well and the dub gets around this by having people speak English with really thick Japanese accents whenever someones using it and just regular English the rest of the time and its a competent enough idea but actually listening to these scenes play out in the original Japanese is hilarious. The original sub does overall have a stronger comedic edge than the dub but scenes where Ana is struggling between English and Japanese are the only times in the series that I go out of my way to switch back to the sub. Other than that you really cant go wrong in either track so my recommendation is split. So true story Strawberry Marshmallow has been on my back burner for longer than any other anime Ive ever reviewed. When I originally started to compile everything Id reviewed into the sacred list I was somewhere around the seventies and as part of my future projections I had Strawberry Marshmallow marked as like I dont know 84? I even had its theoretical release scheduled for the second Saturday of November but nope it never wound up happening. I killed my blog and quit reviewing without ever touching on this anime. When I came back in 2021 I thought Okay this time this time definitely but after I rewatched it I realized I had nothing too important or interesting to say about it so I just dropped it. Well now were in 2023 Im slowly approaching my 200th review and there is nothing thats going to stop me from reviewing this anime... Even though its still just as simple and plotless as it always was. Honestly forget the plot I dont even think this show has a premise. Maybe its like Azumanga Daioh and its whole identity is the premise living on name recognition alone. And thats when it hit me... Instead of just listing all of the shows qualities verbatim why not just do what I do best and make a bunch of obnoxious references and comparisons? I cant change who I am might as well reap the benefits off of it. Ive already thrown some shade at one popular anime as anyone who has already downvoted this review is well aware so I might as well take things back to Lucky Star which I reviewed back in the days of my old blog. In that piece I made some choice comments about the effectiveness of the comedy and comments I still stand by. Specifically I said that the core of Lucky Stars humor was the adversarial relationship between Konata and Kagami and that the farther removed from them the series got the less funny it became resulting in an entire secondary cast that struggled to uphold the magic of those that came before them. Luckily Strawberry Marshmallow doesnt have that problem. There are only five main characters in Strawberry Marshmallow and while there are a decent amount of side characters none of them ever overstay their welcome. There are a couple of running gag characters... An old man whose favorite peaceful safe havens keep getting ruined by rambunctious kids and a boy in Ana and Matsuris class who keeps getting punished for increasingly ridiculous reasons... But aside from them every side character we ever meet gets exactly the right amount of screen time to interact with someone in the main cast for a story or a set of gags before collecting their check and being instantly forgotten. I guess that sounds kind of harsh but its more than excusable when you take into account just how much chemistry the main cast has and how almost all of them... With the possible exception of Ana and Chika... Have unique dynamics with each other. In Lucky Star when Konata and Kagami arent there to provide a punchline Tsukasa and Miyuki get stuck going around in circles of airheaded conversation. In Strawberry Marshmallow when Chika isnt around to make straight man remarks and Miu isnt stirring up trouble Matsuri and Ana are just fine on their own being funny with their mutual English lessons. And each of these kids has an equally compelling dynamic with Nobue. In my review of Listen to Me Girls I am Your FatherGod I hate that title I had a lot to complain about but one of my more specific remarks was that the family in the series didnt feel realistic because among other things there was no conflict. You had four whole people sharing a small one bedroom apartmentor was it a studio? and yet the only challenges they faced were of the time and money variety. Yeah no sorry families fight. Siblings feel realistic when theres a casual layer of annoyance and hatred thats only been numbed by years of resignation to the inevitable stretched out over a much thicker layer of love and loyalty. Chika and Nobue feel like actual real life sisters getting on each others nerves while still depending on each other in a way that suggests years of history that the series barely scratches the surface of. Not only do the two of them feel that way but theres also a very realistic dynamic stretching out across Chikas friend group. I mentioned earlier that Chika and Ana dont really have much of a dynamic and thats not a mistake.. The only reason the two of them hang out is because theyre both Matsuris friends and you know what? In real life sometimes it do be like that. All of that under consideration there are two qualities about this show that are stronger than anything else and the first one is the character Miu. While shes by no means the main character of the series she is arguably the most popular and even kind of the de facto mascot. Shes the most common character in the shows merchandise with Ana as a distant second and she was even the focal point of the shows one and only AMV Hell appearance. Miu might seem like an insufferable character at first glance but its characters like her who keep the plotless slice of life series alive. What would Azumanga Daioh be without Tomo? Would South Park still be around without Cartman? Theres a reason Bart has always been the most popular Simpson. While the rest of the main cast is fine on their own and theres plenty of comedy to be enjoyed between them Miu is automatically the most interesting part of any story shes in and shes really good at keeping these stories alive. Theres only one storyline where she ever goes too far to the point that the other girls start to feel guilty and she does manage to cause actual consequential trouble for Nobue but lets be real Nobue could have also handled herself a lot better. Besides that diner would have gotten boring if it featured in more than one episode. The other quality that this series thrives on is just how wholesome it is. Strawberry Marshmallow is a laid back innocent series where you spend twelve straight episodes watching four preteen girls and their adult supervisor live out their daily lives and yet at no point does it ever feel voyeuristic or creepy... Except on the rare occasions where a joke is made about Nobue being a pervert and while most of these could be interpreted as misunderstandings being made at Nobues expense Id be lying if I said she never crosses a line or two. Seeing her leer at Ana in the bath and refuse to look away when asked is a little skincrawling not gonna lie but still moments like these are few and far between and there arent nearly enough red flags to ruin an otherwise relatable and likeable character. Granted theres also the eyecatch artwork... Eyecatches by the way are the title cards that show up at the halfway marks of most anime episodes... Which are focused on the little girls hips including a shot where one of them is wearing jeans that are just oh so suggestively unbuttoned which is something nobody fucking asked for. Nobody worth listening to anyway. And finally one more comparison Id like to make Lilo and Stitch. Yes I know thats not an anime but it is popularly considered a good example of how to write child characters as children are more than just burdens bundles of joy or McGuffins. Children especially those at the age of Chika and her friends are intellectual beings with complex interests and personalities. The fact that Ana enjoys Japanese festivals and culture and is knowledgeable about Sumo Wrestling ties in perfectly with her language and heritage conflict. The fact that Matsuri is a fan of Harry Potter... Yes the actual Harry Potter not a copyright dodging reskin... Tells us loads about her that we never see. Chikas obsessive studying is suggestive of the example her sister set for her and theres plenty of evidence suggesting Miu is either somewhat neglected at home or just starved for attention for other reasons. All of this feeds into the comedic and unexpectedly dramatic sides of the series and Id have to give away some serious spoilers to support this but the comedic timing is absolutely pitch perfect. Its hard to recommend plotless slice of life shows to people as you can never tell what anybodys going to find boring but I think theres a good chance youll enjoy this one. Strawberry Marshmallow was originally available from Geneon Entertainment which basically means it was expensive as all hell from the moment it was released and the company dying in the mid2000s only made it even more difficult to find at a reasonable price. That was until a few years ago when Sentai filmworks rescued and released it on a far more affordable and accessible Bluray/DVD format. They also released a separate DVD/Bluray for the various OVA episodes but Id exercise caution going into those as they do get pretty creepy and fanservicey. The original manga has been out of print ever since Tokyopop went under and apparently theres a visual novel for the PS4 thats never been translated or released stateside. The main reason Strawberry Marshmallow is difficult to talk about and took me so damn long to review is just that its a very simple show. There are no real complex themes in it and while there is a decent degree of depth to the characters themselves everything else about this series is honestly pretty shallow and straight forward. Luckily while there might not be much beneath the surface it has a pretty damn enjoyable surface. With only a few small exceptions here and there this series is perfectly wholesome and safe for the youngest viewers but with more than enough of an edge to its humor to keep adults entertained as well. With little to no technological or pop culture references its also perfectly timeless and accessable. Its well produced pleasant to look at and it carries an ambiance of nostalgia and warmth thats sure to comfort the soul of even the most cynical viewer even if it isnt quite the emotional powerhouse some people might be looking for. I give Strawberry Marshmallow an 8/10.