KINMOZA! - Reviews

Kin-Iro Mosaic is a slice-of-life / school life show so don't expect a story. This show revolves around Shino and Alice and their daily lives. But this is not a bad thing; shows without any story can be just as entertaining as show with a story.

However this show does not stand out above any other regular slice-of-live / school life comedy shows. The only exceptional feature is the cuteness, so expect a lot of those. But for me personally that isn't enough.

The biggest issue I have with this show are the main leads, Shino and Alice. They are the least interesting and very bland characters. The side characters Aya, Yoko and Karen are a lot more entertaining.

A short intro on the characters:

Alice is a British girl who flew over to Japan to live with her best childhood friend Shino. Alice is small, cute and British and not much more.

Shino is the Japanese childhood friend of Alice and she is obsessed with blonde English girls. Note that she really obsessed about blonde English girls, pervert obsessed.

Aya & Yoko, Aya is a shy girl who always sticks close to Yoko who is a tomboy and pretty dense. These two were the most interesting characters in this show, their reactions towards the others and their interaction were the best. But Aya seemed to have some weird Shoujo-ai feelings for Yoko. For those who don't know what Shoujo-ai is, Shoujo-ai is the love between two women, or in this particularly case, the love between two girls. This gave some funny and cute scenes but it felt really out of place, like this was added to improve the shows sales.

Karen is another British blonde girl who transferred towards Japan. Karen is very....unique, Karen is Karen. She was a funny character but if she would have a bigger part in this show it would have become annoying very quickly, probably. So it is good she remained a side character.

Overall this is good show to watch if you want to see cuteness. But if that isn't your taste this is a forgettable one in a million comedy show, a show to watch for a few grins if you got nothing else to watch at the moment.

Note: the musical at the very end of the last episode was nice to watch.

A bit of a mixed bag, this one. The cringe was pretty strong because of the Engrish which I didn't really find cute. Surely studios can find one or two foreigners willing to say a few lines in proper English but that is a minor point.

The major problem with this show is the lead characters who are not interesting and their chemistry is also quite lacking. The side characters easily stole the show, especially Yoko and Aya. Their chemistry was off the charts compared to everyone else and they were consistently the most entertaining parts of the show. It seems to be a bit of a trend with anime where we have the most interesting characters be relegated to the side while focusing on bland and boring protagonists.

I would have loved to see more of the magical chemistry between Aya and Yoko but it was in short supply. If they could have also tweaked the main characters to make them as interesting as these two, it could have been a great show. But as it stands it's a serviceable slice of life show with cute characters some of which work much better than others which is actually a bit of a shame. A missed opportunity really. The story aspect is pretty much absent which is standard for these sorts of shows but what little there is, doesn't really work.

I'm not sure if I'd recommend this to be honest but the relationship between Aya and Yoko is most definitely worth experiencing. I wish they'd been featured more, it would be an easy recommendation then. They are the reason for the generous overall score I have given here. Still, give it a go if SOL is your thing and get through the first couple of episodes, it does get better later.

Kiniro Mosaic is the most underwhelmed I've ever been by one of these moeblob slice-of-life comedies. After months of seeing clips on Tumblr and Twitter I decided to give it a try, only to find that almost all of the most memorable bits are contained in the first two episodes.

The animation is decent enough but there's no semblence of a story even for moeblob comedies. The characters are also sadly kind of one-note, though they serve well enough as cute girls being sweet and cute. However, the comedy writing isn't very strong and the characters don't have enough depth to them to elevate this above Every Other Moe Anime. If you're looking for another GochiUsa, Yuru Camp, K-On!, or YuruYuri, this isn't it. But if you really liked A Club, Hinako Note, or Non Non Biyori, there is probably something here for you.

If Kiniro Mosaic is seen as iyashikei, it is one of the best presentations in that genre.  As seinen or slice of life … eh, not so much.

Kinmoza's 12 episodes played out so much like the manga, quick dashes of gag/humor, interspersed in a fuller themed storyline.  This gave the series a feel much like Hidamari Sketch, a set of girls getting together and engaging in girl talk.  Much of which is not easily appreciated by father-types.  But the flow of plot in KM is better established as it tells the story of girls from different cultures as they spend their high school years together.

The main characters are the Japanese girl Shinobu and the English girl Alice.  Shinobu met Alice in her study junket to the UK a few years prior.  Then, in Shino's first year of high school, she gets an air mail letter telling her that Alice will transfer to her Japanese school.  Shino has a thing for blonde hair, and Alice and her fellow-English gal Karen have those exciting golden tresses.  Alice is a diminutive girl who has a fair proficiency in Japanese, as does Karen, who thinks she still has much to learn.  Shino worries much over Alice, fearing that she is suffering from homesickness every time Alice looks out a window. Shino’s classmates include Yoko and Aya, two firm friends of opposite personalities.  Yoko is the active athletic type, Aya is just plain moody.  Together, these five girls celebrate high school life in little doses of humor.  Guided by the sage advice of the paragon of 'friendly teacher' Karasuma-sensei, each girl grows in her own specific way.

The animation style displays a muted color scheme, each girl almost a faded rendition of what could easily have been more colorful, but it reflects the manga style perfectly.  It is a coloration that takes time to take a liking to.  And, as the story is the thing, animation does what it can, but lets the girls drive the jokes.

There were three great moments in the season.  First, the portions where there was reverse subbing, the characters speaking English as the kanji translation flashed across the screen.  Granted, the voices were squeaky and hardly of British accent, but seeing the reversal used was a kick.  Second, in the Christmas episode, along with the lights, the presents and Karen's hot Santa-esque miniskirt/costume, Alice reminded Shino that Christmas was the birthday of Jesus Christ.  I've seen many Christmas episodes in many animes, but this is the first where Jesus was mentioned.  The scene honestly floored me.  Then, the last segment after the last episode, Shino's story of princesses and pirates, a huge gush of girlish imagination.  It was charm running amok.

The music held the gentle vibe of girls interacting, a selection which seems to be of better quality than the songs developed for the second season (Hello! KM).  Together, the full effect of Kinmoza! is a perfect delight of schoolgirls working hard to understand each other and create lasting friends which oceans and seas (and language) can never separate.

It amazes me how similar A channel is to this anime, even the characters are similar, this at first seemed like a bad rehash of the popular anime but the more I watched I realised although it is not as good as A Channel it still has its own good points.

Story: The story is fairly normal for a slice of life anime, nothing much happens and it focuses on one year like most anime of this genre, it is based at around 12 episodes with the possibility of an OVA later on, it mainly focuses on the life in and out of school of 5 school girls with two of the main characters being English (England), this creates a language based plot around the anime, however the idea of a girl from ENGLAND sounding like Google Translate kind of pisses me of and many times through the anime I found myself wanting to rip my ears of, otherwise the anime story wise is fine.

Art: The art in Kiniro Mosaic is almost identical to the type used in A Channel, it may also to some people resemble the art in love lab, this art is cutesy and fairly normal for a slice of life like this one, the art itself has no effect on the anime other than extenuating cute features.

Sound: Not really much I can say about this really, the OP isn't bad but isn't nearly as good as some of the more recent and memorable anime. The ED is pretty good though and takes a leaf out of many slice of life anime and has the ED as the main characters singing and dancing together which works pretty well but other than that there are no real scenes where sound becomes important of all that great. In terms of voice acting that a whole different thing, it’s fine until the girls (who are apparently native to England) start sounding like bloody Google Translate and then my ears bleed but other than that its fine, and actually pretty cute.

Character: the characters are similar to the characters of A channel but there are not many other defining features in the characters, there is not much time spent on back story so not much of the characters life gets revealed.

Enjoyment/Overall: This anime was pretty enjoyable, I usually score anime high so if you are into anime as much as me I would take like 2 points off to get it to a reasonable score, as you can tell my biggest problem with the anime was the continuous use of bad English throughout it but other than that it was just another slice of life which means in lay-man’s terms "It doesn't really matter what happened in the anime, the fact is it happened and it's not the end of the world if it didn't work out."