Hakumei to Mikochi

Still at work but I watched it on break because there's no way I could possibly wait, and this was fucking great. Absolutely delivered and everything I was hoping for in atmosphere and a vibrant world. I couldn't stop smiling from beginning to end.

Such a great way to start the day for me with cuto comfiness. Really looking forward to more, and some nice tiny adventurs.
 
1

I'm in agreement with the generic user. This illustrated the reasons why I love Lerche's work now, they know how to put different styles on things but they always retain their beautiful simplicity, and this is no different. The tone is perfect, and the artstyle is brilliant for the tone. The music makes me happy too.

I'm warmed by the display of wonder in this world, the kite ride was brilliant. I was honestly wondering if it was going to attack them but it didn't and then we got some cool stuff.

That town is so cute. Absolutely adorable. I don't know how they did it, but they managed to keep the feeling of everything being small even though everything is scaled around them. It could be the proportions of the characters along with the blocky and simplistic structure of everything in the town.

I also love these two. Their reactions to each other are entertaining.

Ah and after watching the whole episode i finally recognize what artstyle they're going for, it's a childrens book. I feel dumb. But there it is, and it works.

I'm interested to see what other kinds of small places exist in this world, like other civilizations.

The sea shanty made me feel warm. Everything about this show is... comfortable, like gensan kept saying it would be. I never doubted it. <3 lerche.

Nice :D
 
01
with Konohana Kitan last season and then to this, Lerche's on fire when it comes to healing shows, i hope the keep it up
scenery porn anyone? damn it was fun collecting screenshots for this one, everything is just sweet.
the best part of the episode has to be the mantis though, it sounded so cute.
 
Episode 1:

The art is gorgeous, the world is detailed, the music was fantastic and I was utterly bored with the rest of the episode. This was too slice of life for me. It's not like Girl's Last Tour where I could be engrossed by their conversations or wonder about the mysteries of the world they were inhabiting. This was watching these two go about their daily chores. Sure, there's lots of neat details in the art, but the world is presented as fairly mundane since this is just their every day life.
 
Tents said:
Episode 1

I was insanely bored. Slice of life is not my genre. Even Girl's Last Tour took me half the season to warm up to it so hopefully the same happens with this show but the first episode really din't work for me.
Click to expand...
It takes me a while to get into sol shows too, unless it's immediately appealing to me. Some things just hit the right notes from the start.
 
i agree with you guys, this is a little too slice of life-ish, i'm very into those types of shows though so i don't mind it at all. if i were to say, from the art perspective this one is better than Girl's last tour (and a bit more consistent as well), other than that it's inferior in every other way.
 
Currently watching a lot of shows so I may have to drop stuff. If I do, this will be the first to go. I'm fine with slice of life, but I need good characters to watch/root for. Here I have neither.
For some reason I'm really disappointed that they seem to be little people in a big world instead of little people in our world like say Arrietty. I loved the way Arrietty interacted with the modern human world and it feels a little lazy to just go "Take animals and plants and make it big". The shot of the mountain really ruined things for me, I could see how small the trees were and it totally broke my immersion. Something that I thought was cool at first was when they broke sections into small panels and I was like "Woah this reminds me of Scum's Wish" then I started to pay more attention to the panels and it just came off lazy. Scum's Wish used these panels to isolate characters and highlight the drama, while at the same time creating really interesting compositions. Sure it was a money saver but it added weight to the narrative in such an amazing way. Here it feels lazy.
G7qHYvF.png

(Took the image randomly but if you read the subs in a sarcastic way it's funny in the context of my post). Then the most obnoxious thing happens, Kafu shows up. When Mikochi told her story I thought "That's out of nowhere, please don't make him show up". Two mins later there he is. It felt so pointless and vapid. I loved that they were so wrapped up in the journey that they didn't know what to wish for, but that's all the first half really offered me.
Second half was nice, and I'm always down for pointless stacking shops on top of each other. Unfortunately the stacking served no purpose and we never got off the ground level. The shop center kinda pissed me off because it looks exactly like every highschool anime tree with a bench around it, and I feel like I've seen that exact same stone shrine setup somewhere. I started to get sick of the character designs about 2/3s of the way thru. Seeing them stand still next to realistic depictions of animals with great backgrounds made them feel really cheap. Especially after seeing them next to identically shaped basic chibi bros.
Episode left me feeling chill and empty. I don't like this.

Edit: read the synopsis I feel even more cheated out of a show. The character dynamic isn't present, they don't do daily chores I WOULD KILL FOR THAT. They don't create tools, they just magically have a knife that looks identical to something in the real world. What went wrong?
 
Last edited:
Episode 1
Ah, this is lovely. Like sinking into a warm bath or having a cup of tea on a rainy day.

I'm sort of in two minds about the use of small panels. Like @SentientCrab , I feel it kind of cheapens things a bit, but at the same time I think it adds to the picture book / folklore-style fantasy feel of the show. Time will tell, though, if they go in too hard with it.

The shopkeeper from Kobane is so nice. It is hilarious though that the other shopkeepers ended up falling over each other to give Mikochi stuff. You can tell capitalism hasn't taken hold in their world. :laugh:

I wish my shopping trips were half as interesting as that one. :drink:

Ooh, I like that they're including a Walking Underfoot passage from the manga during the credits. I liked that little extra touch of lore when reading the manga, so it's nice that they carried it over. Still, I bet it makes subbing a nightmare...
 
Surprisingly good&cute.
I wasn't a big fan of the art at first (like first few minutes), but i got used to it pretty quickly and kinda like it now.
The faces were looking a bit weird, but the ↓ made up for it really well.
Zed60K said:
scenery porn anyone?
Click to expand...
Hell yes!
It's fun to watch. A small & cute story.
I especially enjoyed the market part! All those small beings looked awesome!
i_mean.png
No physical strength..?
not_too.png
bad_ya_know.png

And that's just one example of many...
 
Episode 2:

This was an improvement on the first episode. The first segment was a snooze, but the two following segments were nice. They paint this world as an interesting and unique mix of the practical and the spiritual.

The fishing segment was just kind of fun, because it was so damn weird. I was totally not expecting a mad scientist lady living in the woods making zombie turtles and fish. The twist at the end with the receiver being inside of Hakumei was amusing.

Then the segment with the coffee gets better the more I think about it. I felt something while I watched it, but the more I think about it the segment was more complex than what it first appeared and had some interesting themes going on. It wasn't super deep or anything, but it had a nice atmosphere that was just slightly melancholic as change and letting go is never easy. This was the segment that made me really think the show is a mix of the practical and the spiritual. On the one hand there's the practical matters of the Hakumei trying to fix the old mill and the shop keep being forced to experiment and practice to perfect her coffee, because her mother didn't want her to just copy the same old formula.

Then there's the spiritual component with the Hakumei explaining that something stuff just stops dead with no explanation. It's not that it's broken, it has just served its purpose. After that of course the coffee mill actually does turn into a spiritual object and moves on.

This is all mirrored in the barkeep's story about her mother moving on when she thought the barkeep was ready to take over. It made the letter at the end amusing, a bit dickish, but a nice period on what the heart of the segment was.
 
02

this episode kind of left a bad taste in my mouth, first part was just annoying, the second was amusing, and the last was just uninteresting.
the first part gave me the impression of a terrible school CGDCT show, and the whole thing reeks of cliched situations, and it drew me out and ruined the mood of the episode for me. the second half was interesting though, or engaging at least, but that barely had anything to do with the two lead characters, it was just a bizarre experience. can't say much for the last part, i barely managed to pay any attention to it.

if i were to compare this show to Girl's last tour, i'd say that one managed to establish it's character's personalities very quickly, here i still don't even know who's who. Girl's last tour's focus wasn't the girl's, it was their activities and the world they explored, it was what made Girl's last tour an above average CGDCT show. the first episode was a bit interesting, since they went to find a birb, but this one was just too uneventful to catch my interest.
 
Smurfs 2

Oh I read that wrong
YGlVb5R.png

I gotta get to my local mujina store
:dankface:
As per lerche, the sound design and insert ost in this episode is better than most things this season.

Besides yurucamp which is perfect in every way and sorry lerche but this isn't perfect.

I'm really interested in most things but the first half like ZK was, the thing with the bones was a really cool concept that I don't think I've seen before. This world is so interesting and it's only episode 2

I get what they're trying to do with the panels but ever since episode one they've bothered me a little bit. Hopefully they're grow on me, I feel like they would work better if they didn't use dialogue while using the panels. That's my only complaint but it is a little intrusive.
Good one.
 
Zed60K said:
02

if i were to compare this show to Girl's last tour, i'd say that one managed to establish it's character's personalities very quickly, here i still don't even know who's who.
Click to expand...

Funny you should say that because I've actually taken to thinking of them as
Chi and Yuu, because they share the same dynamic and each girl is fairly similar to Chi or Yuu. It's not an exact match, but Hakumei is Yuu right down to the obsession with food and Mikochi is Chi the more responsible, but more timid one. I think their dynamic has been established well enough.

The first segment wasn't great because it felt like an extension of just watching them do chores in the first episode, but the following two segments did do some world building. It's not on the level of GLT, but the thing with the coffee mill was especially interesting in establishing the kind of relationship the spiritual has with this world of dwarfs.
 
02:

I loved all of it tbh, or maybe, I'm just an easier to please, slice of lifey fan.

Having said that, the world building was really nice, and the following segments were the best parts. I'm really getting absorbed into the world. I mean, necromancy, powered by incandescent light bulbs? Is just.......wuuuuuuuuuuuuut, but cool as shit, and these are neat details.

I also just find the characters at the heart of it, really charming to follow with their interactions every step of the way.

I do see other people's points to some extent, about the paneling being a little intrusive, but it hasn't bothered me a great deal though, or at least yet anyway. We'll see how I feel about it, further down the lane.

Designated comfy show of the season here.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top