“Kokonotsu Shikada is the son of a dagashi snack shop owner. Although he wants to become a manga artist, his father, Yo, wants him to take over the family business. One day, a girl named Hotaru Shidare shows up at the shop and challenges Kokonotsu.” – Funimation
Streaming at Funimation.com
Episodes: 12
Source: Manga
Summary of Episode 1: It’s difficult when your own aspirations conflict with your family’s expectations. Kokonotsu “Coconuts” Shikada just wants to draw manga, and his art skills are actually pretty good, but his father wants him to take over the family business – becoming the next in line to run the family sweets shop. It’s not just tradition informing this opinion; when an outgoing and snack-obsessed girl named Hotaru shows up at the shop one day, Kokonotsu learns the truth – Hotaru’s candy company wants Yo, Kokonotsu’s father, to join with them because of reasons. Kokonotsu will have to commit to running the shop before Yo is free to follow his own dreams. Kokonotsu isn’t keen to give up his own goals, but Hotaru is very insistent. She plans to insinuate herself into Kokonotsu’s life and use anything in her power to convince him to change his mind, including becoming friends with his sort-of girlfriend and spreading candy throughout town.
First Impressions: I wanted to check this show out because I have a certain interest in Japanese cuisine, and obscure Japanese snacks fall under that umbrella. While I can’t really eat most of these goodies anymore since sugar makes my brain feel like it’s about to burst out of my skull, I can still stand having them paraded around in front of me. As I feared going in, however, the snacks are probably the most interesting things about the episode and the characters who eat them are somewhat hard to tolerate.
I’ve seen several reviewers describe Hotaru as a “manic pixie dream girl,” and to some extent I think that’s accurate. Kokonotsu is faced with a life decision that’s likely to take the length of the series to resolve, and Hotaru shows up as he stands at a crossroads and promises to make big changes in his life. She’s a very weird human being, defined so far by her sweets expertise and weirdly regal bearing. She also looks almost exactly like a manga character that Kokonotsu was drawing as the episode opened, which helps contribute to an eye-rolling introductory scene. She’s a male fantasy, an unrealistic woman who is more plot device and catalyst than equal partner. It’s not the worst of sins that a piece of fiction can commit, but it makes things a lot less interesting.
Something else the turned me off was the constant over-acting and forced comedy that peppered the episode. There’s a lot of yelling, goofy behavior, and immaturity on the part of several of the characters, especially Hotaru and Yo. As far as I can tell, the majority of the characters are young adults, and at the very least Yo is, but the humor is incredibly juvenile and Yo especially is a complete goofball. One of my least favorite tropes is parents who act less like adults than their own children, and while I’ve probably seen this trope expressed more by some anime mothers or female authority figures it’s just as irritating when dads do it. The jealousy exhibited by Saya, Kokonotsu’s childhood friend and likely romantic interest, is extreme. To be perfectly blunt, Kokonotsu really hasn’t proven himself to be a man worth giving a crap about, so Saya’s reaction upon hearing that there was merely a weird city girl in his family’s shop just makes her look bad. It’s difficult to get invested in a story when all the of the characters range from irritating and unrealistic to completely intolerable.
The show’s saving grace is the minimal amount of attention that it pays to the “dagashi” (traditional snacks) that are referenced by the show’s title. like I’ve mentioned, I really like learning about food even if it’s technically food that I can’t eat anymore (sugar and simple carbohydrates make my brain feel like it’s about to leap out of my skull). Possibly my favorite scene in the episode occurs when Hotaru challenges Kokonotsu to create a delicious culinary combination of different Umai-bou flavors. I had coincidentally watched a Youtube video earlier in the week in which the person making the video took different flavored Umai-bou and combined them with various actual foods to create new taste sensations. It fascinates me that such a culture exists around what are essentially large, diversely-flavored Cheetos, and these are the things I really like to learn about. It amuses me that there are more desirable ways of eating the “fries” that the characters snacked on, or that you can buy what are essentially mini-donuts in cute little packages (they look way yummier than the dusty powdered-sugar “Donettes” that are ubiquitous at American gas stations). And now I’m really craving something sweet and doughy to spoil my dinner.
I didn’t have especially high expectations for this show, but I thought it might be an amusement worth checking out. I could conceivably see myself watching another episode or two just to gain some more trivial knowledge about Japanese treats, but the characters themselves make doing so feel like more of a chore than an amusement.
Pros: It’s fun to learn about Japanese cultural tidbits, and Japanese treats and snacks are one of those obscure areas that don’t get a whole lot of coverage in the West.
Cons: The characters are irritating in various ways and the women especially get the short end of the character development stick. The comedy is heavy-handed.
Grade: C-
