carter.eriberto - 2014-08-22 23:43:57

Story: The story is a surprisingly simple one. There are three girls named Riko, Midori, and Mai. Mai is the new girl who befriended the other two shortly after spending some time with them. They all work in an Inn in Kyoto and are training to become maikos (apprentice geishas - traditional female entertainers who sing, dance, and perform).

A festival is coming and the three must practice and get ready for it. However, shortly after practicing and getting ready, they hear that only two of them can participate. They must try to decide and find a way to get all three of them to perform together or else...

Ok well nothing really bad would happen except the other would just get depressed at not being able to do something she really wanted to do and could help with her career, which is something that I can actually relate to personally, since I want to do things and am working to achieve a dream job of my own.

The ending, while I won't give away, is actually kind of clever in some way, but at the same time seems like some of the dramatic bits in this are kind of pointless thanks to it.

Animation: The animation... isn't that stellar. While the ending dance (which we never even see the girls practice beforehand) is animated smoothly though I don't know if that is how its actually done (how geishas dance and stuff). The animation on the character otherwise is pretty standard but the background characters... they don't even move at all. In fact they just... look frozen and do nothing. Unless they interact with the main characters that is. The artwork is nice to look at and is pretty, sadly there isn't much to see in this short.

Sound: The voices are fitting for all the characters and for what there is and there is some emotion put into it, for the most part, some of the characters sound dull and bland but they don't show up much.

Characters: The main character aren't great, but there pretty good for what we got. Mai is the typical nice and new girl who is out going and friendly to everyone she meets. Also she usually solves the problem when something goes wrong... for the most part.

Riko is the nice girl too, but she's more skilled and doesn't have much personality compared to the others.

Midori is the tomboy who is a bit of a slacker compared to the other two and isn't as good as them (at least I think that's her name, either that or I swapped her's and Mai's together accidentally :c). Either way she's the most developed because she does see herself as useless compared to the others and when she hears about the event she tries to push herself to be good and match up to her friends. Eventually she heard about there only having two of them go and decides not to go for their sakes and not miss it out. Kind of a nice girl really.

The rest of the characters show up just to drive the plot or are not interesting, which is sad because I saw potential for the other characters too.

Enjoyment: I enjoyed this anime fine, but my enjoyment for this anime would be higher if not for the fact that... well there's only one episode and they haven't made more yet. The story isn't even finished and we don't know if they'll succeed in their goal or not which is really sad.

Overall: It's a bit boring on some parts but its a nice slice of life in the end. Well the story didn't necessarily finish (I hear there's another episode in the make though) but from what we got it was entertaining enough.

Pros: Good story, clever ending, the performance at the end, decent voice work.

Cons: Dull animation and artwork, shallow characters, there's only one episode of this and chances are, isn't going to continue.

Thanks for reading my 58th review~