tia.hills - 2014-09-06 03:02:56

Story: Nanafa Kyan lives in Okinawa with her grandmother who runs the "Kame Soba" soba shop, her beautiful older sister Nao who is in high school, and her younger sister Kokona, who is in elementary school and has a strong ability to sense the supernatural. One day, Nanafa witnesses a seal fall off of a Chinese banyan tree, and three spirits who live in that tree are unleashed. These spirits include Niina and Raana, who are "jimunaa" spirits. The third spirit is Iina, who is an incarnation of an Okinawan lion statue. As spirits start appearing one after another, the peaceful life of Nanafa and her family begins to change. (Source: ANN)

And that's basically all we get from the story and that's all they explain and mention... yeah this anime does not have much of a story in this aside from that premise and the first episode. The rest of the show is basically a slice of life story which mixes in realism and supernatural stuff with fairies. I know slice of life usually doesn't get much of a story but still they don't bring it up much until the beginning and ending, kind of like everybody else is accepting the fact that there's talking fairies using magic and interacting with humans and stuff... not a huge problem but it's still a bit weak. 4/10

Animation: The animation is a mixed bag. The character movements are fluid and nice, but the background movements are pretty bland. But hey, at least they look nice and the characters look really cute too (aside from the grandma but I can see the intention, but even she doesn't look so bad, which is a relief since a lot of these types of characters tend to be a bit hard to look at in all honesty). Though my big gripe with them is that sometimes depending on the character's reactions, the background and character art turns into a different color like a nuclear fusion happened and I don't like that, it looks distracting and unnatural. That and some of the character expressions are... odd.

Sound: The voice acting is great, nobody sounds annoying and they all have fitting voices so no problems here. The ED song is pretty catchy, not great but its a good listen with some nice visuals and character traits to boot.

Characters: All the human characters are likeable and have realistic and nice personalities that a sort of charm. For example Nao acts like the older sibling type who's serious for the most part and wants to keep the family in check but also has a soft spot for cute things but doesn't want anything else to know about it which is something I can relate to. Nanafa is the easygoing friendly type of girl but doesn't let others push her and knows when to talk back and call out the fairies whenever they slack off or be rude.

Speaking of, the fairies... aren't as likeable. The three have one trait different from them but for the most part they have the same crazy and lazy personality and mess around. Niina is rather rude, lazy, and annoying. She doesn't do much and makes things worse for the others. Now I will give credit that she does get better as the show goes on and she does try to mend her mistakes and behavior in the final act of the anime so I will give credit for that. Raana is the buttmonkey and can't seem to make up her mind, Lina is the cocky one who wants to prove her use and best Niina and protect the soba shop (but she's not so good at it). Like I said they're not bad, just weak and annoying at parts.

Enjoyment: It was a pretty enjoyable watch, the pace was ok and if there were more episodes that focused on the slice of life aspect and story (and not shoe horn and remind us at the last possible minute) then I think we could have gotten something stronger, but hey, it could have also been a lot worse actually and I'm ok with what we got.

Overall: If you have some time to spare and would like to see some cuteness and fantasy all in a few minutes then I say look no further than this one... maybe :P

Pros: Likeable human characters, catchy ending song, solid voice cast, cute art, fluid animation (for the most part)

Cons: Fairies are rather annoying, odd facial expressions, bland background designs, they don't even do much with the story either

Thanks for reading my 59.5th review~