Tamako Market is about a girl named Tamako who lives in a shopping district and helps her family’s mochi business. While going about her normal routine Tamako meets with a talking bird named Dera who is looking for a bride for his prince. Dera ends up living with her. Most of the series shows what happens in the store and shopping district at various important times of the year. It also explores the different relationships between the different residents.
Tamako Market is mostly a slice of life show, but it has the overarching story of Dera looking for a bride for his prince. The prince’s bride story is mostly neglected until the end, which hurts the end of the story. The slice of life portion of the show is pretty interesting though with all the special events and relationships.
The production for Tamako Market is by Kyoto Animation so it is obviously cute and very well done.
Most of the characters are pretty boring especially Tamako and Mochizo. Fortunately Dera and Kanna are around to save this show. Dera’s personality makes up for a lot of flaws in the other characters, since it looks like they are the straight men to him. He is larger than life with his beliefs about how great he is and all the girls being in love with him. How he believes that human girls are interested in a self-centered bird I will never know. Kanna has an obsession with hammers and an active imagination that keeps moments where the girls are at school from being too boring.
Tamako Market looks at unrequited love at all ages and for many different reasons. For some reason in the Tamako Market world nobody loves someone that they can have. Tamako is oblivious to anyone that is interested in her so Mochizo and Midori are out of luck for now. Dera is a bird that is interested in humans, so that is doomed to fail. Choi obviously is interested in the prince and probably thinks she is not good enough for him since she works under him. My favorite example is how Mamedai still holds a candle for his wife, but that love cannot be requited anymore since she is dead. Seeing scenes from their courtship and Mamedai’s reactions were some of my favorite moments.
The ending for Tamako Market was a bit disappointing. There was all that build up about the prince and Tamako being a bride candidate. Then when the prince actually comes they get the whole question about whether she would go with him out of the way really quickly. I think that as a major plot point of the series the visit from the prince should have been a bigger part of the show.
Overall this is one of the best cute girls doing cute things shows I have ever seen. It mostly has to do with the face that the focus shifts off of the cute girls so often.
Score: 4/5
Oh prince it looks like you have a marshmallow peep on your shoulder.
