And so we are once again back to the land of no subtitled sweetness with cats that have literal hearts on their faces. However, there are only 2 Cocotamas in the show so far, and there are 6 in the opening. So you know…episode 4, it’s time we fixed that. So let’s bring in another one!
The episode starts up with the two Cocotamas trying to wake Kokoro up, because they think she’s late for school. They eventually get her up, but it turns out that she didn’t have to wake up because it was a day off for her. Going downstairs she sees her father is looking for her mother because she wants to know why she left an egg in his study. Kokoro immediately recognizes it as a Cocotama egg and tells him that the egg is hers and she’s been looking for it everywhere.
She tries to open it, however it can’t open. The egg eventually gets to talking as it reveals that it’s a god of books, however it can’t come out of its egg because the book it was born from had a page ripped out and until the book is fixed, she can’t properly be born.
The reason the book is ripped, they show in the beginning of the episode is because the little brother hid a piece of paper in the book and when the book began to glow because the Cocotama was being born, he accidentally ripped the page in surprise.
However the others don’t know that as they begin their search to find the page. At first the egg blames Kokoro’s mother, thinking since she heard she was going to the park, took the page and threw it out in the park. Kokoro doesn’t want to check the garbage as is, so she needs a disguise and because Luckytama’s magic is all based on luck, she ends up dressing up as a power ranger.
While searching she meets up with (sigh) her crush who is this generic guy who plays soccer.
She picks up a piece of paper and gives it back to him, but the egg thinks that may be her paper for some reason. They steal it only to find out that it’s a grocery list. They give it back and now the egg is very upset about how she thinks she’ll never get to be hatched.
Seeing this, all three of them search like mad to find the paper, however unfortunately they can’t and go home. Once they get home they discover that it was the little brother’s fault because he was trying to hide the fact that he got a 0 on a quiz.
The younger brother then repairs the book and the Cocotama can be born.
Okay. Let me repeat this.
The mother discovers what her son did, and on their own, fix the book.
That means…that EVERYTHING these three did for the entire episode to find the paper was COMPLETELY POINTLESS. If they had sat home and did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING it would have been the same thing. The only thing it did was show the book god that they cared for her…That’s about it.
Oh. and it turns out that the book god is also a cleanliness Nazi.
Oh, and a random bit of trivia, her voice actress is the Japanese voice of Tea in Yugioh.
And that’s where the episode ends.
I do like the fact that they’re bringing in new characters as there’s 6 of them, so we got to see more of them soon. Otherwise we get the issue we did with Monster Musume where we only get 2 episodes with all the characters and I prefer the characters coming in earlier rather than later.
Still, this was a cute episode, albeit i wish that the characters actually had more influence on the outcome rather than “the mom just happened to solve everything”. Now that there’s another character it should bring more dynamic into it as she’s more of a serious character which is nice as the other two, while nice, are kind of dumb asses, so it’s good to see a character with intelligence who can tell them they’re being idiots as Kokoro is too kind to.
As I said in episode one, the romance aspects is REALLY forced and unnecessary. This girl’s like..10. I really don’t need to see her want to jump on this guy or…whatever it is 10 year old girls want to do..hold hands? I have no idea. It’s a completely unnecessary aspect to the show that could just easily be erased. I mean like..the guy’s probably in the “eww girl cooties” phase anyway. Besides what kind of date would they have like… would they have their mom drive them to each other’s houses for dates? that’d be…weird.
Anyway the point is…they don’t need this aspect as it changes her character whenever she’s around him from a girl who cares enough about her friends to work to exhaustion
Into a twilight fangirl.
I don’t find it cute, I find it takes away from her character. Like the writers went “Well she’s a girl, so she HAS to have a crush on a boy! Because she HAS to! Our population rate is declining! Quick! We need to start them young with the idea of marrying a Japanese boy! Get it in their brain now! 10 years old? old enough! DO IT! DO IT NOW!”
I don’t know. I’m probably looking too deeply into it, but it bothers me a bit.
That being said, I do like this new character, I just wish this episode featured more of her NOT in the egg. The episode was cute and had a lot going on, and It does make me want to see next week. So you know..there’s that.
Episode 6.5/10
-Hideki
I don’t think you’re overreacting about the forced romance at all. Unpopular opinion: I honestly got that vibe from CardCaptor Sakura back in the day, between Sakura and Syaoran. And that’s not even starting on the pedophelic relationship between Sakura’s classmate and that one teacher in the Japanese original (if I remember correctly). gag Even in Shugo Chara, the main character Amu is like 12(? – Wikipedia says she’s in elementary school) and one of her crushes is an older boy who’s definitely in high school. And I think that even was the hinted-at pairing at the end of the series, from what I remember. She turned down the boy her age because she was into the older guy (and it was reciprocated).
Case in point: I went to Vancouver’s Anime Evolution (now Revolution) convention a few years ago, and while I was browsing one of the doujinshi tables someone came up and asked for Amu x Ikuto paired doujinshi (Ikuto being the high school guy). One of the staff manning the table said they didn’t carry it because it’s literally child porn, and if they got found out they’d be in huge trouble.
SPEAKING OF SHUGO CHARA. Every time I read a review for this series, it just radiates Shugo Chara. It seems like a cute show, but I can’t get over the feeling of “seen this done that got the t-shirt.” Except this show has the mini-characters from SC, this series has hamsters.