Enter the Prince. Everyone seems all aflutter over the idea of Tamako’s impending rise to royalty…except Tamako herself, who has other concerns.
What They Say:
Episode 11: “I Never Thought That Girl Would be a Princess”
Word gets around that Tamako MAY be a princess, while Tamako herself focuses on earning more loyalty points to get a medal from the shopping district.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Is it me, or does the Prince just look like Mochizo with a suntan? As we come to the final episodes of Tamako Market, it is the little things that start to stick out more and more. The fact that the character designs are not very interesting or imaginative if you’ve watched K-On! The fact that almost all of the characters lack any kind of depth or hidden dimensions to them (no, Tamako being “revealed” to be a princess is not a hidden dimension; that was so boringly predictable that anyone who would take a bet on the opposite result deserves to lose their money). The fact that you could have radically changed the plot to be about a giant marshmallow creature threatening the world who can only be stopped by a group of cute high school girls and this would require you to change, at most, about three episodes (and perhaps not even having to do more than substitute a few scenes and alter some dialogue in those three).
Tamako Market is not an objectively bad show, not particularly objectionable in any way. It’s not that it is a pale imitation or carbon copy of anything else (in fact, the characters might have been more interesting had they borrowed more liberally from the creative team’s earlier efforts). The problem for me with this show is that it’s like eating, if you could imagine it, unsweetened, unflavored mochi. There are calories here, but they are empty.
Oh, the episode itself. A flashback to the past where we see the beginning of the search, back on the mysterious island. Back in the present, we see the people of the Usagiyama Shopping District starting to get excited over the idea of Tamako being a princess. A different reaction comes from Tamako’s various friends and family. Her father is, stereotypically, unhappy but keeping it quiet. Midori, of course, is upset (we’ve seen previously she dislike the idea of any male getting too close to Tamako). Shiori is all agog over the idea of Tamako getting married. And Kanna…is only interested in the columns on the Prince’s island which are used for projecting the image of what Dera relays to him.
And Tamako herself? She’s more concerned about finally filling out the last loyalty point card book for the Shopping District’s top prize. She manages to do so, and gets a special medal for having bought regularly from the shops and getting her books stamped. This makes her very happy, much more happy than all the talk of her getting married to a prince. But everyone else has their minds on that other matter, and they start to take it as a given that Tamako will become a royal bride, though Dera seems to have some reservations. Choi, however, has divined this, and thinks that it will come to pass. She even sets up a “meeting” between the Prince (his name is revealed as Metcha Mochimazzui, which can be translated to mean “mochi are mega disgusting”) and Tamako through the medium of Dera’s projection function. They do not get a long time to speak, however, as Dera’s link breaks up.
It is only near the end that the show both rises to what I would consider a high point, the moment at which the writers have belatedly given Tamako a personality, and then immediately sinks to a low point where the most vomit-inducing piece of predictable writing has reared its ugly head in this show. The high point follows Tamako’s late night conversation with Mochizo via the cup-and-string phone the two have used at various points in the show (and we can assume have been using since they were small children). Mochizo, of course, after going through the usual stages of the Kübler-Ross scale, has come to acceptance and tells Tamako that he’ll be happy for her when she moves away to become a princess. Following this conversation, Tamako throws what can only be called a tantrum and a lonely cry for help. She quietly (it is late at night and people are trying to sleep) stamps her foot and softly cries out “Why does everyone want me to leave?” This outburst of selfishness is perhaps the most interesting thing Tamako has done to date. So far, we’ve seen her as largely an inscrutable figure, but unknowable not because of any great depth or hidden complexity, rather the opposite. She is a shallow pool that largely reflects the light and images shown upon its surface. Now, someone has thrown a pebble into that pool and we can see that, if not great depth, at least there is real humanity in Tamako. She is a normal teenaged girl after all, who is more worried about losing her family and her friends and the world she has grown up in than enchanted with the prospect of being shipped off to some distant island, even if it is to be married to a “handsome” prince.
It’s too bad, then, that the writers have followed up this long-needed look into Tamako’s heart with what can only be described as an utterly cliched event: Tamako’s medal, the one she won for filling in her loyalty point stamp booklets all these years, goes missing. She searches for it high and low, all across the town in addition to home. There is a frantic earnestness to her search which again serves to humanize her (and the fact that she wears her glasses throughout this entire scene may also work to push away the “perfect and bland” Tamako we regularly see). When all seems lost someone, finally, finds the medal and brings it to her. It happens to be the Prince.
Excuse me while I throw up.
I will have further thoughts when this show ends next week.
In Summary:
Tamako is happy that she is on the cusp of a major personal achievement: filling in the last loyalty stamp book needed to get the Usagiyama Shopping District’s highest prize, a special medal. Everyone else, however, is much more interested in the news that Tamako may be destined for a royal marriage. Tamako, however, is not, at least not yet. It remains to be seen how things will end.
Grade: C+
Streamed by: The Anime Network
Review Equipment:
Apple iMac with 4GB RAM, Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard