Boys and their toys.
What They Say:
“It All Started With Pompompurin”
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Way, way, back many years ago, the big mall near me had a Sario store for about a year when the mall first opened. I always had a lot of fun going into it and I always found that Kerropi was my favorite of the properties at the time. But, beyond Hello Kitty, I never paid much attention to Sanrio in a general sense so I’m going into this show about cute boys and their love of Sanrio properties pretty much without any real knowledge. Which is how a great many people will be doing it so the show really has to survive in being able to be more than just plugs for their stuff and be something more. Which I’m hopeful it will be because it just looks adorable in all the right ways.
The cold open is a lot of fun as we get the boys as part of the Sanriio Military Academy amid a fight that introduces them by name and visual at least as they fight, or try to stop the fighting, resulting in Kou getting taken out by both sides as it reveals itself to simply be a play that the boys are putting on as part of the culture festival. That event is much further down the line, however, from where the series really wants to get underway as we get introduced to them before they met and became friends. Told through Kou’s eyes as a second year high school student, he’s going through the trudge of the year and is just getting by. Through his movements at the school where we learn more about him and the location we also get him seeing others that he’s aware of but not friends with that he will be. Kou isn’t without friends and that’s helpful so we don’t get someone so completely isolated and he does have fun with them on his day off. But there’s a certain something lacking in his life.
That little something enters his life when he helps a little lost girl who has a Pompompurin purse and she gives him a sticker of the character after he helps her find her mother. That little piece serves as inspiration for him after his parents talk about how his life hasn’t changed since getting into high school and that he needs to find something to do. Remembering his own childhood encounters with Pompompurin with a stuffed animal that his grandmother gave him, you can see how big of an impact it had on him but also the problems later with other boys who bullied him over it and how it hardened him by killing something inside of him. I remember similar happening to me at that age, though I stuck to what I enjoyed and lost friends instead. Kou’s emotional journey is well played out here in a way that while familiar and obvious sets the stage well for the character, putting more material into him than many get after a whole season.
To help balance this we get some time back at school where it’s lighter and filled with less nostalgia as we have Kou returning a key he found to Yuu. With it being Sanrio related, he’s wary about giving it to him in class since it could be viewed the wrong way in several ways and that just leads to some fun silliness since Yuu wants to know what he wants as he runs away, which naturally crosses paths with everyone else that will be a part of the club. It’s a fun way to touch on everyone in small ways but also something a bit more intense when Shun catches up to all of this and presses him up against a wall. The playfulness of it is just right but also how Kou really over thought things about how it would be embarrassing for him if people, especially girls, found out that he liked Sanrio stuff. When the cool Shun turns out to be a Hello Kitty fan, well, all bets are off!
In Summary:
Sanrio Boys is a show that I expected would come across well because they’d be smart in how they’re presenting the actual Sanrio elements of it. Focusing on it as a cute boys show works really well and I’d even like to see a cute girls version done similar. We’re only really introduced to a couple of the characters here with its main focus on Kou and that helps to ease into it well instead of just throwing everyone at is. Touching on all of them lightly helps to build what’s to come and it’s just such a pleasant and enjoyable little show that it really did delight me. Mixing in some somber material and building the character of Kou has a lot of payoff here as it leaves you wanting more of him but also seeing how he interacts with others as it progresses.
Grade:
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
