Ten Years Later: Tamako Market

While not quite the golden rule that it once was, anytime a new Kyoto Animation project comes out it’s something worth watching was the mindset for many over the years. 2013 saw the debut of an interesting new project with Tamako Market, a slice-of-life series that had a companion novel released and was followed up with a film in 2014 called Tamako Love Story. For a lot of fans of this particular genre, Key is able to deliver well on it because of their visual design and approach to detail that makes these places feel truly lived-in and inhabited. And often they’re part of the smaller areas where life slows down a bit and that helps to make it even more engaging for many. I’ve generally been a fan of these types of works because I like the more intimate style of them and the way that we don’t have to deal with a big rush of events or crazy situations. It’s more real-world than most other shows and it can definitely reinforce a connection if you’re so inclined with this type of work.

The story introduces us to Tamako Kitashirakawa, a first-year high school student who has a pretty good life. She’s got friends, she does decently at school and gets along with adults there and she’s very well-liked in the shopping district that she lives in. Her family runs a mochi shop there that’s been around for a couple of generations as it’s run by her father with some assistance from her grandfather. Tamako has a good family support system there with her younger sister Anko included and all the people she’s close to in the market that have known her all her life, including her childhood friend Mochizo who lives across the street. Amusingly, his family also runs a mochi shop. The two do things differently, but there’s no real competition in a way because everyone does their own thing in order to make the marketplace work and draw customers. For Tamako, the only real hardship she has beyond doing a lot of work and school is that she lost her mother some time ago, but this isn’t a significant part of the story overall.

Into every everyday life, a little change must enter. For Tamako, that comes in the form of a rather mildly fancy bird that shows up in the market that she ends up sneezing on, which causes the bird to bond with her. The problem is more than just that though as said bird actually speaks fluent Japanese and is named Dera. It turns out Dera had arrived here from a small island nation as he’d been sent by the kingdom’s royal fortune teller, a young woman named Choi. She sent him out for the prince of the island, a young man named Mochimazzwi, in order to find for the prince a bride. These things have always been discovered by divination and the use of the birds like Dera though for Dera this is the first time he’s ever been off the island. Dera’s mission is important but you can see pretty easily that Choi has a certain level of feeling for Mochimazzwi. But outside of a couple of minor appearances from afar early on, he doesn’t show up until just about the end of the series so it’s not a huge role.

The first half of the series immerses us in Tamako’s life as we see her going through work, home, and school and the various interactions. We also expand the cast lightly with a friend, another student named Shiori that has her own shyness issues to contend with. We get good interactive time with Anko and Tamako’s father with some nice familiarity with their grandfather, but we also get some good time with the extended family that exists as the marketplace is made up of that. It’s a real family-community and watching it come together really works well to show why Tamako has as good a foundation as she has. It’s all done in a good, honest and realistic way. This is why you really, really have to suspend your disbelief in a big way when it comes to Dera as not only do we see Tamako accepting that he’s a pretty smart and conversant bird but pretty much everyone else does. And nobody calls him out on it really as they go on about their days just thinking it’s a little surprising at first and never another thought about it. It’s just one of those things that either make or break people.

The second half of the series largely plays the same as the first, but what it changes is that it brings Choi into the picture as she comes to Japan to find out what Dera is up to. The show spreads its episodes over a good bit of time as nearly a year passes from the first episode to the last and bringing Choi in during the fall works nicely as we see how she integrates with the close-knit family that exists in the marketplace while trying to find out what it is that Dera is doing. Her being there eventually leads to the subplot that you expect of Tamako being called the princess bride to be and that has its own issues, but Choi is a nice character to add to it. Often new characters that come in that late can be problematic or dominate the storyline, but they manage a decent blend here that takes us to the kind of quiet slice-of-life ending that you’d expect.

Looking back on it ten years later, my tolerance for some slice-of-life shows isn’t as strong as it used to be and there are things – ok, Dera – that make it harder to connect with. I wasn’t huge on it to begin with but I loved the location, the shopping district, and the visuals for it along with what Tamako brings to it. I had found in my first home video viewing after the simulcast that I wasn’t as keen on it as I was on a weekly basis and looking back on it now ten years later, that’s grown a bit more when it comes to the story. The mix of normal and surreal isn’t unusual in this genre and nothing that’s done here is really radically different, it’s just something that has lost its luster a bit as time has gone on Outside of that, I like the way the characters act and the overall feelings it generates. But it’s not a series that goes for the hard stuff because there isn’t anything hard here. It’s all light material that accomplishes its goals well but doesn’t quite leave you feeling hugely satisfied in the long run but will deliver in the moment.