Mitsuboshi Colors

Residing within Tokyo's district of Ueno are the Colors, three individuals who protect their city by performing good deeds and aiding their community. Or, at the very least, they pretend to be the city's defenders. In reality, the Colors are just three young girls: the shy Yui Akamatsu, the noisy Sacchan, and the video game-loving Kotoha, who spend their time playing make-believe and exploring the city. The Colors' activities are facilitated by the grandfatherly Daigorou "Pops" Kujiraoka, who uses his store's inventory of knick-knacks to entertain the rambunctious trio.

Not everyone is a fan of the Colors though. The local policeman Saitou just wants to deal with his regular duties, but he often finds himself the target of the Colors' attention, having been made the villain in most of their fantasies. But despite his personal feelings, Saitou always finds the time to go along with the three girls' games. Even though the Colors do not actually defend Ueno, they definitely help brighten everyone's day.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Aoyama, Kotoha Main

Hioka, Natsumi Japanese

Kise, Saki Main

Kouno, Marika Japanese

Akamatsu, Yui Main

Takada, Yuuki Japanese

Saitou Supporting

Tamaru, Atsushi Japanese

Kujiraoka, Daigorou Supporting

Genda, Tesshou Japanese

Sasaki, Nonoka Supporting

Asai, Ayaka Japanese

Kise, Saori Supporting

Nazuka, Kaori Japanese

Guide no Oneesan Supporting

Satou, Rina Japanese

Subaru Supporting

Numakura, Manami Japanese

Old Woman Supporting

Kataoka, Tomie Japanese

Yamashita, Shinpei Producer

Ogata, Mitsuhiro Producer

Nanbara, Mitsuhiro Producer

Ishikawa, Isao Producer

Reviews

Mar 25, 2018

HaXXspetten

Recommended

"Grownups are so busy. We can’t count on them."
"Grownups don’t have energy. Kids have energy!"

These lines are part of the cheerful opening theme of Mitsuboshi Colors and perfectly exemplify everything this anime is about. Forget about the troubles of your everyday life; it’s time to go outside, find your own adventure and have some fun!

What I love about Mitsuboshi Colors is that it perfectly embraces everything that childhood is about. Normally in CGDCT anime you either get to see some sort of glorified moeness or some rather absurdly chilled out atmosphere, but this is different. Not that those two concepts aren’t good mind you, but ... they feel very "anime" in the sense that they don’t really represent how young girls actually behave very often in real life. But Mitsuboshi Colors is the opposite. It is much more genuine and basically just showcases kids being kids. It’s blunt, silly, sometimes crude yet very relatable and charming because odds are you can look back on how you used to be yourself as a child and see yourself doing similar kinds of stupid things as the three girls in this anime are doing.

In short, Mitsuboshi Colors follows the energetic boke Sacchan who keeps wanting to go on adventures throughout the town, the smug and sadistic game-addict Kotoha, as well as the more reserverd "leader" and tsukkomi Yui. The trio have their own hideout in the form of a cabin in the forest where they hang out and try to come up with new ideas of fun things to do, which usually end up with them going on quests throughout the urban areas, either by their own volition or by pestering some of the shop owners or a local policeman they know into making them give them some fun challenge to complete (or in the case of the latter, they’re often just playing pranks on him too). The series revolves around their silly little adventures and the rather blunt interactions between the characters. It’s cute, but in a realistic sort of way rather than the moe overdose style that CGDCT anime usually tends to do. It’s childish, but oh so enjoyable.

If you want a reference point then the closest series I can think of to this would be something like the Yotsubato manga, which is generally praised for more or less the exact same reasons, or arguably even Mitsudomoe to a certain extent. Either way it’s a breath of fresh air amongst the plethora of moe shows that come out every season nowadays, and in my opinion most definitely an anime worth checking out if you’re into slice of life and/or moe series in general. It certainly stands out from the crowd quite a bit.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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May 15, 2022

otaku86

Mixed Feelings

Mitsuboshi Colors is about a group of three elementary school girls; Yui, Sacchan and Kotoha. They made a pact to protect and keep the peace of their town, more specifically Ueno park and its surroundings. And so they run amok causing all sorts of adventures upon themselves; from fighting trees and flowers so they stop causing people to sneeze to handing tissues near the subway entrance and selling strawberries to strangers in the park. To them, everything can become a call to adventure and a chance to explore their environment.

One of the people particularly interested in making their day interesting is Daigorou. He owns some ... sort of second-hand goods store and loves to come up with all sorts of mysteries to keep the trio occupied. One much less enthusiastic about the girls is the police officer Satou, who has to put up with their antics pretty much on a daily basis. He seems to be the most antagonistic character here, but this is an Iyashikei show, so that means he just tries to shoo away the kids from time to time. Another "quest giver" here is Sacchan's mother, Kise, who sometimes will ask the girls to run some errands for her.

Other people they deal with on a daily basis are the sisters Nonoka and Momoka; they own a bakery soon to be turned into an onigiri store and that's pretty much the cast. Yui is the leader, being probably the most serious and alert of the group. Sacchan is a ball of energy. Charismatic and always looking for something to do. Kotoha is a gamer with a lot of odd and funny theories about the world.

Watching this show was an interesting experience. It felt like it took me every minute out all of the 12 episodes for me to start to care about the characters. When I finally reached the point I felt like I could enjoy the show, it was over. I think there are two main reasons for this. First, the stories feel too scattered and catch-as-catch-can. I'm not talking about an overall sense of progress, this is not what this show is about, but how thin some of those episodes felt. It wasn't soothing, it wasn't funny, it wasn't endearing… it was just there. Felt like the whole script was written as a last minute thing. Some are interesting, for example when they follow their pet cat to figure out what it is doing during the day, or when Yui has to take part in a parade. Others feel like busy work, really, like sending the girls to hand some tissues to get some tickets for a lottery, just so they get more tissues as prizes.

The other issue for me was the lack of interesting supporting characters and a lack of a contrast between the main characters. Yui, Sacchan and Kotoha are just too similar to each other. Their friendship feels consumed by uniformity, there's very little for the viewer to follow in the characters themselves. Supporting characters could be interesting but ultimately they suffer from lack of screen time. I think Nono and Momoka would be great, if they had more development. In fact their relationship as sisters seemed a lot more interesting than the characters the show follows.

Also, watching this after watching Ichigo Mashimaro makes it very difficult not to draw comparisons. The characters here are way less interesting visually and feel superficial when you compare them with the girls in Ichigo. I'm still interested enough that I'll read the manga. We'll see how it goes.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Mar 16, 2023

DigiCat

Not Recommended

Funny

Preliminary (3/12 eps)

Anime Genre Roulette 🎰 Review 6 🎰 Shounen

The idea behind the series is not bad
Some kids being total idiots, basically everyone's childhood
The execution unfortunately was nothing far from terrible

This could've been a cute and fun story to watch while reminiscing about happy childhood memories (i mean the opening line is a poop joke), and it was, for half an episode
But the repetitiveness of the pace will, depending on your temperament, make the show range from mildly boring to extreamly annoying

Animation is also nothing to look foward to, with nonsensical proportions and movements that look like they came out of a pop-up book
And on a more ... personal note, ngl, i absolutely hated the artstyle

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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