Kobato.

I have to admit to being won over by Kobato before ever seeing the first frame of film. One look at the artwork for this series and Kobato's beautiful clothing and settings and I knew this was going to be something for me. Thankfully I was also rewarded with an enjoyable and heartwarming story. While Kobato doesn’t exactly break any new ground, it’s a light hearted series that should make anyone smile, with just a touch of drama to keep it interesting.

Kobato herself begins as a bit of a mystery, tasked with a mission of healing the hearts of others in order ... for her to be granted her own wish. Despite being a hopeless idiot and incurably moe, Kobato does the best she can helping others. She is guided and protected by Ioryogi, an important figure from the spirit world who appears to Kobato in the form of a stuffed animal. The reasons for her mission, her origins, and the reason for Ioryogi's appearance are explained as the story unfolds.

Most of the plot is going to be fairly predictable to anyone who's seen many series like this and the early episodes are a bit formulaic. However this does change as the plot thickens over the last half of the series. I found the pacing to be good and I never felt that it lingered or stalled for too long in any place for me to get bored with it. Maybe the only exception would be the first half dozen episodes, with their similar and episodic plotlines. I was never blown away with any of it despite Kobato's overwhelming cuteness, but the ending story arc is both heartwarming and heat wrenching. But I did like the ending overall and felt it wrapped up the series nicely and tied up all the loose ends.

The main reason to watch Kobato is for the titular character. She is overbearingly adorable in every way. Her character design is extremely appealing and she has possibly the best wardrobe I have yet seen in anime. Kobato could be the poster girl for moe; she’s earnest, innocent, naive, lacking any common sense, and impossibly stupid. On the surface one would probably think she lacked substance as well. While you could definitely say this early on, due to the length of the series and the time spent growing and developing her character she eventually becomes a great all around protagonist, instead of just a moe figurehead.

Kobato's main foil would be her guardian Ioryogi. A quick tempered spirit stuck in the form of a stuffed animal, he is constantly berating Kobato for her stupidity and chastising her for not staying on task. However despite his gruff nature it’s obvious that he really loves and cares about her too. The relationship between them is the source of a lot of the shows humor, and I found the pair to be quite a delight to watch.

The other most important character to the story would be the introverted and standoffish Fugimoto. I am not really a big fan of Fugimoto's type and always feel this is an overused cliché, particularly in shoujo and romance anime. I don’t think I will ever understand why girls find this kind of guy to be appealing. Why would you want to break down the guys emotional barriers and deal with all his baggage when there are plenty of other guys who are actually nice to you? Someday I hope to understand this mindset.

The rest of the supporting cast is handled well and for the most part quite interesting. Sayaka is the most important, as the head of the preschool that Fugimoto and Kobato work. The great majority of the story takes place at the school and revolves around their efforts to save it from villainous loan sharks. Sayaka is given some back story and development but most of the remaining cast remains mostly static. They push the story in the right direction when needed and then fade from view. This is a good thing since it allows the show to focus on those who deserve the screen time.

I am not particularly a huge fan of CLAMP artwork and designs. While their drawings are undoubtedly brilliant and beautiful (particularly when drawing children), I never liked the skinny and malnourished looking characters. However, I was pleasantly surprised that this wasn’t the case in Kobato and the production studio opted for a more normal look. While everyone is still a bit too thin, they don’t look like they are starving to death. What really won me over and why I think this is perhaps the most visually appealing work yet was Kobato and her beautiful clothing. Also, being a CLAMP product you can expect are to see plenty of references and cameos by familiar characters from their other works. It is nice that at least for the important ones, they don’t seem to reuse the same old models with different names. This may or may not be a bonus to some fans, but for me it was refreshing.

The series music, the OP theme and the in between songs are cute and very fitting of the series nature. In addition the acting is solid all around. Kobato's seiyuu is suitably adorable sounding and brings out her personality. Though it does become a bit grating and overly cute at times, it is a minor annoyance and it probably wouldn’t work as well with a more mature sounding voice.

Overall I found Kobato to be a rewarding and wonderful viewing experience. If you like cute and adorable things, CLAMP, light hearted and touching stories with a hint of romance; then Kobato should be high on your list. If you really dislike moe or need action to be entertained than this is something you should stay away from. While it may not go down as an all-time classic, Kobato will leave you with a smile.

Some­where around about epis­ode 12 it hit me. No, not that the show had sud­denly become watch­able, that wasn’t to hap­pen for sev­eral more epis­odes. No, what hit me was a per­fect way to express what it was I didn’t like about this show. I had some vague review thoughts in my head (sub­con­sciously review­ing the show as you watch it; the curse of being a critic) but most of them revolved around bitch­ing about how stu­pid Kobato her­self was and how the show relied on cute­ness as its main appeal, some­thing I’ve just never really liked. But then it hit me. I read on ... a blog somewhere that the way the person got through a series they didn’t like was because they spent their time also play­ing Poke­mon. So I finally got around to play­ing Poke­mon Plat­inum after the first few episodes of Kobato (why yes, I am a game behind every­one else) because I real­ised I would prob­ably smash my laptop if I had to sit through another ‘Kobato Gan­bar­rebleargh~’ without some­thing else to occupy my mind. Now nor­mally this shouldn’t work unless I was watch­ing the dub. Mul­ti­task­ing while watch­ing subs is next to impossible. How­ever it did work because I actu­ally under­stood pretty much everything that was being said.

Let me explain. I have never once made an attempt at learn­ing Japan­ese. I know about as much as any wee­aboo who watches subbed anime would know. Watch­ing Kobato wasn’t a sud­den grand real­isa­tion that I was now flu­ent in Japan­ese. It was the sim­pli­city of the lan­guage the char­ac­ters used. They all had just a few stock lines they would throw out in most situ­ations which meant that after watch­ing a few epis­odes pay­ing atten­tion to the subs you knew pretty much everything that they could say. This effects the anime in far more ways than you might real­ise. Of course you get the pain­fully dull and repet­it­ive dia­logue. Of course there’s the way every scene and every epis­ode feels the exact bloody same with no inspir­a­tion, ingenu­ity or ima­gin­a­tion, bar Kobato’s ward­robe. But along­side that you also have the actual ten­sion in the series solved using the same unin­spired meth­ods in every epis­ode. Kobato throws out a few stock phrases, Ioryogi mut­ters some­thing in the back­ground and all is right with the world once again. It lim­its the dir­ec­tion any epis­ode can take.

But yes, it does get bet­ter. It may take until around epis­ode 17 before I actu­ally went through an epis­ode without hav­ing beaten 3–4 poke­mon train­ers while it was play­ing, but it cer­tainly did improve. Vastly improved. By epis­ode 20 I had shut that Game Boy for good and was actu­ally watch­ing this show for real. The show took a much more dra­matic and mel­an­cholic tone that suited the style of storytelling far more. After watch­ing the pre­vi­ous 16 epis­odes of failed com­edy (bar Ioryogi dodging cork bul­lets at the fest­ival. That was quite funny) and bland stor­ies that were sup­posed to be heart­warm­ing, the effect this change to a plot-driven story had on the over­all qual­ity of the show was phe­nom­enal.

Let me talk about the MAL stats for a second on this series. There’s a very high per­cent­age drop rate to com­pleted rate, around 20% of the people who watched it, dropped it. And yet the anime is rated 8.07 at the time of writing, a very respect­able score indeed. MAL doesn’t count the scores once you’ve seen bey­ond a cer­tain num­ber of epis­odes so those who actu­ally sat through the entire thing were clearly rewar­ded for their efforts. It also shows the usual reac­tion of people to rate some­thing highly because the later epis­odes were bet­ter, much like After Story. It’s some­thing that bugs me a lot because I hate hav­ing to sit through sev­eral poor epis­odes just because ‘it gets bet­ter I swear!’. I don’t doubt it does. It’s just those earlier epis­odes are a right pain to sit through. Because Kobato is, for the most part, a poor anime. It just hap­pens to end on a very high note. Plus you can’t skip those earlier epis­odes the same way you the­or­et­ic­ally can for After Story. Without those earlier epis­odes the end­ing ones don’t work.

It did turn me into a romantic sap though. Good old Clamp did it again. They made me believe that, through any­thing, love will pre­vail. No mat­ter what hap­pens to you, what you go through, what form you’re in, love will get through all that. It did the very same thing Chob­its did. It made me believe in the Power of Love. I came into this anime look­ing for some­thing to rep­lic­ate the feel­ing Chob­its gave me and, in the end, I guess it did exactly that.

Expectation: Protagonist magically heals broken hearts from lots of emotional high school romances, divorces, and mild trauma in each episode that ends on happy notes. Alright, sounds like just the right blend of bittersweet but warm and empowering, I'm in.

Reality: Ditzy girl with 0 superpowers devotes the majority of her life to a failing kindergarten with predictable children. "Helps" people by forcing her way into the daily lives of neighbourhood's residents, and is rewarded when they smile.

- I was initially surprised that I hadn't heard of this anime before. The description sounded appealing for a sensitive sh*t like me, and I generally appreciate ... protagonists who try to make others' lives better, because I too, like helping people in real life. Now I know why it was never popular, and hope it stays that way. It is NOTHING like the description said; the description is a LIE.

- Out of 24 episodes, we can say maybe 2 of them were actually 'broken heart' related stories. Literally everyone else was under 10 years old and 'healing their hearts' could be as simple as telling someone they're awesome that day. That's. It. There is no deeper meaning, no tragic backstory, and very little focus on young adults or anything adult, really. This show is a show about KINDERGARTENERS. PRESCHOOLERS. TODDLERS.

- And I love toddlers. e.g. Gakuen Babysitters is one of my favourite 'feel-good' series to watch. But ... this isn't one of them. Where Gakuen Babysitters shows realistic sides (good AND bad) behaviour from babies and their families... these toddlers were one-dimensional. They had as much depth as a cardboard tree cut out. Their voices sound the same, they generally do what they're told, they're unrealistically peppy all the time; they're basically a lifeless NPC army.

- Protagonist has too many aspirations, and there's too many genres and elements stuffed into one series. You're never sure if you're watching a magical fantasy anime, supernatural spirits, working part time job lifestyles, or fake Japanese mafia. They somehow cram all of that into one episiode, so nothing makes sense.

- They introduce new characters (e.g. Kohaku) and then you only see them again when the protagonist needs their help DESPERATELY. It's inconsistent and very confusing. And the characters. Ohmygod, the side characters. I wish I could say the supporting characters saved this show - they didn't. While we do get VERY good looking male characters that were totally my type and why I even bothered watching at all (Doumoto is best boy) ... we don't really learn much about any of them, male or female. They had a lot of potential, but it seemed like the writers were content with focusing on the idiotic protagonist and her "love interest who is not a love interest".

- Re: love interest
God, that guy is a piece of WORK. He is an arrogant jerk to everyone. He works 3 jobs at any time, taking out his unresolved childhood trauma on strangers, and never smiles. But of course, because of how poorly this anime is written, he's somehow The World's Most Eligible Bachelor to our protagonist. She sees him as a 'project' to take on, similar to women who want to change womanizers they've fallen in love with. No. Do not. Stop. Ladies, you know this kind of story never ends well. You can't change someone who doesn't want to change on their own! But this anime will tell you that is exactly possible, and ONE WOMAN can change the world. The way the world revolves around the protagonist perfectly, they could've showed her ending world hunger and achieve world peace, and it would be a plausible storyline.

I am actually really bummed about this part. Like I sincerely hope that this anime did not influence viewers too much and encourage females to chase after men who are abusive towards them. While the efforts to improve someone's life are commendable, there are so many other people who will appreciate the love, energy, effort, and support given out. 'Projects' could benefit more from professional psychotherapy than years of well-meaning do-gooders who don't address the root source of trauma, neglect, abandonment etc.

- The love interest's character growth improves... by the end of the anime. Same thing with the other side characters including "Ioryogi." I actually found the 'talking plush toy animal' gag very annoying after 2 episodes. Especially because they employed slapstick humor throughout the series, breathing fireballs and other 'comic relief' scenes that came off as cringy to me. I don't think I could reasonably tolerate this much slapstick humor unless I was 12 years old again. He could've been an intelligent bodyguard dog of sorts, but no, they had him as a menacing toy that yelled every. five. seconds. It wasn't funny to me.

- Did I mention that the kindergarten the protagonist is obsessed with is in unexplained debt? Throughout the series, we know that the land(?) the school sits on is valuable, and the teacher owes money. But why she owes money, how the debt even started, isn't explained until Episode 22+, and even then, it's very vague. Like two sentences. It's incredibly frustrating to watch, and felt like the writers created fake drama so the story would have some plot. Huge waste of time.

- Lastly. The stream I watched this on translated the candy representing hearts into 'confetti,' which was mildly offensive. I'm pretty sure the correct translation should be Konpeitō (金平糖, コンペイトー), a standard in Japanese sweets and known globally...

- The graphics were also terrible (though I'm not sure if this was because of the streaming platform), only 360p available, so it felt like I was watching a series from 2005 and not 2009, when it was supposed to have aired. Other graphic / artist rant - Kobato's clothes are faded pastel tones at all times... but they're not done well. There's a lot of cream yellow, maroon, light green or light pink. I didn't really like any of her outfits, they felt like a very weird clash of 'Lolita meets Mori girl' fashion. There's so many ways and colors to do that well, and this fell flat. Hurt the eyes.

In conclusion:
To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. I'm just utterly relieved it's over. I wanted to drop this series many, many, times, but the social pressure of people on MAL generally finishing their series kept me going. I didn't understand the word 'Pollyanna' and thought it was Americans misunderstanding optimistic people. No. If I only had one word to describe the whole series, it would be that: Pollyanna. Now I know the perfect definition of it, embodied in Kobato, and why it's unattractive.

If you still want to watch this anime.
Nothing happens from episode 1 - 12. That's right. You can completely skip the first half and literally won't miss anything.