[Tamako Market] - 5
I shall have to join the chorus of others who feel that this week's episode of
Tamako Market (hereafter refereed to as
TM) was rather disappointing compared to previous outings. As other's have pointed out, Tamako is a rather boring, vapid character and there's nothing substantial about her at all. Which isn't to say that the rest of the cast is particularly interesting and engaging but they are considerably more robust than the eponymous fair maiden.
Tamako's blandness certainly saps the strength out of any storyline that attempts to revolve around her I think this episode has some fairly weak writing and direction. Despite KyoAni's lush colours and high quality animation I still found this episode to be relatively flat on the visuals front, which is kind of disappointing considering that that's what they're known for. Just in case you think I'm being overly picky, consider the scene where Midori confronts Mochizō. Just when their conversation is getting particularly heated we get a number of close-up shots of characters bodies that simply focus in on say, their arms or their legs. These shots are used to show how Midori and Mochizo are mirrors of each other, both in terms of their body language and in terms of their feelings for Tamako however that doesn't really help sell the scene because we could have picked up the same idea from a distance. In addition, bringing the camera in so close means that you completely miss the characters faces and all the facial expressions they should be displaying while having this heated conversation.
If this was a lesser studio I'd say they're doing that deliberately to avoid animating the face however I know that the folks of KyoAni have no trouble doing that, which means that this choice was simply a bad one.
As I mentioned above, I thought the writing was problematic too. If we leave aside the idea that Tamako is a dull girl then we can have a look at what this story was trying to be about e.g. communicating one's feelings to another. Now, Mochizō spends some amount of time looking for an outlet to communicate how he feels. Now, he finds the prefect way do that via the Bird. He goes as far as to prepare his note and have it transmitted, however this fails. The problem is really what happens next. Rather than either conquering his feelings and confronting Tamako directly or solving the problem in some other method he instead resolves to maintain the status quo. For no reason. Midori even confronts him about this and he refused to disclose his reasoning. Then Midori decides she likes Mochizō again, even though they had fought before.
The problem with all this is there's no good reason for reason why Mochizō gives up his quest for Tamako or why Midori starts to like him at the end of the episodes. It just kinds of happens because they felt like it should, but it doesn't fee authentic. The net result of this episode is: nothing.
. Never saw Ano Natsu. Worth watching?
