Ah, England. Land of tea, crumpets and cynical cunts moaning about the weather. But did you know it is also full of cute, young, blonde teenage girls? Who are innocent and moe as all fuck? Because Japan does! And Japan has decided to give this burgeoning demographic a proper animated tribute in the form of Kiniro Mosaic!
Some of the above might be a bit of a lie. I know I certainly don’t have crumpets all that often. But it’s certainly true that Kiniro Mosaic is a cute-girls-doing-cute-things slice-of-life with the twist of two of the five girls being English transfer students! And they both have hair as golden as the sun!
And it’s really, really, really cute!
I just want to start off by praising how much attention to detail was paid in the first episode when Shinobu went on a homestay in England. It’s not quite on par with the K-On! movie, but it’s still really admirable. For example, take the trains:
Anyone who has spent any amount of time with the British rail network can immediately tell you that those trains are First Great Western and CrossCountry ones. The colours and locations of the colours are dead on, as are the general shapes of the driving carriages. And on the inside:
Again, dead on. From the size of the seats, the width of the aisle, the shape of the handles, the doors, the maintenance closet, signage, emergency things, and the fact that one of the lights at the top isn’t working, that looks exactly like the inside of a First Great Western train. Well, aside from the fact that it’s far too bright and clean in there. Seriously, First Great Western trains are fucking awful.
The station looks the part too!
Oh, and she’s on the right train service for her destination. While the town/county she stays at is never given, the look and feel of the scenery, combined with the way her host’s house looks, generally says south-west pretty loudly – which First Great Western services!
Speaking of the house, it’s pretty well-known that it’s based on Fosse Farm B&B, which I should point out is not the model for a typical British home, even in a small countryside village. It’s a bed and breakfast, after all, and that kind of over-the-top, traditionally British décor is part of the experience! But hey, the fact that they went so far as to include some Homepride storage pots (the little black and white men in the hats) really tickled me.
Again, it’s hardly a surprise – it’s mostly just a matter of using their references pictures faithfully – but it’s pretty impressive nonetheless. As a Brit myself, I approve of the authenticity, even if it’s hardly representative.
But after that first episode, we’re back in Japan. Shinobu’s homestay was only brief, but a year or so later a surprise greets her: Alice – the blonde daughter of the family Shinobu stayed at, who she became fast friends with despite the language and cultural barrier – has learned Japanese and is transferring to a Japanese high school! And will be staying with Shinobu for the duration! Cute things (as performed by cute girls) ensues!
Authentic British landscapes and minutiae aside – and as mentioned, it very much is case aside after the first episode – what’s so good about Kiniro Mosaic? It’s cute as all hell, for a start. With the character designs, the mannerisms and interactions of the girls, and the art style making gratuitous use of pastel shades, watercolour backgrounds and soft and bright lighting, everything just feels gentle and kind and soft and fluffy and freaking adorable. Just from the aesthetics, it sets up the perfect atmosphere for this show.
Obviously the characters are cute too – it’d kinda defeat the point if they weren’t – and there’s nothing particular unique in the cuteness. They act unrealistically but adorably around each other, with the series preferring silliness on their part, there’re some yuri undertones to it as well (although it largely requires goggles to see it that way), and they frequently have that simplified, stylised look for reactions or particular sentiments… again, it’s all stuff that you’d see in most other similar series. But what elevates Kiniro Mosaic’s approach to cuteness and all things moe is the Engrish. Oh god, the Engrish.
The K-On! movie had remarkably good spoken English – I was honestly surprised to find out that VAs were all Japanese – which is a good decision given how prominent London was for that. Expecting the same treatment in a series centring on an English girl? HAH. The spoken English is just hilarious – not the worst I’ve heard, but still pretty bad – but seeing all these young blonde girls speak it so badly is just utterly endearing. It’s just unfortunate that it never gets cuter than the end of Shinobu’s homestay, where when she’s being driven away, the two of them are saying goodbye to each other. It being that they can’t speak the other’s language, Shinobu is saying goodbye by yelling “Hello!” and Alice “Konichiwa!”.
My heart couldn’t take it.
The Engrish is great and super funny (it’s even in the ED! Dat “preeeeashe” yo) and all, but it’s definitely the girls that make it here and really bring the comedy. If you’ve seen a few series in this kind of vein before, most of them will be pretty familiar in personality, but credit where it’s due Kiniro Mosaic brings enough originality to make the cast (or at least certain members) stand out from crowd.
Shinobu is one of the two main main characters in Kiniro Mosaic, and as mentioned kicks things off by going on a homestay in England, briefly living with Alice’s family. She’s generally pretty quiet and air-headed, often coming up with pretty ‘out there’ ideas, and has a love – bordering on a fetish – for blonde haired girls. She loves all things British (and French), often dressing up in very stereotypical and traditional (read: outdated) clothes from those cultures. Think French maids, Victorian-esque dresses, that kind of thing. This contrasts with her appearance of a very typical, traditionally Japanese young girl. Alice comments on her looking like a Japanese doll, even! This contrast gets a fair few jokes out of it, but in general most of the humour that Shinobu is directly responsible largely comes from a combination of her air-headedness and love for all things blonde – i.e. doing amusing stuff with Alice.
Alice, the blonde girl Shinobu stayed with in England, is by contrast quite level-headed. At times. She can recognise when Shinobu is being weird or nonsensical, but is hardly the most sensible herself. She has a tendency to worry a lot about her friends (and Shinbou’s sanity), and after Karen gets introduced, her possessiveness and jealousy take hold (but in a cute way) and she does some pretty dumb stuff as a result. The two of them really work together, and have some great chemistry; nearly every scene they’re in together is charming, adorable and funny.
Aya is usually the straight man of the group, calling them out on their stupidity and reprimanding them accordingly. She’s also kinda insecure about her really young appearance but in a way that’s kinda cute and not terrible. But where Aya truly shines is when she’s with Yoko. Now, as I mentioned before, there are a fair few yuri undertones if you actively look for them, but with Aya it’s incredibly fucking blatant that she has a romantic crush on her, and watching her get all flustered and tsundere around Yoko basically always leads to hilarity and cuteness. It starts fairly innocently – getting all embarrassed at a compliment, things like that – but before long she’s having full-blown romantic fantasies and imagining Yoko as her ‘prince’.
By contrast, Yoko is boring as hell and doesn’t contribute much of anything. A couple of jokes here and there, but her worth is mostly tied up in Aya’s crush on her.
Karen is fucking awesome.
She’s the other Brit – Alice’s childhood friend who decided FUCK IT let’s follow Alice to Japan and attend the same school as her. She wears a fucking Union Jack emblazoned blazer, speaks broken Japanese (ending most every line in DESS, said in the best possible way) and basically just does whatever the hell she wants. She doesn’t give a fuck about what anyone thinks of her, so she behaves incredibly outwardly and energetically, all the time. She also teases everyone (especially Aya; Karen is surprisingly perceptive, and has basically figured out her crush), and her blissfully ignorant/idgaf smile is the best. Also she’s rich.
Words cannot describe how endlessly entertaining she is. She plays off every character fantastically, bringing out the best in all of them and encouraging them to stop caring about everything so much and having fun. Every scene with her is just marvellous. Star of the goddamn show right here.
These kinds of series are always hard to review, because it basically comes down to “it’s cute-girls-doing-cute-things and it’s funny” “how cute and how funny?” “both enough to be worth checking out!” and then basically that’s almost everything you’d need to say. What Kiniro Mosaic does to distinguish itself really helps and really works to its benefit, allowing a greater range of less-common jokes to mine. But even without that, it’s still got a great sense of humour, and a lovely atmosphere; it’s strong enough on its own merits.
Kiniro Mosaic is best described as very similar to candyfloss: insubstantial as a meal, but so light, fluffy and super sweet. And it has the best finale ever. Seriously.
8/10
Bonus “Karen is best girl DESS” gallery:
[…] is still best girl […]
[…] Kiniro Mosaic getting a sequel was a bit of a surprise. Sure it was a fun series, but I doubt it would be as fondly remembered were it not for that glorious finale – most of my memories are of it being a bit hit-and-miss, a little too slow, and good-not-great. But thanks to that finale it saw an immediate surge of popularity and sales and now here we are with Hello!! Kiniro Mosaic! Good news! If you liked the first entry of everyone’s favourite cute-blonde-British-girls-doing-cute-things-in-Japan anime, you’ll undoubtedly love Hello!! Kiniro Mosaic. It is definitely more of the same, but so much funnier and more consistent this time around. The humour is on point for the entire series with every episode being stronger than just about any episode from the first series, and where that amazing finale was needed to make up for some of the shortcomings, Hello!! Kiniro Mosaic is so good that a scene like that would barely stand out. […]