This will be the first in what I hope to be a long line of anime reviews.
Title: Ichigo Mashimaro (Strawberry Marshmallow)
Genre(s): Comedy, Slice of Life
General info: Ichigo Mashimaro follows the life of Nobue Itoh, her younger sister Chika, and her friends. The basic premise of the show can be summed up in "cute girls do cute things in cute ways", be it trying to quit smoking, going outside to play, celebrating a holiday, or doing school work.
Number of Episodes: 12
Original Run: July 15, 2005-October 14, 2005
Characters:
Nobue Itoh: Nobue is the eldest main character. She is Chika's older sister and usually has final authority on all matters. She often tries to "borrow" money from Chika to buy cigarettes. Nobue is perpetually searching for a part-time job to earn money for more cigarettes to calm her nicotine addiction.
Chika Itoh: Chika is a 12 year old girl going to the same class as Miu, who lives right next to her. Chika is a cheerful girl and her understanding for common sense is greater than the ones of the other girls. She is quite skilled in cooking as well as baking cookies. Being the little sister of Nobue, she is often nicknamed Chi or Chi-chan.
Miu Matsuoka: Miu is another twelve-year-old girl who is depicted in the story as having a problem-child personality. A childhood friend of Chika, she lives next door to the Ito house and attends the same class as Chika. Miu likes to say random things out of the blue and often plays pranks on Matsuri and Ana, but is most of the time interrupted by Nobue (and sometimes by Chika), ending up lying face-down on the floor. She has the least common sense or manners of the girls, and is rarely taken seriously because of her weird ideas and comments.
Matsuri Sakuragi: Matsuri, is an eleven-year-old glasses-wearing girl with a pet ferret named John, and is depicted as having a very timid personality in the story. She is often the subject of Miu's teasing and can resort to crying and hiding behind Nobue. She is one grade below Chika and Miu, in the same class as Ana, with whom she quickly became friends. Matsuri discovers that Ana can speak Japanese fluently and helps her hide both her Japanese language skills from the rest of their class and her lack of English language skills.
Ana Coppola: Ana is an eleven-year-old girl who originally came from Cornwall, England, five years before the series, but seems to have forgotten how to speak English. She first pretends that she speaks only English, but it is not long before she is discovered by Matsuri while speaking very polite Japanese. Matsuri tries to help her re-learn English. Ana is often teased by Miu because of her name, Ana Coppola, which can be written in kanji to mean "hole", "bone", and "cave" (穴骨洞, "hole", "bone", and "cave"?). Miu nicknamed her "Coppola-chan", much to her grief. Ana's "proper Japanese" personality is reflected by her very traditionally feminine and polite speaking style.
Opening:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuyuuneXlvM[/youtube]
My Review: Ichigo Mashimaro is a very laid back comedy that will entertain you all the way till the last episode. Each character has their own way of making you laugh, whether it being Miu's hyperactive, attention craving attitude, or Ana's attempts to relearn english, her native language.
My Rating: 4.5/5
Cute Little Girls: 4 and a ferret