Here I go reviewing another show that could get that “Slice of Nothing” descriptor and that doesn’t really have much of a plot to spoil. Well, I’m pulling out the Pass-Fail grading again, and digging right into the anime community’s favorite infomercial, Dagashi Kashi.
The basic premise of Dagashi Kashi is simple. Kokonotsu Shikada is the heir to a family run dagashi-shop, currently operated by his father, Yo. Hotaru Shidare, the eccentric heiress to a major snack-producing conglomerate, wants to hire Yo to run a shop for her company. Yo would like to go, but isn’t willing to do so unless Kokonotsu takes up the family business. Kokonotsu doesn’t want to take up the family business, though, and would rather become a manga artist. Thus, Hotaru decides to stick around and share her love of dagashi with Kokonotsu until he relents and decides to run the shop. Along the way we also interact with a couple of Kokonotsu’s friends – Saya Endo, who manages her family’s cafe in the same small town where Kokonuts lives and has an extremely obvious crush on him, and her brother To, who is good friends with Kokonotsu and also kind of a perv in that “endearing because it’s expected of a teenager” way.
So, one thing Western audiences might want to know at this juncture is what dagashi even are. There is not a good equivalent in America for the general category, and so it’s not easy to describe in few words. In general, dagashi are a class of traditional Japanese snacks and sweets, defined largely by their availability rather than their type or content. Specifically, dagashi are usually very cheap and target at children, who would be able to pick up a couple pieces with mere pocket change. Because of this, dagashi are often heralded by colorful mascot characters or designed around ways that kids could play with their food to get more than a split second of enjoyment out of a tiny piece of candy or the like.
If there’s anything in the canon of the American experience that’s similar, I’d say it would be the panoply of products associated with “Ice cream trucks” and school playgrounds, from the mythical Ninja Turtle Bar to the dreaded Warheads sour candies, but even that collection has a significant skew that doesn’t align perfectly with the idea of Japanese dagashi, and the trucks themselves are a poor parallel for the “home town” feel of an old-fashioned dagashi shop like the Shikada business, as much a social landmark for local children as it is a storefront.
With few exceptions, each episode of Dagashi Kashi will consist of a few vignettes, each centered around one or more iconic dagashi (or sometimes related entries like toys or games). This is, to an extent, why I called Dagashi Kashi an infomercial: these are real products, often brand name products, and the characters (mostly Hotaru) do not hesitate to go into significant detail on everything surrounding the vignette’s topic, including the history of the snack and its maker, its cultural significance, its slogan and mascot and where those come from, and what (in theory) makes it popular among children. There is a degree to which each bit falls somewhere between a cultural survey or history lesson on one side and an outright advert on the other. What saves this from being deeply troubled is that the “informercial” material is presented interwoven with character-driven comedy.
Hotaru is defined by her excessive, even freakish love of Dagashi in all their forms, combined with a patent disconnect with normalcy. There’s a further running sort of joke with Hotaru that she is a very attractive young lady who either doesn’t understand the kind of effect she can have on people, or else she knows all too well and both is interested in and only in using it to put people off balance. Thus, she will often say something highly suggestive, and even string along that line for a bit, before somehow redefining her comments to be snack-related. You think her marks would catch on, but Kokonotsu and To are teenage boys, they’re permitted to be a little thick. Lastly, she has one more joke in that she is utterly, almost supernaturally without luck, and will lose any game of chance she plays no matter how many times she tries.
Kokonotsu is pretty much always the straight man in the comedy. He is, however, fairly easily drawn into Hotaru or To’s absurd schemes, just sort of going along with the flow. He’s almost as knowledgeable when it comes to Dagashi as Hotaru, and thus holds his own when she (as is often the case) presents some sort of contest. He’s generally fairly nice and more or less reasonable even if he can be convinced to take leave of said reason, but he’s rarely the inciting force behind anything.
To, of course, plays everything you would want about the idiot best friend. He wants to be popular with girls, enjoys big boobs, and would probably come off as sleazy if it weren’t for the fact that his pervy nature is also pretty much entirely passive. He often gives Kokonotsu questionable advice or an in on some loony way to look cool, like kicking off the Kendama vignette by insisting that the old-fashioned toy is now popular in the big city.
At first you might think that Saya’s big gimmick would be her crush on Kokonotsu, but oddly enough it’s not played that way. She likes him, sure, but there’s not the same jealous and competitive nonsense that is usually used for comedy. For instance, she actually has a pretty good relationship with Hotaru, since she recognizes that Hotaru is only interested in dagashi and that if Hotaru “wins”, Kokonotsu stays in town. She also, frankly, would seem to have a pretty good chance, since while any actual romance is pretty far from anything Dagashi Kashi wants to depict, Kokonotsu always seems to regard her with affection and make time for her, meaning there’s not a lot of room for the “Clingy jealous one-sided crush”, and good riddance to that. Instead, Saya’s main gag is that she is absurdly skilled and absurdly lucky. Lucky, in the way that’s the opposite of Hotaru where she tends to win games of chance first-time out, or even repeatedly in some cases. Skilled, in that whenever there is some game or trick of manual dexterity involved, Saya is effortlessly good at it, often humiliating To and impressing Hotaru who takes to (according to the subtitles) calling her “Master Saya” in respect of her skill.
Lastly, Yo is typically the goofy manchild type. He’s friendly, good with kids, and sometimes even comes off as fairly innocent, but he’s also kind of an idiot who needs to get lectured by his son on matters of basic common sense. He doesn’t show up as much as the kids, but when he does it is a nice mix of kind sincerity and moronic naivete.
In all honesty, that’s pretty much the show. Any other speaking roles are entirely bit parts, and there’s little point in going through the beats of every episode because most of them are just “it’s a wacky excuse to learn about this dagashi or children’s’ toy”. There are a couple movements that refocus a little. When Saya and Kokonotsu share a vignette, the show often skews a little more heartfelt, because it treats Saya’s feelings and their shared past as something of value while still remaining in the typical low key atmosphere. There are also a couple of moments where Kokonotsu is asked to think seriously about what he’s going to do, but they pass fairly quickly, mostly because the incentive is usually coming from the crazy snack lady and she has a habit of breaking serious moods.
Other than that, there’s a pretty good summer festival episode that’s more about just taking in the atmosphere as Kokonotsu and Saya go around (with some extra time spent with Hotaru and To), and a later multi-episode sequence where Hotaru gets a sore in her mouth and keeps making matters worse with her dagashi addiction, since she’ll do just about anything snack-related rather than taking medicine. This leads to a lot of comedy at her expense which, since she’s such a loon and you kind of know she earned what she gets, is quite funny.
The last thing I wanted to really talk about, and I’ve alluded to it already, is the atmosphere. It was pointed out to me, and I find it to be a good comparison, that Dagashi Kashi has oddly much in common with Flying Witch when you’re just talking about the general feel of the world they inhabit. At first, this seems incredibly odd – Flying Witch is a magical little Slice of Nothing, too mellow and present to really be a comedy and too cheerful and safe to be a drama. Dagashi Kashi is very much a comedy, with these strange and eccentric people bouncing off one another and getting into overblown scenarios that really shouldn’t be the kind of big deal they’re made out to be, a little like the early episodes of Kaguya-sama: Love is War.
But the shows inhabit the same space in that they seem to have a very earnest love for an old-fashioned, small-town, “life in the slow lane” approach to existence. Either setting is somewhere that seems almost secreted away from the rest of the world and the relentless march forward of time, existing entirely in “the good old days” or something like them, where people are generally nice and you can have these extremely understated pillars of the community. It’s soft, warm, and personal (as Hotaru might say suggestively, before clarifying her version to be about food), a tone that’s not exactly nostalgic but that invokes something of a similar appreciation for simplicity.
All in all, I find Dagashi Kashi to be an easy Pass. There’s not enough there for me to really feel comfortable issuing a letter grade, but it’s quite enjoyable and something I would grant at least a fond recommendation. It’s not something you really have to run and see, but if you want a bit of low key comedy or are interested in learning a little slice of Japanese culture with your anime, Dagashi Kashi will be quite satisfying.