Lisa on Visual Culture

Ichigo Mashimaro

Strawberry Marshmallow, by Barasui is my favorite of all the cute anime and manga I have. [Though Hidamari Sketch is running a close second!] I love and rewatch/reread Azumanga Daioh, ToHeart and Yotsub&!  but Ichigo Mashimaro is my favorite. [For something to be "cute," it cannot have any seriously dark elements. There are certainly cute aspects to many of the comics I read and watch, but even ちょびっツ (Chobits) is way too dark for this category, in spite of having a reasonably happy ending.] Five numbers of Ichigo Mashimaro are available in the USA, and the anime is available in the USA. Much supplementary material is available in Japan. The character songs are soooo cute!

Ichigo Mashimaro is about five girls: Nobue Ito, Chika Ito, Miu Matsuoka, Matsuri Sakuragi and Ana Coppola. In the manga Nobue is 16; in the anime she is 20. That's because she smokes and drinks, and 20 is the legal age in Japan. Chika (Nobue's sister) is 12, as is Miu, their next door neighbor. Matsuri and Ana are 11. The younger girls all go to the same grade school. Ana is a blond, blue-eyed transfer student born in Cornwall, England, who has been in Japan the past five years and has mostly forgotten how to speak English, which she initially tries to hide. Matsuri has a pet ferret named John. They are all terminally cute, though Nobue is something of a juvenile delinquent with some barely hinted at dark facets to her life.

Miu is an insecure pain in the butt who is at the center of most of the craziness that goes on. She idolizes Nobue, who tends to torture her. Chika is the 'straight man' for much of the humor, with Matsuri and Ana the innocents caught in the crossfire of life. Nobue has a serious moe fixation and there is (not surprisingly) some yuri subtext from time to time. There's a great deal of basically slapstick humor. I love it!

That's what I think, here in Lansing MI on 2008 February 8.

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