Kiniro Mosaic: Pretty Days

Have you ever thought why your life is so boring? I will tell you. It is because you still have not watched Kiniro Mosaic.
NOT ONLY while watching it you will encounter a superior friendship story and perfect OST (and a ton of AYAYA) but also you will find the reason why living on earth is not that bad. Spoilers are the worst thing in existence so i will let you get over the entire show by yourself. Once you watch it i recommend you reading parts that have not been animated. This show is an absolute game and life changer.

So Kiniro Mosaic: Pretty Days having a movie was a kinda surprise for LA as not many slice of life cute girls anime series gets one.

Before LA starts with LA's usual spiel about anime original movies and their repetitive flaws they have...well Kiniro Mosaic: Pretty Days can't exactly be subjected to it. One, because it's a slice of life cute girls anime taken to a 50 minute movie thus they have nothing to recap and even then recapping slice of life events from the anime series is redundant (and thankfully Kiniro Mosaic: Pretty Days doesn't do this), second is that it doesn't introduce new "movie-only" ... characters because there is NO point in adding new characters to Kiniro Mosaic as the four girl ensemble of the main cast ARE the main cast and thirdly and finally, the story is more about the backstory of how Youko, Aya and Shinobu became friends eliminating any "movie original storyline" ploy. So what can LA critique from Kiniro Mosaic: Pretty Days?

Well the only thing of interest, the plot of course!.

Kiniro Mosaic: Pretty Days frame the movie out to be about Shinobu and and the gang getting ready for the cultural festival where Shinobu is the scriptwriter for a play with Youko, Alice, Aya and Karen helping her however this movie instead is mainly focused on Ayaya. Ayaya herself has some niggling worries about her friendship with Shinobu and her thinking she is an inadequate friend to Shinobu, as Shinobu was friends with Youko since childhood and both Karen and Alice for being blonde (her words not LA). The majority of the movie actually lies in how Youko, Ayaya and Shinobu became friends and Ayaya helping Youko and Shinobu go to their preferred school. The only problem is that since this is a past event besides being the bulk of the movie, there are some predictable instances concerning Ayaya's decisions with this backstory but nonetheless it did help flesh out as to WHY Ayaya sticks with Shinobu and Youko and are friends in the first place, as in LA's eyes, Ayaya was probably the least fleshed out (or to be more precise, the most normal) character from the four ensemble main cast and this movie helped her immensely.

In terms of animation done once again by Studio Gokumi, it has the same style and quality as it's anime series counterparts from chibi facial expressions and watercolored/pastel-ish coloring for backgrounding and the character designs are moefied cute girls expected from Gokumi.

As for voice acting, well LA might need to tell a bit of history with Nao Touyama for Kiniro Mosaic, as Nao Touyama voicing Karen at first for LA was annoying in the anime series (mind you this was BEFORE Nao Touyama was even in LA's radar AT ALL, besides her funny Engrish, LA basically ignored but noticed Karen at least. LA was more focused on Risa Taneda at the time), but yeah since LA had become a Nao Touyama fanboy, yes.....Nao Touyama was great in this and probably delivered some of the best lines in the movie, however LA is still giving the best voice actor for this movie to Risa Taneda as this movie was all about Ayaya and she carried this entire movie thus Ayay- *ahem* Risa Taneda definitely deserved this. Other than that, a great voice cast from the likes of Yumi Uchiyama, Yukari Tamura and Satomi Sato.

Kiniro Mosaic: Pretty Days is a nice entry into Kiniro Mosaic with the expected moe fluff and slice of life elements the anime series has. Kiniro Mosaic: Pretty Days however adds that touch of heartwarming moments to an already growing friendship of girls and does it well...no yuri. Be it if your a Kiniro Mosaic fan or just wants to relax with some moe fluff then Kiniro Mosaic: Pretty Days pretty much got you covered.

I don’t think Kiniro Mosaic was ever going to be amazing. I watched two full seasons and this lengthy OVA because the series is entertaining and I get to hear Nao Touyama say “desu!” a lot. I wouldn’t bother sitting through much less than that, but I’m also wary of any promise of more.

Pretty Days would have fared better had it stuck to the usual formula of post-series OVAs and simply given us another beach episode or a series of amusing sketches that didn’t fit into the main show or something similar. The one-dimensional characters, lackadaisical storylines, repetitive gags, chalky backgrounds, and ... carefree mentality of Kiniro Mosaic can’t support much more than a series of loose comedic scenarios and adorable accented English, even when the last two episodes of the season roll around and it’s time to pretend that there are deeper things at stake. The problem with repeating the tried-and-true approach is that this OVA has 50 minutes to work with, which means stretching out across two episodes material that sometimes doesn’t suffice to keep abreast of one. Even if I can watch two episodes back-to-back, a double-length episode quickly becomes exhausting.

That leaves the other approach for a special post-series anime project: the feature film. Pretty Days isn’t quite long enough to pull that off either, but damned if it doesn’t try to be equally important. The way the story is framed, you’d think this OVA were ramping up to something significant; a film is, after all, the perfect opportunity to address more serious topics and develop a storyline with much greater depth than an individual episode of a show could afford. Similar shows have taken that chance to nail down some development and explore their premises in a way that the regular seasonal run was unable to replicate. Pretty Days makes the attempt, but can’t muster an ounce of maturity or substance to break orbit of regular Kinmoza fare, with the result that it completely misses its chance at creating an emotionally resonant storyline and comes off as a brooding, overlong rehash of jokes and story beats we’ve already gotten plenty of from the show.

Shino faces mild burnout while Aya, struck with ennui or depression or just boredom, questions the nature of their friendship and flashes back to her middle school days with Youko and Shino. Exploring the history behind how Aya became part of the group and how they all wound up going to the same high school might have made for a solid half of a regular episode, but it’s not a compelling enough tale (and not compellingly told) to carry a program of this length. The middle school storyline, aside from eating up most of the screen time with intermittent flashbacks, seemingly has nothing to do with the frame story of the gang (Shino in particular) preparing for the school festival. There should have been some thematic continuity or lesson to tie the two plots together – maybe not in a regular episode, but certainly in a production like this that pretends to greater significance.

Moreover, the plot lacks focus. Whatever troubles Aya is experiencing, they don’t seem to have a serious point of origin or solution. I watch her relive her memories expecting to find some indicator of what she’s feeling in the present, why she might be feeling that, how she can overcome it, how that relates to the events taking place around her in the present… I get none of that. Pretty Days is just Aya remembering things with no goal in sight and then a school festival that amounts to little more than the usual excuse to screw around with comical characters. This OVA sets itself up to have a plot and some manner of consequences, but it doesn’t follow through.

At its best, Pretty Days doesn’t deliver anything more than what we could get out of a regular episode of the show, but because it tries to coax a feature-length story out of its 50 minutes, the pacing feels completely wrong, the story drags, and the overall effect is to remind me that, as much as I might enjoy Kiniro Mosaic, it really is a mediocre series.