Urara Meirochou

Urara Meirochou. Alright, you're a moe blob anime, what's your gimmick this time? Let's see here... Set in a town of 10 districts... Divination... Gods and spirits...? And...lots of yuri baiting. Alright well this is going to be a 'fun' venture, now isn't it?

Story: Labyrinth Town is a town of fortune tellers where girls with spiritual powers starting at the age of fifteen come to the city with the prospect of becoming rank one urara, the highest rank of fortune teller that one can receive. It's here where we meet Chiya, a girl raised in the woods ... who comes to Labyrinth town to meet friends with the goal of becoming a rank one Urara in hopes of finding her mother.

Urara Meirochou is what one would expect coming into a moe show filled with cute girls. The show has an all female cast, cute character antics between the four main characters (cause 4 is apparently the magic number for this), some fanservice for those who're fans of seeing animated underage girls with less than a full set of clothes on, and a large majority of pointless dialogue talking about how they're all friends and how happy they all are being with one another. Standard fare, nothing special, so what does the show's gimmick, the divination and setting of Labyrinth town, add to the overall story?

As far as impact goes, the added story elements help to spice up the story just a little bit to make it a bit more than the basic moe blob formula. The majority of the episodes feature the girls learning various forms of divination while providing both the audience and each other with backstories and slight development with their ultimate goal being "we're going to be #1." In addition, the story manages to sprinkle in moments of unease (contrary to what a happy go lucky show like this may have normally) and show how the gods and spirits of the town interact with the Urara to an extent that I honestly wasn't expecting at all from this series. The contribution of these elements actually do help keep parts of the story to feel interesting, but what makes it disappointing is how uncommonly these elements, particularly revolving around the lore of Labyrinth Town, is used.

As far as endings go, the show has what is known as a 'throwaway episode', where the story of what the cour wants to achieve has been told in full before the entire 12-13 episodes is completed, causing the creators to use the remaining time for a fluff episode that the story could just as easily go without, and it wouldn't make a difference. I'm not a fan of throwaway episode, and it felt like I was just wasting my time to finish up all 12 episodes of this show.

Ultimately, Urara Meirochou is what one would come to expect from a cute girl moe show with unrealized potential. Largely focusing on moe antics, the rest of the series involving the lore of Labyrinth town and the secrets of the gods and spirits that reside over Labyrinth town go largely unnoticed, thus creating only specific moments of the series which I would say is even worth watching. The divination aspect stays with the series throughout its runtime, and it's an ever-looming concept that's thankfully fully a part of the whole series, but at the same time, just like the show's other parts, doesn't get fully realized, thus relegating all of the show's unique elements to feel more like gimmicks than absolute necessary components of the main story.

Overview:
+ Manages to integrate unique elements well
+/- Largely still moe-blob based
+/- Unique elements however don't feel fully realized
- Throwaway episode at the end

Characters: The girls in these types of shows are usually only ankle deep in character. And to be honest, Meirochou doesn't do anything that different.

Chiya, as the main character/girl of the series, can be summed up in just three words. A feral child. Raised in the woods, Chiya adopts the cheerful genki persona while adding a twist of woodland qualities by consistently showing off animal-like behavior whenever she interacts with the other characters in the series. Her goal in the series is to find her mother, and, as expected of a short adaptation of an on-going series, does not happen. (Gotta keep the readers reading.) Beyond wanting to make friends with everything and trying to find her mom, there's really not much to say about Chiya. Admittedly the fact that she has a motivation is commendable enough for a character in a moe show, but again, this is a case of "They could've done more."

The other three girls, Kon, Koume, and Nono, can also be summed up in just a few words. The hardworking fox, the witch, and the shy one respectively. All three of these girls bear similar character depth as Chiya, and as far as characterization goes, only goes as far as a backstory to give the audience a little bit of a better understand for as to what is motivating these girls to move forward on their journey to become first rank Uraras. Again, there's really not much to say here. They're all cheerful friends with one another as expected, and the show's lack of conflict or its use of laughably easily resolved conflict in such a bright and cheery show make the viewing experience of these girls surprisingly dull.

The rest of the cast is relegated to the side and feature other girls/women who act mostly as comic relief or unreliable mentor-types to add a little more variety to the character types that we're given in this show. You have the one who stands up for the law, the yuri fangirls, one who's a sadist cause why not, and a troublesome teacher. Again, nothing too special, nothing really worth mentioning beyond this tiny, tiny paragraph, so we're going to move onto art.

Overview:
+/- Typical moe cast

Art: Produced by J.C. Staff, Urara Meirochou has some pretty standard art for the company's track record. Characters are drawn in your typical cutesy art style, the color palette is bright and shiny to give off that colorful and cheerful feel, and characters are given exaggerated faces complimented with background changes to signify comedy and other moments like those. They also put the characters' faces dangerously close together so often to the point that I swear they were going to kiss at least once or twice.

While the show's normal art has nothing too terribly special to mention, Urara has another style situated in the show's more unsettling moments when they feature the show's more mysterious component of gods, spirits, and divination. The art for these scenes are done with mesmerizing patterns and unsettling shapes and colors combined with a much darker color palette when compared to the rest of the art that I can't help but feel like wanting more. It's not fantastic by art or animation standards, but these scenes really had me intrigued by what this series could've done with these concepts. They don't use this style very often, and I really would've loved to see more of this contrast just so the story could've had a bit more oomph to its established lore.

Overview:
+ Contrasted artstyle from its normal art
+/- Rest of the artwork/animation is standard fare

Sound: The OST is nothing special. Admittedly while both the OP and ED each have parts to them that are catchy, nothing about them screams memorable. So in my opinion, not worth the time.

Personal Enjoyment: Urara Meirochou was a moe blob that I thought would have potential and was something I saw as something that could be potentially interesting. I was wrong. While there are parts of it that I liked, the show largely didn't have much of itself to be interesting, and I got bored of it pretty fast. Regardless of how often they weaved the divination concept into the main story, very few things about it stood out to me.

Did I like this series?

I feel neither joy nor sorrow about this series. Meh is about all I can say to explain it broadly. In terms of specifics however, I like Kon as a character. I don't know why; she was just that one character that I liked. Maybe it's because I'm a fan of foxes and her entire character is wrapped around that concept (quite literally because her name is the sound that they believe foxes make).

What didn't I like about this series?

In terms of specifics, the two yuri guards that pop in as comic relief. Characters whose entire character revolve around fawning over one character and how great they are shouldn't even be called people. I hate them and the series would be much better off without them.

Would I recommend this series?

Eh...watch if you want is all I can say. Honestly, the time spent watching this series could be better used on watching something else. Meirochou doesn't really fulfill any kind of niche that other shows can fill, and you could find most if not all of its elements in other better shows. Is Meirochou a bad show? No. Is it a good show? No. Is it ultimately worth your time? Well, if you ask me, no.

Seriously Urara Meirochou is cataloged as an anime "Seinen"? WTF? This Seinen has nothing,it seems more a comedy a little fun with Lolis and Shoujo ai.

The story of a group of friends who live in a city full of women (seriously no men) where they sought to become a kind of witch guessing known as "Urara" to achieve their different personal goals. It's actually simpler than it sounds.

The art is not bad, the characters are similar to Manga, although they abuse much of the miniatures in certain parts, but it is not something that greatly affects the story.

I found the Sound Very good, not because ... its opening and ending are very good (they are regular, repetitive and sticky songs), but because it has the background sounds suitable for the comedy that is.

About the characters the most outstanding of all is Chiya, his personality is the most striking, I think the rest of the characters could have something more of protagonism.

Overall it's not a big anime but it made me have a good time (although I think this "Incomplete" story), I look forward to seeing the continuation of the story in a second season ....

I'm not going to go too into depth with this review, I'll just put my thoughts down for this. Of course, there will be spoilers, but I'll try to keep them as vague as possible.

I thoroughly enjoyed this anime, and felt that it was an adorable anime, with adorable characters, doing adorable things. The romance ships were there and the ending even supported some of them, and it had so much potential for a serious plot while remaining carefree and soft.

However, the end of this anime has left me wanting so much more, but NOT in a good way. They started with the ... premise of an adorable show with a lot of character development, with a potential for a serious story in the background, then discarded all of that for a slice-of-life show for most of the series. It remembered the story that had sunk into the background towards the end, and left nothing resolved.

The entire story revolves around the main character, Chiya, trying to find her mother. She also aspires to become a first-rank Urara to find her mother, if need be. Yet by the end of 12 full episodes, we learn very little of her mother, and she is barely even mentioned for the majority of the series. Most of the information we learn in episode 11. Episode 12 could have been spent finding heavy clues for her mother perhaps, or exploring where the future will take them, but instead it's spent with an obligatory bathhouse episode. Not going to say I don't appreciate it, but it felt like a waste of potential advancements.

I genuinely hope a season 2 will happen to tie up the loose ends that are, honestly, the entire show. Next to none of the original plot points have been resolved, few have been furthered, and the show leaves a lot to be desired. However, despite the failed plotline of the entire show, there seemed to be plenty of character development, and that much I can appreciate.

I still enjoyed it though, as it was very cute and I enjoyed watching the girls getting up to their antics. I just wish that the show could decide whether it wanted to be a cutesy slice-of-life anime, or something more serious. The show didn't decide in time, and failed to balance it out whatsoever. It seemed that they were trying to do far too much with the episode limit that they had. Perhaps making this a 24-episode anime would have been a great workaround for this problem? Regardless, I'm giving it a 6/10, because story is very important to me.

I watched the first 3 episodes of Urara Meirochou before dropping it, but here's what I've got.
Story & Characters: The story is simple and has some potential, but ultimately never goes through, ending up as another show that just forces the whole cute/moe/waifu material deal. The characters are stale and uninteresting like a 2 week old bread that has been standing outside through wind and weather, rain and sun, turning tough and chewy. There's no depth at all in any of the characters, and as the story relies heavily on the characters to move on, it stays pus.
Art & Sound: Both the art style and ... sound are good, but at the same time feel kinda mediocre as it's about the same as we see in most shows nowadays.
Overall: The show isn't very bad in it's own rights, but doesn't really bring anything to the table either. This leaves, in my opinion, our hungry family of anime watchers to starve as we pursue, hopefully, quality. I just couldn't keep watching something that was only pointless moe feed.

"Urara Meirochou" rather that cute children, it didn't had much to offer. I would say that for any drama to be successful we need a story. But what was the story here? A mountain girl wants to be a urara which is just like a priest or a fortune teller managing a cult in any back alley around the globe.

Really I don't know why the hell this show got such good rating? Is this world really full of perverts who would like anything as long as there are cute girls in it?
If this is the case then this industry is doomed.

The story was ... comic and not much comic to lift the score of this show. 4 girls 1 is introvert, 2nd is extrovert, 3rd is normal and over excited and 4th a jungle girl. Really a deadly combination and I really expected a lot but was rather shocked after watching and thought a twist must be there but there wasn't any.

Urara Meirochou is... Fine. It's mediocre, but not really the bad kind. That's about the best I can describe this series. It wasn't bad at all, but I didn't really think it was amazing or even good either. It was fun enough as a series to just pass the time with, without it actually feeling like a waste. But it also didn't really leave much of an impact on me.

The characters are enjoyable to watch, though I think they can be a bit too annoyingly quirky and cheesy sometimes. The art is pretty good, and the sound design is decent. Barely anything I can really ... complain about in these aspects.

The thing I liked the most about this series is the premise of its story. Urara that can divine information by lending powers from gods/spirits that do not want to be seen. Interesting to say the least, and I definitely wanted to see more.

But here we have one of its problems; aside from a few select scenes hinting at 'something', we don't really get much of anything. I think this series was meant to set up the world and the backgrounds and motivations of the characters. This series does a good enough job in that aspect. But without the thought of a second season, Urara Meirochou has to stand on its own... In which case my mediocre opinion of it is solidified even more.

I also think that Urara Meirochou is a bit confused as to what it wants to be. Does it want to be a chill and happy slice-of-life/moe anime, or does it want to a be a fantasy-esque anime filled with mysteries and excitement? But I see it trying to juggle both of them too much at the same time... Causing it to fall a little flat as a whole.

All in all though, I'm willing to give Urara Meirochou the benefit of the doubt and rate it a decent 6 out of 10.