Kiniro Mosaic: Pretty Days

After 2 seasons of these lovely group of friends and their daily lives in high school, full of fun and happy moments that made the viewers smile to no end, now we reach this short movie that continues the story and fleshes out some of the main characters of this simple, yet heartwarming story.

While there is a school festival moving the plot, this movie focuses in Aya(ya) and her memories with Shinobu and Youko when they were still in middle school, putting focus on how the three friends spent their days together preparing for the entrance exam for highschool.

Even though Karen and Alice took a ... minor role in this movie compared to the screentimes they got in the main series, they were still as loveable as always and had their shining moments, Not to mention, the way how the backstory of Aya was executed definitely compensated for the lack of the two blondies.

The art of the movie was similar to the main series, focusing like always in putting a lot of focus in showing the various expressions of the girls, in the sound department, like most slice of life shows, this movie provides solid background songs that add to the emotions of the different scenes, but in the end tend to not be that memorable, something that happens here as well, the opening and ending themes kept the happy and sweet feelings that the ones from the main series had.

As a Kiniro Mosaic fan, this movie was as good as I hoped it to be and I couldn't be more satisfied with the experience. I can't recommend it enough to any viewer that enjoyed the previous two seasons of this lovable series.

Do you need more Ayayas in your life? Have you been suffering from "Desu!" abstinence for the last two years? Would you like to charge up your blondie power meter? Then the solution is simple.

I will keep this brief since you should already know all about this show from the first two seasons of it. Pretty Days is essentially a 50-minute movie of Kiniro Mosaic taking place during a school festival. The film is divided into two parts: one which covers the events of the festival itself where Shino is tasked with scriptwriting and providing costumes for a stage play, and one which tells a ... lengthy backstory of how Aya, Youko and Shino managed to get into high school to begin with (I.E: before Alice and Karen came to Japan).

The backstory is definitely the highlight of the movie. For most of the TV-series' runtime, Karen has been the one taking the center stage of the show, but this time it is Aya who gets the main spotlight. Here, we get to see how she helps her two friends with less than stellar grades pass their entrance exams together, and also the conflicting emotions starting to take place within Aya herself regarding whether she should go to a better high school (as her grades are much better than Youko's and Shino's), or if she should pick the same one as her friends in order to be able to remain with them for a while longer. Naturally, we already know the outcome of this from the start, but the way it is presented is quite heartwarming and charming to see.

Regarding the school festival, it is perhaps a bit less impressive, but still enjoyable. It is more along the lines of what a typical episode of Kiniro Mosaic might look like in the TV-series. The girls have some light-hearted fun together whilst preparing for the stage play, and then we get to see the results of it at the end, and unsurprisingly things quickly turn chaotic and silly but all in good fun.

The art is perhaps a little bit underwhelming considering that movies generally have better visuals than TV-series do, but in this case it basically looks the same as I recall the last season doing. Of course that has always been more than enough for the show, but maybe it could have been a little bit more still this time around.

Overall, this is another one of those cases where if you have seen and liked the first two seasons of the TV-series, there is essentially no reason whatsoever not to watch Pretty Days too. If you liked one, you are basically guaranteed to like the other. While it may be considered unfortunate that Karen and Alice are largely irrelevant for large portions of the film, I also think it was about time the other girls got some more focus instead of the blondies for once. As a result, Pretty Days manages to be more than just cute and funny (though it still does that too of course), but momentarily also quite touching. And for what after all is nothing more than a simplistic moe comedy at heart, that is about all you could ever ask for.

Story
Although the story doesn't provide us with much story progress after the ending of Hello! Kiniro Mosaic, it is still a highly impressive story. If you remembered the impression of Kiniro Mosaic 1st episode where Shino travels to England to meet Alice's family, the story in this anime film left us a similarly strong impression. It's about friendship, a deep one. But focuses more between Shino, Youko, and Aya. We'll go flashback on their middle school life during the time they prepared themselves to enter Moegi High School.

Animation
The animation looks very good. The character design is still the same which is good. The background is ... artistic just like the usual style of Kiniro Mosaic. It's like painting and they keep the style consistent. The color is a bit off.

Music
One of the strongest side of Kiniro Mosaic is it's excellent music, both the Background Musics and Theme Songs. This time, I'd say the music is on masterpiece level. It fits on every scene beautifully, making impression on each scene deeper. This level of work is more or less on par with Hibike Euphonium although Kiniro Mosaic doesn't involve music on its story. There are 3 theme songs in the film. The opening theme Happy★Pretty★Clover, the insert song during the festival is Shining Star, and the ending theme is Starring!!. All of them are performed by Rhodanthe* which is consists of Nishi Asuka, Tanaka Manami, Uchiyama Yumi, Taneda Risa, and Touyama Nao who also voiced the main characters.

Characters
This time, we see another side of the main characters. Aya's role in the anime is actually bigger than we knew. Shino and Youko are already have quite a lot of story proportion. Alice and Karen are kinda left out in the story focus this time but they already plenty of story on the TV series, so I think it is acceptable.

Final Thoughts
For those who haven't followed Kiniro Mosaic, it's hard to recommend this anime film. For the fans, this is certainly something you mustn't miss. Although this is just a 50 minutes anime film, this is the best work of Kiniro Mosaic and the only one I rate as Masterpiece.

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.

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.