Kiratto Pri☆chan

When I first started watching Kiratto pri chan I had only recently gotten into shows for young girls. The realization had been half a decade in the making, if not my whole life, but only in late 2017/ early 2018 did I realize that I didn’t just like cute things in anime, but I also liked shows for little kids. So it was then, as I was watching and immensely enjoying the beginning part of hugtto precure, whilst I was hungering for more weekly kids shows to keep up with, that two little shows started airing named Aikatsu friends and kiratto pri chan.

You could almost ... say that these shows were the same show: They’re both game adaptations, with middle school idols, insert performances and collectable outfits. Both shows start off with two main idol girls and two rival idols and they both later add two more idols. Both shows also have some older idols, the greatest in the world, who occasionally interact with the main characters, mostly during competitions, and who must ultimately be overcome.

Any time though, when you see two shows with the exact same premise, it becomes obvious pretty early on which is the better one: Aikatsu friends in this case. And so a lot of people who were watching both shows jumped ship on pri chan pretty early on, and so did I. Not for long though. There was a thing in my soul that believed I should continue it , and I didn’t understand why yet. Was it I, god or who, that moved this mouse to put Kiratto pri chan back on my watching list?

Aikatsu friends was obviously better through more conventional means. It had good animation, great looking CG during the dance sequences, lovable and interesting main characters (though weaker rivals) and more consistency altogether. But I just couldn’t help myself rooting for pri chan. It was the underdog between these two, and like any good underdog it had it’s lovable quirks. Aikatsu friends was relatively consistent, but therefore also a lot more predictable; but you never knew when something insane and hilarious would happen in pri chan. It was just so much more eccentric and surprising. (though there were some very eccentric episodes and jokes in friends as well, don’t get me wrong)

To me it’s pretty obvious where all these eccentricities came from: Director Hiroshi Ikehata. Ikehata has directed nothing but comedy anime, like Robot girls Z, sore ga seiyuu and akiba’s trip the animation. These shows are all considered good but not many people love them. That’s different for Mahoujin guruguru (2017), which has a strong cult following, which I am a proud part off, though that show is likely as good as it is because the source material is so strong. Point is, Hiroshi Ikehata is a comedy director through and through, though a fairly new and upcoming one. He is likely the reason why this show has all these random comedy bits, and I love him for it. The fact that Ikehata's style of comedy really works for me, is probably a good part of why I like this show.

Sadly his eccentricities aren’t present in the main characters. Our three protagonists are fairly boring, which is likely my biggest gripe with the show. One of them has a somewhat funny rivalry with one of the rival idols, and it’s not as if they can’t be funny when the situation calls for it; it’s just that they’re all fairly lacking in personality. This isn’t true, however, for the rival idols. Sara and Anna have lots of personality and have great chemistry together, with Anna being this loud and bratty girl who’s constantly bragging about herself and showing off how ridiculously rich she is. Sara contrasts her immensely by being this cool easygoing girl, who secretly loves all things cute. They do their jobs as rivals perfectly, early on in the show, and later on they become good friends with the main characters. But my favourite character in the show has to be Meru-Meru, an old friend of Anna and Sara, who has been gone for years. Unlike the dignified Anna and Sara she is very childlike and wild. She is an incredibly smart scientist and inventor, but unlike most characters of that archetype, actually has a personality on top of that. Because she’s been in America for so long she’s constantly spouting Engrish, but it’s definitely some of the finest Engrish I have ever heard. I can’t not smile when Meru-Meru is enthusiastically spouting nonsense. She is the best part of the show for me and my only complaint with her is that she comes in far too late into the show. I need more of her!

I actually feel similarly about the character designs as I feel about the girls. The main girls are pretty boring to look at, but Anna and Sara both look great. Anna has a very nice shade of red for her hair and somewhat goofy looking pony tails that roll up like a slinky near the end. This hair style is common for rich girls in anime, but I have never seen it done with this bright shade of red, only with blond hair, maybe black or pink. Anna always has a proud and sassy look on her face, whereas Sara has a cool, confident look on hers. You can definitely subtly tell their personalities from the way they look, and similarly when you look in the main characters eyes you can clearly see they’re actually dead inside. Sara has a very cute short, green haircut and often wears cute looking hats. Her fashion sense is definitely the strongest out of all the characters in the show. Anna is more into fancy dress, though she usually wears normal clothes throughout most of the show. Generally there’s a decent amount of cute clothes worn throughout the show, but not enough for it to be impressive. Aikatsu friends definitely has it beat in that regard. Though in both shows I much prefer their casual wear over any of their performance dresses.

Main characters aside, the background characters can often have the most surprising character designs. Anna’s maid is introduced fairly early on in the show and looks hilarious. Unlike all the other characters in the show she has gigantic iris-less eyes, leaving not enough room for a nose. Because this is a girls show all the characters have big, colorful, well shaded eyes, but Anna’s maid has some of the simplest eyes you could draw, with just a few dots for pupils. The maid is a pretty funny character as well. She never talks, is fast and strong and at one point she effortlessly kicks in two giant, locked metal doors as if it’s nothing. Often when the show zooms in on a group of background characters, and especially if those characters are moving, the show will simplify them, giving them the same simplified eyes as Anna’s maid and they always look hilarious in my opinion. In aikatsu friends the crowds always look consistent with everybody being properly drawn, but in this show they look really goofy and funny and I like that way more. Please Japan, no more CG crowd scenes, just look at this show for inspiration!

I’m always fascinated with anime that manage to look good, despite a low amount of resources available. This show is definitely a nice example of that, with a lot of goofy faces and funny looking shots, as opposed to the usually beautiful and well crafted look of aikatsu friends, and that just makes me root for it more. Ikehata and his team definitely put some love into this show and it shows. Just wish it was more consistent.

The big problem with the show, despite how loveable it is, is that it ultimately isn’t consistent enough. The funny and wacky moments come out of nowhere, but not often enough. Too many episodes are kind of a snore, which is also true for aikatsu friends, which is why I, regrettably, can’t give either show more than a 6/10, even though I was really hoping to. If the show had lots of wacky stuff in every episode it could easily be an 8. Both shows even have 9/10 episodes, however rare they may be.

That leaves only one part of the show to be discussed: The performances. To be honest, I’m not the guy you should be asking about this. I don’t care much for the performances. Some people only care about the performances and I don’t think I’ll ever understand them. The CG in this show isn’t as good as in Aikatsu friends and I don’t care about dancing. I usually space out during these sections, listen to the cute pop songs and browse some sites. But really think about it, if I give this show a solid 6, despite the fact that I didn’t care about the performances and you actually do care about those, and if on top of that you resonate a lot more with girly stuff than I do, then this show could easily be an 7 or an 8 for you, could it not?

There’s always at least one performance per episode and they never re-animate them. They’re essentially CG, insert music videos. The disconnect comes when the characters talk about how good each others performances were, or how much better than usual they did. It’s hard to quantify their performances if they’re prerecorded. In a battle or sports tournament you can see that one opponent beat the other because he took his opponent out or got a better time, but in a battle of the idols you can’t see who wooed the crowd better, except when the show explicitly tells you. As such, the episodes focusing on these competitions are almost consistently my least favorite episodes. It’s weird to me, then, when I see people complaining about ‘filler’ in these shows. To me the filler is the best part. I love creative and funny episodes, where the creators of the show get to do whatever they want. My favourite episode of the show is likely the dolphin episode, which I’m fairly sure is filler. It seems there is just a crowd of people that is into these types of shows that gets something quite different out of it than me.

All in all, I like kiratto pri chan quite a bit. I just wish I could like it more. Periodically on 4chan, you see a thread discussing all the shows for young girls in one go. These threads are usually dominated by precure and aikatsu friends, but you always see some people squeezing in a little bit of this show, as if to say: “Hey, we still exist. This show is good too, you know.” But no one listens as the Chad aikatsu and precure watchers waltz right over them. This show is the ultimate underdog. It’s a long, episodic kids show, and a girly one at that, and it doesn’t have any action, like precure. Instead it’s about idols, a genre that is quite niche, on top of the fact that most anime fans don’t watch kids anime. And on top of all of that, this show has a twin sister that is simply superiour. If season 2 could try harder to be more consistent, could stand up and fight even harder, like a shonen action hero, then season 2 could end up being better than aikatsu friends season 2. But that might all be but a dream. Could the underdog truly stand up to the superiour foe in real life? Or do miracles only exist in anime?

Maybe I could give an update on this, when I’ve finished both second seasons in May(hopefully). Until then I’ll keep enjoying Meru Meru’s fun antics, for so far as anyone cares to translate hem. I keep talking about these two shows, instead of just this one, because I really don’t know how not to. I watched these incredibly similar shows at the same time, often got confused as to what happened in what show, and ultimately I can say that the experience of watching these two shows was one big experience. I can’t separate them in my mind and there’s no need to anyways. I’ll remember the experience of watching them for a long time and I’ll always remember Kiratto pri chan as the ultimate anime underdog.

Until I find a new underrated anime to be all dramatic about.

Oh Kiratto, how much potential you had... and mostly wasted.

STORY: 6/10

This is, perhaps, the worst part of all. Unlike similar series, where each episode brings a new challenge or arc, Kiratto insisted on shoving the same generic issues at the audiences' faces, over and over and over again. The show just never evolved, which in turn, seriously held the characters back.

Every similar series makes sure to show their characters working hard, working out, training, studying, taking things seriously - but Kiratto seemed utterly determined to keep their characters silly, stupid, and just having fun. There were a few moments of real work, but they were ... just that - moments, nothing more.

CHARACTERS: 6.5/10

Well, they tried. Not very hard, but they did.

Sara is unique - the queerbaiting with her is frankly insane - while Anna shows depth at surprising and unexpected times. But Mirai, our lead, is painfully naive and shallow, while Emo's catch phase is both incredibly annoying and utterly meaningless, along with almost everything else she tries her hand at. Poor Rinka does her best to hold everyone together, and is frankly the only interesting character of the bunch, having a 'mysterious' background and fun arc, yet ultimately gets the least screen time.

Nobody in the cast grows up, learns, or evolves (except for Rinka.) They're rarely challenged by anyone outside of their inner circle, and when they do, they win with ease. It's boring, and the characters' rivalries quickly feel stale and forced.

ART: 8.5

If there's one thing the Pretty franchise has over Aikatsu, it's always going to be the art (and as far as Kiratto goes, absolutely nothing else.)

The CGI is gorgeous, with good choreography and an impressive variety, complete with great backdrops and smart 'camera' work. Plus, this is the first Pretty series where ALL the dresses are at least decent - there's no ugly clown-frog suits to be seen this time. In 2d, their dresses are just as adorable and well designed, each girl genuinely looks unique from the last, the backgrounds manage to be both detailed and not distracting, and everything is just excessively cute.

SOUND: 7

Don't get me wrong here - what they do have, they do exceptionally well at. It's all catchy, poppy, and fun. But that's the ONLY thing they ever do. Compared to Aikatsu and LoveLive and basically any other idol show out there, which have rock and ballads and folk music, Pripara's playlist is just, well, boring.

OVERALL: 6.25

I'll give it a quater point for the amazing art, but between the repetitively bland storylines, flat characters, and generally boring playlists, this series definitely earned a 6/10.