Taishou Otome Otogibanashi

Taishou Otome Otogibanashi is a tone-deaf masterpiece, completely contradictory by nature, the anime proposes a romance that is barely believable and a sense of having to completely suspense your disbelief against the strange forces of wholesomeness and eye candy relationships. While the anime itself have a bunch of extremely respectable features that I will explain later, the final taste is that this is something that shouldn't exist, or at least, it shouldn't exist as it is.

The anime is not offensively bad, honestly, the comedy works extremely well with the usage of exaggerated emotional reactions, the characters are somehow charismatic, and the energy that the anime ... radiates does its job at letting us fully enjoy the relationships and quirks of them, it sometimes goes into predictable territory, but you can lose yourself into it without any problem. While the anime just has broadcasted 4 episodes, in each of them we have an interesting perspective over the pain provoked by authoritarian and almost evil family figures, and at the same time it let us go into detail about the perspective of the common people towards those that are above them. I don’t really know if this is historically true, but it works in the concept of the anime and it is a coherent motive about how the other can affect our own sense of development and sentiments.

And that is probably one of the main strong motives of the anime, to forge our own path is not just a thing that we do in the solitude of our own world, but it is a shared experience with all of those who can affect us, be it not just our friends but also our context, the world as an entire idea. Proposing the idea of caring to the one next of us, a positive idea. To extend such proposal the anime uses an interesting way of expressing the mental images of the characters, developing not only a coherent aesthetic that fits the historical period but also a pleasing way to truly understand the sentiments of them.

Why is this anime a 1 then? Because the concept is broken by design. The anime is not oblivious about its lack of touch, during the fourth episode a doctor tell the main character about what everyone who live in a developed country in the 21st century would think, about how buying an underage bride and using her as a servant is just an abuse of power and a completely bankrupt way of treating another human being. The problem is that while this anime is self-aware about how toxic the message is, it doesn’t turn around and make a reflection out of it, but instead just tries to silence those voices and try to go forward with the inhumanity of the main duo. Contradiction. The anime tell us something but does other.

And why is this a toxic message? One could say that this is a historical piece, and then whatever happens in that context is just a historical antecedent about something that existed, equivalent of doing a historical documentary. That would work, and I would love to see a realistic depiction of the reality about arranged child marriages, imagine yourself being a coin of exchange because your family were poor, that is strong. This anime lacks touch at treating such topics, it is tone-deaf, the main struggle presented in the anime is not by the perspective of the bride that was sold but the people who are in power, the equivalent of telling the story about a slave in a cotton farm being obedient and brightening the life of the slave owner. It is wrong, because it uses a deeply controversial topic that is still relevant to the present day, an issue about gender inequality, power distribution and poverty, and romanticize it to create a romcom, a narrative that instead of trying to portray it humanly it does a wish fulfillment manner. The caring sense of this anime just go in one direction because the main girl is not a human character, and the eventual struggle of the child bride by her condition is just used to sold us the character growth of the people in power, or to say, the husband and his family, instead of being a topic on its own.

I could add more negative factors of this anime but it is probably not worth it. The characters face extremely questionable struggles, the main character is not subtle at all about anything, and a bunch of other negatives, but anything that I can say wouldn’t be as problematic as the exposition of bride arrangements. Now, I will gladly delete this review if I sense a change of direction over this, but there is no business about this anime having a score higher than 1 in this situation.

This is the kind of show that, if written by a man, would’ve been rightly viewed as an incel fantasy about having a submissive, underaged fuckdoll. However, it’s written by a woman, so it should therefore be viewed as a controlling female fantasy about a short, maidenly goody two-shoes healing her tall, rich, handsome man-baby whose emotionally vulnerability pushes him to rely on her for everything, gazing at no woman other than her. Most of the anime community is male, and most of these men aren’t exactly rolling in women, so the resulting subculture is one that has a warped, rose-tinted view of female literature. ... You’ll often hear people express sentiments like: “Anime is misogynistic. Most anime and manga authors are otaku manchildren, and all they want is to create female characters who appeal to their perverted fantasies.” Indeed, these opinions may seem hard to dispute, because while the part about the entire medium being misogynistic is debatable, the part about male authors often not knowing how to write female characters definitely isn’t. However, my personal favorite is this: “Men are not socialized to recognize uncomplicated, unsexual fondness for a female character, and their association with fiction proves this.” Say whatever you want about contemporary ideology cultivating the belief that men are primitive beasts who should be degraded into thinking of themselves as rapist monsters—I’m not trying to start irrelevant controversy here—but this opinion is the epitome of what I’m talking about. The people of this community, both the outnumbered girls and the boys who outnumber them, simply know nothing of popular female literature.

There are literary masterpieces written by women just as there are literary masterpieces written by men (I hope that goes without saying), but there’s a very glaringly obvious reason that—oh, I don’t know—the Fifty Shades of Grey book series sold over 150 million copies worldwide. Let me ask, have you ever read any manga aimed at Japanese women? Literally 99% of them feature women embracing traditional roles and following the lead of a dashing older man, 99.9% of their doujins foster smutty dreams about being submissive fuckdolls, and anything which doesn’t feature a female MC is almost guaranteed to be fujoshi trash. When I went to go see Promare, the theater wasn’t filled with old-ass Gainax nerds hyped about the next big Imaishi project. It was filled with teenage girls shrieking at the screen, acting just as obsessive, shameless, and depraved as ANY male otaku I’ve EVER seen at ANY idol concert. Gosh, just thinking about what the theatre audience must be like for My Hero Academia: World Heroes’ Mission makes my skin crawl. Now listen. I’m not trying to make this a competition, but the point is made: BOTH sexes are filled with antisocial degenerates possessed with lurid fantasies and their own preferences for fanservice. This might shock you, but different women have different tastes and different forms of pandering media. Some like, "being swept away by a domineering ikemen who competes with other ikemen to claim my heart and bend me over,” and others like, “healing a broken boy so he falls in love with me instead of one of those other sluts competing for his attention.” Taisho Otome Otogibanashi just happens to fall in the latter category.

And I’m not saying any of this to detract from the show. If you can tell a compelling story based around fetishistic wish-fulfillment, that’s awesome. I just wanted to articulate the fact that, yes, this show is rooted in trashy sexual fantasies, just not the male kind which you may be tempted to think. The real reason I’m giving this show such a low score is much more simple: it’s just boring and ugly. Yuzuki Tachibana, our lovely fourteen year old protagonist, gets sold and married off to Tamahiko Shima, the seventeen year old edgelord who’s totally not just going through a phase, Mom, I swear! Seriously, the first episode opens with this edgy grainy filter and overdramatic letterbox over the entire screen while Tamahiko narrates his tragic backstory, and the second Yuzu shows up on screen, the grainy filter and letterboxed margins disappear. At that moment I realized this show would continue to have the subtlety of a brick to the face, and this is a problem not only with the symbolism, but also with every character and every single piece of dialogue. Its historical setting can be mildly interesting in ways I’ll talk about in a second, but the actual elements of the show just come across like those of a generic, modern day highschool romcom. If you’re comfortable viewing this as the non-pornographic fetish-fantasy which it’s clearly supposed to be for reasons aforementioned, then great, but that’s not what I signed up for, and if you don’t feel like projecting yourself onto the submissive maiden or the edgy boy in need of your womanly healing, what you’re left with is two boring, one-dimensional characters whose dramatic backstories add little to the tedium of their lives.

Its presentation is also terribly lackluster, and since the animation itself is pretty shoddy, the whole show often borders on being downright ugly. The color design just ruins everything. I never thought I’d live to see the day where I recommend Demon Slayer of all things, but that show legitimately does have a much better color scheme to fit the Taisho era (it’s also a convenient example to use because literally everyone has seen it). In the manga, everyone’s hair and clothes are shaded with much deeper and darker blacks, but everything in the anime has a color palette leaning more toward grey, and the whole show just looks kind of washed out as a result. However, while I still think it looks bad on an artistic level, it was this hazy presentation which got me thinking about something much more interesting, and the only element of this show which I actually really liked. This show is called Taisho Otome Otogibanashi, A Taisho Maiden’s Fairytale, and the more I watched, the more I got the feeling this title was supposed to be interpreted not simply as a romantic hook to bait viewers in, but as a literal description of the story, because in context, the show itself feels like a fairy tale. Taisho Otome Otogibanashi, the manga, has a sequel called Showa Otome Otogibanashi, and in it, the two lovers meander around a rapidly radicalizing imperial society, deeply depressed, and actively wanting to commit double suicide, and while we were comparing that manga with this one on /a/, someone posted this greentext as a joke:
>extremely cute and vanilla love story
>followed by an edgy as fuck sequel where main characters want to kill themselves
>extremely liberal and democratic era
>followed by an edgy as fuck era where everyone becomes imperialist war criminals
Now, while this greentext did directly inspire the thematic interpretation I’m about to discuss, it’s also extremely reductionist. Describing Taisho as an “extremely liberal and democratic era” is over-stating things a lot. It's definitely true that the Taisho period saw a lot of political and social movements towards liberal democracy and attempts at government reform, but on the whole, the era is better characterized as chaotic and unstable, plus these movements and reforms never really coalesced into any lasting form, all the while suppression acts like the Peace Preservation Law were being passed in order to consolidate power away from the people and more toward police and military factions. This is why from the turn of the 19th century all the way up until the end of the war, the technological development of the Japanese countryside was nearly a century behind that of the cities, because all their resources were being devoted to capitalizing on the nationalism of the Meiji Restoration, industrializing the nation’s heartland, and modernizing the nation’s military—which the government had long since lost control over—for the sole purpose of creating and expanding an empire and becoming a world power as quickly and aggressively as humanly possible, over a hundred years after the initial industrial revolution took place, leaving the old isolationist Japan in the dust. The history lesson I’m giving you right now may feel exhaustive for a MAL review, especially one concerning a fetish show like this, but I promise this is all relevant.

The earthquake featured in episodes ten and eleven was a real event called The Great Kanto Earthquake. In the show, we’re treated to scenes of everyone coming together, hugging it out, and aiding in the relief effort, but in real life, ultranationalist cells among the military police force in the city center were working with civilian vigilantes to take advantage of the chaos and use it as a pretext to massacre political dissidents and commit ethic cleansing against thousands of Koreans living in the region. Thinking about it more soberly, Taisho would be better described as an era of idealism and hope for change, and this is why I feel this story works so well as a literal fairy tale (otogibanashi) of the Taisho era. Considering the fetishistic nature of the series I discussed in the first two paragraphs, it can also be said that, in a meta sense, this show acknowledges the proliferation of smutty literature that occurred throughout Taisho. A great deal of erotic poems and stories got popular as a result of the influx of laxer social standards, and the increased popularity of female authors also had a huge impact since libidinous poetry was especially popular among female readership. On top of all of this, it was also the era in which love marriages started to be more idealized over arranged marriages, which is obviously a huge theme in this particular story. I don’t know, maybe I’m overthinking this and giving the author WAY too much credit, but either way, I think it’s a cool way to view the series, because as far as simple naming schemes go, it's honestly really clever. Now we just need Heisei Otome Otogibanashi about a loveless marriage between a salaryman and a sengyo-shufu. Forget historical commentary, the doujins practically write themselves.

Thank you for reading.

Ever had a knee jerk reaction just from a show's opening?

That's Taishou for me. A story about a sad boy being sad and the /manic pixie/ dream girl that "saves" him. I grew up in the 90s and early 2000s. This genre was practically invited back then and it completely saturated the market back in the day. I guess Japan, like Disney, really is 20 years behind trends...

Now the catch here is that she's a granny. Nope, that's it. Think of the ideal grandma, the sweet one that does all the housework perfectly, makes the best food and can sew. Yeah, now place ... her in a childlike body and you have this show. Because heaven forbid we don't infantilize women. Sorta made worse by having the boy practically tower over her, I get that tall = handsome is most Otome stories but this just looks like a pedo entrapment show!

The rest is what you'd expect from this kind of story really. /manic/ is loved by all from the start, super happy all the time even when it makes no sense for her to be and she saves sad boy by bringing him out of his shell. In return sad boy is handsome, super tall, rich, gets good grades and is the author's ideal only with better hair.

And here is the issue I have with this trope. The characters are empty. Sad Boy usually feels more real since we get his inner monologue in stories like this but Manic doesn't really have her own identity, she is whatever will make sad boy happy (bra size included!). It makes sense that she was "bought" for him now doesn't it... By the way I find it problematic that this premise is ok in this day and age. It's a common one is BL to force the couple together but in a supposed romantic show??? There is some lip service paid towards this but that's all it amounts to, lip service.

It gets a few points since some of the situations are cute. Also the old timey 1920s aesthetic is charming and does work with manic's grandma persona. Over all it's not too bad but if you're not into this specific trope then you won't like it.

Honestly I cannot believe how much they ruined this from such a great beginning.

I really don't recommend this one, because there are just better shows with same idea. Tonikawa being one of them.

At first, I liked Taishou more. It had some dark elements mixed in with wholesome stuff, which meant wholesome moments felt more real. Main lead was lovely and their interaction was cute, and love as a feeling wasn't forced.
But, for unknown reason author decided to introduce new character every new episode. Is it bad in general? It isn't.
Then why is it bad here? Because introducing characters that are toxic towards main lead with ... overforced sad backstory/personality is just lazy writing for unnecessary drama.

Art/animation are nothing worth mentioning, its average.

Sound is good, but it doesn't stand out.

How should you watch this shitshow? Watch first 2 episodes to get introduced to backstory of both leads then read last chapter of manga. It will put your mind at ease, and you won't be introduced to lazy writing.

Well, this is the second time I write review about an anime, maybe I should stop watching anime and just read manga because there lot of part missing or modify from manga making some good story turn bad. I dont know about the manga version of this anime, but this anime only make sense for me for only the first 3 episodes. To be honest I was so hype for this anime at this beginning, but the more episode I watch, there more things become unresolved, this anime supposedly about peoples, relationship between family, and social community, but most of the thing in this anime ... felt like it was just left it like that, add some stuff then proceed to next thing, sometime I felt the boy condition not address properly. Well I saw many anime like this, and some of them really address this kind of thing really well, for example "Kono Oto Tomare! (Sounds of Life)", you should watch it you havent it yet, you will not disappointed. Okay, back to this anime, I think the anime should address lot of thing in this anime properly, sometime I felt the comedy part out of place, awkward, because they left important part hanging, I dont know about you guys, but after episode 3, lot of thing become unresolved, well the romance good but sometime they focus too much on this and left other part hanging, making it, well out of place. This my honest opinion, well if you guys not bother by this things like me, you can watch the anime, Im not saying this anime is bad, its just felt like something not right most of the time and its not finish airing the last episode yet, wonder how its end, haha. That's all from me, have a good day, ps. I give 3 rate because that how many episode I enjoy, haha, and I still considering to continue or not, haha.

I will try not to be too critical, I will also highlight the positive points of the show.
I abandoned it after 4 episodes, when I really intended to watch 3 and decide about continuing it then. Before I was not a fan of leaving anime halfway through, but over the years being a fan of this medium, I have learned to value my time and I hope to help anyone reading this to do the same.

I admit that the beginning was entertaining and the main characters fit because they were of similar ages, an aspect that made it not so unpleasant for me that the ... main girl was characterized as a loli. Had she been paired with an older gentleman, it would have been much worse. The pacing is not too slow, as the chapters alternate different segments.
It was increasingly difficult to advance because it became repetitive and monotonous, always applying the same jokes about Yuzu's curly hair and her young age.

Probably the weakest section of the writing is the premise and definition of the character of the male protagonist, Tamahiko, who day after day strives to maintain a pessimistic attitude and never forgets about it. This makes his predefined pessimism to be forced and lose its raison d'être. Such disillusionment leads him willingly to abandon his studies and not to challenge his condition.
Being abandoned by the family that raised you, as a disgrace to them, must be hard. However, the motives of the one-armed man's demanding father seem to me insufficient and exaggerated, as if they were an excuse to create unnecessary drama. He sends him to live helplessly in a villa in the middle of nowhere. Somehow, Tamahiko's gloom doesn't feel realistic.
It's funny that the enemies of several characters are, coincidentally, their evil parents, who abused them in the past.

I found it unfortunate that the serie forgot to delve into the issue of the forced marriage involving Tamahiko and Yuzu. Neither of them had such pretensions when they were so young. Moreover, Yuzu did not even reach the minimum legal age of 15 for marriage at that time.
She was frightened because she did not know the identity of her buyers and was surely saddened to be exchanged, given the financial needs of her poor parents. It would have been interesting to explore her emotions.
We can say that she was genuinely lucky to get along with Tamahiko.

I liked Yuzu's optimistic personality, with which she faces any problem. She is an extremely good-natured girl, who wants to be accepted by her future husband, but.... where are her feelings? I have the impression that her narrative function is simply to alleviate the sorrows of the protagonist and other visitors to the household. She has developed a self-sufficient personality, single-handedly performing chores around the house and going so far as to overwork herself. While Tamahiko is lost in thought, Yuzu cooks, cleans, prepares the bath and does the shopping. I know the original play is set in the Taishou era, where arranged marriages and gender inequality were commonplace. However, Tamahiko gave the impression of valuing his beloved, so by having each other exclusively in a house lost in the mountains, Tamahiko could, exceptionally, do more than his share. The only favor he did his correspondent was to invest money in some gift kimonos.
For him to be aware of her incompetence, it took the borderline situation of Yuzu falling ill and having to be treated by doctors, who questioned the carelessness of the person with whom she shared a roof over her head. On the positive side, Tamahiko feels guilty.
Those who have seen episode 4 will know what I mean; the scene in which Tamahiko, worried that Yuzu had coughed up blood, tears at the stained bandages that hinder her breathing, only to be suddenly shown some stunning breasts on the screen and all the tension is cut off, is anticlimactic.

It was no surprise to discover that, in later episodes, a secondary character will appear who, acting as "Tamahiko's mother", will try to seduce him and come between the engaged couple (typical roncom cliché). Knowing the story behind these episodically introduced characters, who become friends with the couple very easily, is not interesting.
Last but not least, the conclusion does not show the expected marriage, leaving the audience unsatisfied.

In conclusion, it is a watchable series, although I advise investing time in another more promising option. In addition to the above comments, this show does not bring any novel idea, different from those already used in comedies of the style (two children are forced to marry and live together). Personally, I don't think it stands out in animation, soundtrack, setting, direction or cast.
Instead, you might give a chance to "My Happy Marriage," a period anime that approaches its themes with more seriousness. I don't claim that the latter is perfect, but in it we witness the building of a solid love and the evolution of Miyo Saimori who, engaged against her will, evolves in an internal struggle to overcome the traumas of her tragic past and learn to value
herself.

So. This is only my second review, so take what I say with a pinch of salt.

It’s not very often that you would review an anime months after you finish watching it. Even though I usually rewatch anime, and judge them based off how rewatchable they are and how enjoyable the rewatch is, Taishou Otome stuck out to me, as there was not a single fabric of my body that wanted to rewatch it, and the sole reason it stayed in my mind is because of the one dude that hyper-analyzed it back to the oppression of Koreans.

Though I’m not going to explain the ... plot or anything, I will say this: There is absolutely nothing special about it. It’s not groundbreaking in any way. There was almost a good concept until it was just changing the time period for the same tropes. Forget what people have said about the plot being misogynist, it’s just bad. Dude really got robbed and then made friends with the criminal because they happened to be involved with children.

A main reason why I’m not going over the plot is because of how worthless it was. I remember a total of three plots from this show: This guys sister comes over, he teaches some kids math, and his wife falls victim to a historical event which is neat. Throughout, I don’t recall there being any progression, and though I’m sure there are people who can find some meaning in the plot, the fact that it can be forgotten so easily shows a thing or two.

Considering what’s top rated on my list, I want to sum up what I said with this: Why was this anime/manga made? To convey what message or feeling? People like to praise things for being original, against stereotypes (both ways, as anti-stereotypes have become stereotypes), and new, and will focus on this when judging a piece of art. However, i think it has been said before that a soulless, shitty, copy of a remake of the same idea twelve times over that manages to still be fun one way or another is a thousand times more enjoyable than a piece of media that tries to be original for the sake of it, or for the sake of having a plot, and then fails to deliver.

I don't have a problem with wish fulfilling anime/manga, it's nice to be able to insert yourself a little into a character and distract yourself from reality for a few hours every once in a while. Some people find it pathetic, but at the end of the day it's just a form of escapism, as most other pieces of media that the average person consumes.

The problem with Taishou Otome Otogibanashi is that it's too childish, to the point where I don't believe a person older than 13 can watch it without cringing. The interactions between the characters lack any kind of nuance, everything is on ... the nose, all the feelings are worn on the character's sleeve, to the point where every little action and conversation are predictable. Same thing with the art-style and the colors, they're childish, almost as if the producers hired elementary schoolers to draw and paint the pictures. This wouldn't be a problem if the target demographic were kids, but it's clearly not because there are also depictions of prostitution, child labor, domestic violence, suicide, self-harm tendencies, and human trafficking. These kinds of things get depicted in this world that has a fairy-tale like appearance, but they're never delved into nor fixed. Aside from the male protagonist, the victims just don't get any help at all. They keep on living as if nothing happened and the issues are not discussed at all.

Therefore I'm conflicted about what's this supposed to be. On one hand, everything about this anime is childish, on the other hand it's too dark for kids. I don't see myself liking it now nor as a kid. It's boring, painful to look at, and some characters have shitty voice-acting that's painful to listen to. Honestly, only the female protagonist had a decent consistent voice acting. And since the show is centered around her cuteness anyway, I might as well give it a 4/10 because she is indeed cute. However, everything else sucks.

What an incel fantasy... a pure maiden wife of some depressed man to save him...

First of all, I cant stand the "a girl too pure for this world" troupe, which is what the FL of this anime is. However, the story concept sounded very similar to my favorite webtoon (yes talking about Happily Ever Afterwards), which also had this troupe. So with that in mind, I decided to give this anime a chance. However Taisho Otome was not an exception like I had hoped.

First of all, the main couple has no chemistry - for good reason. They are two strangers thrown together through arranged marriage. ... FL was purchased to be a bride for ML, who was banished and currently living as a depressed shut in. FL appears as his savior, saying she feels sorry for him and takes care of him out of pity love. Thus the very basis of their relationship doesnt have romance. And just like the openjng says, "Too shy to ever speak of love or romance, she dares not allow herself to even dream of a kiss." Falling asleep yet? So when any romance moments happened, it was very empty feeling.

With that said, heres how the story went:

Story: 4/10
Just your average savior complex story. This guy was depressed and had no purpose until this girl shows up, and changes how he is by being happy all the time around him. Now his life is better. A lot of anime is based on cliches - and I dont have a problem with these as long as they are interesting. But I struggled to find ANYTHING of any intetest in Taisho Otome.

Characters: 3/10
WHY are there so many pointless characters???? Oh right. More people for the FL to "save." ML's sister was a great character addition and gave the FL a companion and brought ML closer with his family. FL and the sister bonded and encouraged eachother to become better, so this wasnt bad. Also ML makes a friend at school - while the character himself wasnt important, it was important to see ML creating those bonds for himself. Aside from those two side characters, the others end up adding literally nothing. Especially the nosy neighbor girl and famous local singer girl. Like why were they even there... oh yes, only to show how pure FL is to them...

Art: 6/10
The character designs for the girls is very cute. FL has a cute hairstyle thats rarely seen in anime and the kimonos are very pretty. However ML is your average bland self insert. Cue the eye rolling. However my main problem comes along with how FL is so clearly designed to look younger than she is - for clear fantasy purposes. This already makes me ick. She is 14-15 and he is 16-17. (In this time, the marriage age is 15.) And there is literally no reason to make her like this. While super short x super tall is a VERY cute dynamic, it just feeds into the incel fantasy part of the story with her being innocent and childlike.

Sound: 7/10
Its fine, the songs are enjoyable. Nothing special.

Overall: 5/10
With all that said, theres nothing really enjoyable I found about this anime. I wanted to like it, but this anime is already broken from the core. Instead of Taisho Maided, I reccomend Tonikawa (romcom based around two innocent teenadults falling in love and learning to live together as complete strangers) or My Happy Marriage (much more serious themed romance also with an arranged marriage and making eachother better concept). Both of these animes take what Taisho Otome is doing and does it 10x better.

Theres nothing horrendously wrong or hatable about Taisho Otome, and if you like it, good for you. However this is not an anime I would reccomend to anyone.