Yume Tsukai

This is my first time ever writing a review, so this may appear a bit jumbled. I came into this anime with very few expectations aside from a basic idea of the premise from it's description. At first it was a kind of blah story that just barely kept my focus. However I have a rule when it comes to anime, if you start the anime you must finish it. I implemented this rule because I found some series that turned out to be hidden gems, or fairly interesting, that I initially considered dropping. This rule hasn't always been great to me, looking at you ... Mahou Sensou and Taboo Tattoo, but it has found me many gems like Wolf's Rain, Endro, and now Yume Tsukai.

This anime came to be enjoyable for me around the 6th episode as it started to settle in. I would rate the anime a solid 7 with the stipulation that in anime I care far more about the story than I do animation and music. As such this score is almost completely based on the story itself. I would recommend the anime if you like introspections on relationships and emotions with a bit of comedy and a pinch of cringey comic relief. Now let's move onto my full review

「Warning massive spoilers ahead」

If you read this far and care to be spoiled I will now break down the story and my thoughts. First let's look at the premise, everyone has dreams and these dreams are born from our emotions be it our fear, guilt, love, sorrow, or depression. These dreams are normally tucked away in our hearts but they can sometimes cross into our world and manifest themselves in various ways. A dream may not always reflect how we feel on the surface or even our personality but a dream does reflect what we are truly feeling.

As these dreams can enter our world and cause trouble possibly harming or even killing people including their creators, a special way to deal with them was created, enter the Yume Tsukai. Yume Tskuai use toys to fight materialized nightmares by placing toys into special shrines built into their staves and invoking the power of the toys to take on their characteristics.

The premise is an interesting one although the execution of the magical aspect of the plot and the rules of the magic system are slightly vague at best. Further the execution gives off a sort of power rangers vibe that turns many people off from the anime. However if we peel back this superficial layer and look at the stories that are told using these dreams turned nightmares as a story telling mechanism, then the plot and the anime as a whole begins to shine.

The plot covers emotions somewhat broadly but nearly every story has an underlying theme associated with love be it the loss of a lover, the feeling of being unloved, what happens when love between people fades and how it can affect others, the fear of confessing love for fear of social clap back, fear of confessing love for fear of rejection, obsession, or even ideas of forbidden love. More on that last point later.

The plot while explaining these emotions also uses these stories to build up our characters and give them some depth. Arguably our main character Touko sees the most development throughout the story, albeit it more as a establishing back story than a maturing sort of development. Her story is the big climax of the series and delves the deepest into the emotions of people by far. However to fully explain her story we need to explain the stories that proceeded hers and how they hinted at her past due to her reactions.

Our first story is about a girl disappearing into a classroom that is raining. After we find the master of the dream that created the raining classroom we gain the reason for the dream manifestation, fear of confessing because of societal stigma and how ones love can be viewed as taboo in society. In this case it is a girl that has fallen in love with another girl and decides to confess, but before she can confess she overhears other girls gossiping and calling her gross for being attracted to another girl. This causes her to abandon the love letter she had written which becomes the source of the dream that spirits away the girl. This is our first hint at Touko's past as she exposes the love and doesn't feel put off by it despite it's societally taboo nature.

Next we have a story of a little girl and her familial love for her father, despite her mother divorcing the father and taking the girl with her. The little girl longs for her father and that longing became the dream. Touko relates to this as she too had a strong connection with her father as she wears his mask at all times since his death.

In the third story we have a women who is too shy and somewhat fearful of confessing to the popular guy in her office. This story relates to how Touko views love as a mysterious thing that we can't control.

The fourth story is about another yume tsukai that is still in training and a case that she needs help with where a man has recreated his dead lover with his dream and has attempted to live with her. The yume tsukai in charge can't bring herself to separate this man from his dream at first because she too has lost a lover, the previous yume tsukai in her position. As a result she wears a hat that was her lovers, much akin to how Touko wears her dads mask. Touko shows the yume tsukai that even if someone is dead their love and your love for them will always remain by your side. A lesson Touko is very familiar with.

The fifth story is about an old women who moves in with her sons family but is treated like a burden and wishes that she was dead so that the family she loves could go back to normal. This story doesn't so much affect Touko as it does her sister Rinko who is still in elementary school despite being a yume tsukai as well. Rinko in this case comes to understand the sadness and help the women out of her dream so that she can work her problems out with the family because disappearing doesn't really solve anything.

The sixth story is about the yume tsukai who lost a lover, Satoka, coming to Tokyo with a very important goal and Rinko learning that there is more to life than work. Satoka's goal in coming to Tokyo was to obtain a special type of food from a specific stall that her lover once gave her so that she could fulfil a promise to go there with him to eat the food. She does this on the anniversary of his death. This story is another moment for Touko to relate again to the loss of someone dear.

The seventh story is about a girl and her teacher who are in love. However the teacher's dream manifests itself to essentially seal him away hoping the girls feelings would fade because he found out that their love is forbidden. It is revealed, much to the surprise of the lovers, that they are in fact siblings related by blood that were separated when fairly young due to their parents divorce. Having been apart for so long and not knowing who each other were they fell in love with each other. This is one of the main stories that relates to Touko's past. If you haven't guessed already from the theme of the story the relation is incestuous forbidden love. But more on that later.

The eighth story is about what happens when the love between two people disappears and how that effects those that are closely related to the lovers. In this case a little girl whose parents fight all the time and constantly say that if not for the daughter they would split up. This desire as well as the depression of the little girl fuses together into a nightmare that starts erasing the little girl from existence memory by memory. This story also has a bit of a subplot involving budding love between a childhood friend of the girls and the girl herself. While this story doesn't directly relate to Touko it does paint a picture of why we shouldn't wish to disappear because of the harm it causes to others in our absence.

The ninth story is about a nihilistic boy who sees no point in the world because he seems to lack emotions. His dream eventually disappears after consuming him, much to the shock of Touko who had been interacting with him and sympathizing with him due to the despair she herself felt because of her past. The boys decision to allow his nightmare to eat him reminds Touko of her fathers death and set's the final plot in place.

The tenth story is a bit of filler meant to give the support cast member Misako, Touko's aunt and her fathers sister, a bit of character development. The story doesn't really relate to any of the main cast but it does cover a man who loves big breasts and manifests his love for big breasts and idols in the form of a roughly two story tall big breasted idol girl called pai pai. When confronted he decides that he is tired of big breasts and leaves. Misako feeling sorry for the nightmare decides to stay with it for a bit until it turns out that the nightmare wasn't just a manifestation of its masters obsession but also his scorn for being rejected by the women he worked with. Misako is saved by her childhood friend, another yume tsukai, and comic relief character Hajime, a man whom she has feelings for despite the fact that he is a lolicon and views any girl over 10 years old as an old lady.

The eleventh and final story is explaining Touko's past, how her father died and her coming to terms with all of the emotions hinted at throughout the course of the story. Touko's mother left them, it is a bit ambiguous but it is likely she died, and Touko essentially tried to replace her mother in her father's eyes, serious papa love vibes coming from this. At first it was just a normal father daughter love but eventually Touko developed romantic incestuous feelings towards her father. As a result she kissed him one night when he was sleeping while wishing to replace her mother as her fathers lover. Her father awakes to the kiss and is startled telling her to never do it again because it is not right. This causes Touko to harbour feelings of yearning, nearly obsession, towards her father which manifests itself as a nightmare that nearly consumed her. Her father appears and saves her but at the cost of his own life. This leaves Touko grief stricken. These emotions of her forbidden love and her grief and wish to punish herself manifests themselves in the form of a nightmare that resembles a younger Touko, about the age she was when her father died, in mourning clothes wearing her father's mask. Initially the cast, aside from Touko, seem to be oblivious to the identity of the girl when she appears at the toy shop to request Touko investigate the secret base on the mountain behind the shop. The secret base is the cave her father died in near an abandoned park that Touko and her sister used to visit with their father. There the nightmare reveals itself and after some running Touko decides to accept her fate and let the nightmare take her.

This leads to Touko's sister entering a dream to find out the origin of the nightmare and discovering the truth about her sister's feelings for her father and how her father died. Shortly after a rescue mission is mounted with all of the yume tsukai. After some words from the grave via a memory viewed from invoking her fathers mask via their shrine staff, Touko comes to terms with her feelings as her father in the memory told Touko's sister that there is no such thing as a bad dream because dreams are just how people feel and you really can't change your feelings. Finally they kill Touko's nightmare and we end the story with Touko and her sister at a cliffside releasing the paper doll that represents her dream into the wind symbolizing that she is over her guilt and has embraced her feelings. Touko's sister gives her some words of encouragement saying that she doesn't believe that her love for their father was wrong, it just didn't fit the rules of our reality and they leave to go deal with a new nightmare.

While I was able to guess the plot twist a mile away, although I am not sure if I have watched too much anime or if the foreshadowing was just a bit to on the nose but either way, I enjoyed this anime and the stories it told and the introspection it gives into society, relationships and emotions. However I do have a few complaints with certain parts of the execution and the pacing of the series.One of the biggest annoyances for me was the ambiguity of the magic system, especially since their Trump card seems to be something designed in a computer program. Aside from this the siblings love arc and its ending kind of heart my heart. Outside of these minor complaints the anime is fairly good for its age and relatively misleading art style.

This is a show that people can enjoy during the morning or in those early saturdays in bed. There is nothing graphic or too complex to do in order to enjoy the show.

I constantly admired the characters and I feel this show has potential to continue well passed 12 episodes.

Each episode follows the lives of the two main sisters solving mysterious and enjoying their job. The only drawback is how little we see each character's lifestyle. The show mostly skips forward to the mysteries which change from each episode.

It's like scooby doo so its hardly ever boring. Sometimes I can't look away because of ... how engaging each mystery episode is.

Again, its a crime there are only 12 episodes. It has nice potential to be a running Saturday cartoon.The ending was a little....weird. It was fun to watch but again the moral issue at the end was unexpected. An earlier episode already covered the morals of love, so I don't know why they continued with the theme.

The main story was a 6, the characters an 8, the enjoyment of each mystery a 9.
I guess from an overall score, this anime has a solid mystery story and characters.

::QUICK REVIEW::
Story: 7 (Nice idea but drop the power ranger stuff)
Art: 3 (I've seen better art off in cheap hentai)
Sound: 5 (Nothing to wow you but nothing to hate)
Character: 4 (permanent cross-eyed loli's are bad)
Enjoyment: 6 (Defintiely aimed for children)
Overall: 25/50 = 5.0 (Only for shrine maiden fans)


... ::FULL REVIEW::
Well what can I say about this anime that's not been already said. One thing you'll notice is that there is a 5/10 overall score for this show. It's also quite a forgettable series with such a short time and poor cast of characters, this is one of the weakest shows i have ever seen. Kind of sucks since this is the first anime series I have seen in a while. But that wont really factor in for the whole score, yet.

The real gist of the story is a team of shrine maidens operating in an antique toy store try to save the world from "bad dreams." All that is fine and dandy and i don't even mind the quirky weapons that they carry, but what really killed the show for me was the added power ranger element. With super weapons and cheesy transformation and power up sequences, it all started to go down hill for me. On top of that, despite being only 13 episodes, it becomes repetitive fairly quick. I felt a weird unbalance between the drama and the action. At times, fights would end in under a minute, at other times fights would take half the episode and the monsters didn't have any difference in power.

The characters of this show was pretty forgettable. No love or hatred for the characters ever came forth when i was watching this. Even though they try to sexualize the lolis with garters and upskirt shots, it really felt like an afterthought. I did manage to laugh at a few jokes considering there is an effeminate lolicon that was usually at the butt of the jokes. Also, considering these girls are supposed to be cute, they all also looked very ugly. A large part of it was because of their eyes.

It's most likely the creator's art style, but I just couldn't get over how ugly the characters were. A permanent cross eyed loli didn't appeal to me and im sure it wont appeal to most audiences. It did appear that they tried to make this show look good with all the small details like all the toys in the toy store, or the high frame rate during action scenes. But in the end, the art just feels poor and unpolished.

With a poor cast of characters and an unpolished art style, its too much burden for this show considering that the story actually isn't that half bad. Maybe if they took this series a little more serious they could have had a hit. Unfortunately, they would rather aim this toward the younger audience and leave many things unexplained. I'd recommend this only to the hardcore shrine maiden fans.