"Grownups don’t have energy. Kids have energy!"
These lines are part of the cheerful opening theme of Mitsuboshi Colors and perfectly exemplify everything this anime is about. Forget about the troubles of your everyday life; it’s time to go outside, find your own adventure and have some fun!
What I love about Mitsuboshi Colors is that it perfectly embraces everything that childhood is about. Normally in CGDCT anime you either get to see some sort of glorified moeness or some rather absurdly chilled out atmosphere, but this is different. Not that those two concepts aren’t good mind you, but they feel very "anime" in the sense that they don’t really represent how young girls actually behave very often in real life. But Mitsuboshi Colors is the opposite. It is much more genuine and basically just showcases kids being kids. It’s blunt, silly, sometimes crude yet very relatable and charming because odds are you can look back on how you used to be yourself as a child and see yourself doing similar kinds of stupid things as the three girls in this anime are doing.
In short, Mitsuboshi Colors follows the energetic boke Sacchan who keeps wanting to go on adventures throughout the town, the smug and sadistic game-addict Kotoha, as well as the more reserverd "leader" and tsukkomi Yui. The trio have their own hideout in the form of a cabin in the forest where they hang out and try to come up with new ideas of fun things to do, which usually end up with them going on quests throughout the urban areas, either by their own volition or by pestering some of the shop owners or a local policeman they know into making them give them some fun challenge to complete (or in the case of the latter, they’re often just playing pranks on him too). The series revolves around their silly little adventures and the rather blunt interactions between the characters. It’s cute, but in a realistic sort of way rather than the moe overdose style that CGDCT anime usually tends to do. It’s childish, but oh so enjoyable.
If you want a reference point then the closest series I can think of to this would be something like the Yotsubato manga, which is generally praised for more or less the exact same reasons, or arguably even Mitsudomoe to a certain extent. Either way it’s a breath of fresh air amongst the plethora of moe shows that come out every season nowadays, and in my opinion most definitely an anime worth checking out if you’re into slice of life and/or moe series in general. It certainly stands out from the crowd quite a bit.
