Story:
A tiny teenage Japanese girl in the 1900s leaves her home and sails away to Paris to live with two grown men and keep house for them. Now, at first this sounds like it was written by Pedobear but nothing could be further from the truth. There is no fanservice and no pervy stuff, which can only be counted as a blessing. The story deals mainly with culture shock on both sides of the equation and comes to the inevitable conclusion that no matter how different we seem to be we can still find common ground. Don't read any romance into this, there is none. In general, the story is refreshingly innocent and all sorts of sweet.
Characters:
Yune is the diminutive Japanese expatriate. She is a sweet presence and in a miraculous manner she has been saved from the moe-tard stain. She may be soft-spoken but she's not an airhead and she has a will of her own. She is infinitely more charming this way and she does not need any cutesy antics to make us like her. I do wish more anime paid attention to this carefully balanced female character creation.
Claude is one part of the French host family. He is a good sort of guy, if a little too broody at times. He is abrupt and outspoken and these elements play off nicely against Yune’s more reserved and polite Japanese nature.
Oscar is the other part of the French host family and Claude’s grandfather. Always in the grip of wanderlust and a total flirt, he is nevertheless the sort of grandfather anyone would want. Kind, insightful and gentle. He is a sort of bridge between the two worlds, France and Japan.
Alice is a spoiled rich brat with a fetish for Japan and determined to make Yune into her pet. A truly obnoxious character but who nevertheless adds an extra layer of comparison for Yune. There is the French-Japanese and then there is the rich-poor layer to the story. Necessary, I admit in retrospect, but that doesn't mean that I wouldn't gladly bludgeon her to death with any convenient spiky object so I could have the pleasure of seeing blood and brain bits flying…ahem, back on topic, back on topic.
Animation:
Simple yet above average. There is some repetition and most frames don't need any extravagant angles that would complicate things. The backgrounds are pretty and surprisingly accurate for the period and place. It so happens that Japanese animators are often baffled by the architecture of European houses and end up drawing a generic box with a generic roof and generic windows. This has been mostly avoided here since it is apparent the studio worked with references. Where references were not available the generic box makes a slight appearance. Character animation is soft and beautiful.
Sound:
Cheerful and fluffily melancholic. Feels like being in a French bistro so I guess it was spot-on.
OP & ED: The OP is a very pretty travelogue of Paris 1900 and the ED is just pretty nonsense which I mostly skipped.
Overview:
This was a nice anime, a soothing slice of life. There are no stellar characters or elaborate plot twists; if you are to enjoy this you enjoy it for the simple sweetness and innocence. If you are fed up with the borderline hentai crap and moe-tard gimmicks and are in need of something genuinely sweet, pick this up.
