Anime Writer's Choice: 2022 Spring Anime Summary Review! Five works including "Parisian Kongming" and "Not Just Cute, Shikimori-san" are introduced! Anime Column

A comprehensive review of the titles from the Spring 2022 anime series that have reached their final episodes! We will review " Palipi Komei " serialized in "Weekly Young Magazine", " Heroine Taru Mono" written by HoneyWorks, " CuteHeroine and Her Secret Job " based on Japanese sweets, and "Magazine Pocket"! ～The review picks up " Palipi Komei" based on the " Weekly Young Magazine" series " Palipi Komei , " " Jantama PONG☆" from the "Super Animeism" slot, and " Deai Mon " based on the Japanese confectionery series " Deai Mon!

Palipi Komei

Zhuge Liang Kongming, a famous military strategist of the Three Kingdoms period, was reincarnated in modern Japan after a lapse of about 1,800 years. He is usually behind the scenes as the manager of new artist Eiko Tsukimi, but in episode 6, he goes on stage himself to try his hand at freestyle rapping. As the audience listens to Kongming's singing, which is lyrically based on Chinese poetry, the background art is somehow transformed into a touch painted with a brush and ink. Inviting the audience into the world of landscape painting, he boasts of his first-rate skills as an artist.
Just as the OP animation began with a cut of Kongming changing costumes one after another, the variety of fashions in the play is also impressive. While Eiko shows various stage costumes, the masked girls' band AZALEA appears in the latter half of the film, dressed in costumes that the producer had unwillingly decided to wear. The final singing performance in the film is not by Eiko but by AZALEA, and the audience is captivated by the scene in which the girls show their true colors while dressed in extreme costumes. It is a hopeful finale that shows why P.A. WORKS, which has produced many original anime, chose this work as its first manga original.

A Heroine! ~The Unliked Heroine and Her Secret Work

A school idol anime based on a song by creator unit HoneyWorks. It depicts the struggles of Hiyori Ryoumi, a high school student who is a classmate of the high school unit LIP×LIP but has been hired as their manager's apprentice. Hiyori is a simple girl who mocks herself by saying, "We are just a mob," but the point of this work is that the camera is focused on the managers, hair and makeup artists, live staff, and other nameless people who support the idols. LIP×LIP, which had only been interested in its own performance, carefully depicts how it realizes the importance of the fans who support it through Hiyori's efforts throughout the 12 episodes.
The situation in which Hiyori works as a manager of an idol without telling her friends is also appealing. Sometimes, unexpected trouble arises, and high school girls hit each other with goop. This is a work that also offers a glimpse into the toughness of the heroine who fights.

Deai-mon

Animated version of a heartwarming story set in Midorimatsu, a Japanese confectionery shop in Kyoto. It depicts the interaction between Kazu (Nagomu Irino), who has returned from Tokyo to take over his family's business, and Kazuka Yukihira, a girl who has been working as the store's heir. Kazu is the prodigal son of a former band member, but he is an abominably good-looking boy who is popular with Midorimatsu's part-time workers and ex-girlfriends. However, what attracts Kaz is not only his kind nature, which allows him to treat everyone without distinction, but also the soft atmosphere of the Kyo dialect spoken throughout the story.
The story begins in spring, and each episode takes place one month at a time. The sense of the season is conveyed not only through the scenery of Kyoto depicted with a watercolor touch, but also through the Japanese sweets. Wagashi that are pleasing to the eye, such as wakayu (young sweetfish) that give the feeling of early summer and chestnut manju (a sweet made with sweetened chestnuts) that one would like to eat in autumn, make one feel hungry. The fact that the beginning of the first episode and the end of the last episode both depict dancing cherry blossoms is also very typical of spring anime.

Not Just Cute, Shikimori-san

This love comedy depicts the daily life of high school couple Shikimori-san and Izumi-kun. Izumi-kun, who has an unfortunate constitution, is barked at by a dog, almost run over by a car, or hit by a falling billboard just by walking around town. ...... The highlight of this film is Shikimori's handsome girlfriend who protects him from such troubles in a spectacular manner, and the scene in which the two walk side by side is particularly memorable. The casual depictions of them walking down a gentle slope in the evening sun when leaving school, or walking home together at night, seem irreplaceable.
In the ED animation, SD characters depict a moment when they walk home from school together. The song "Route BLUE" is rhythmically paced to show Shikimori-san saving Izumi-kun from a pinch. The music game-like lightheartedness of the video makes you want to repeat it over and over again.

Jantama PONG☆

A 90-second short animation in which the mahjong players of the online mahjong game "Jantama" go on a rampage as SD characters. Although it is supposed to be a mahjong anime, there are surprisingly few scenes of real games being played, and the freewheeling style even includes episodes in which mahjong is not involved at all, such as enjoying solo camping by a river or playing chinchillorin on a crab boat.
While it is not unusual for mahjong anime to involve life-threatening exchanges, the unnatural number of death-reminiscent elements other than mahjong in this work is also disturbing, such as a meteorite colliding with the earth, getting lost in the snowy mountains, and being poisoned by sweets. Yet, in the blind tile game, where the player must make a strong hand while blindfolded, the game is played in a subtly realistic manner, and the exquisite spoon-feeding is addictive. The game has a very good tempo, as if it were a game of Janki-ryu.