Review of Taisho Otome Fairy Tale
Reading these reviews sure makes me sad about the state of our world. So much bitterness and anger, so much jaded cynicism and looking to attack others, that we can't even enjoy an anime such as this one without throwing around terms like Misogynistic, Predator, Lolicon, Female Fantasy, Male Fantasy, Feminazi, etc... It's ridiculous, man. Have we gotten to a point where we can't even watch what is basically a modern day studio Ghibli film without pulling the proverbial knives out? This anime was a lovely anime about a teenager who was viciously abused emotionally by his family and outcasted for being soft, long beforehe was hurt in a car crash. It's about this boy finding hope in a girl (who is only 2-3 years his junior) who his father bought him to take care of him because he only has one working arm. That turned out to be the only good thing he did for him, for the most part, because the girl he sent was strong underneath such adversity as literal debt slavery in the mountains, that she passed on that love and strength to a mentally shattered boy. They overcome being sold off and abandoned by their parents in the mountains, and grow to have a full life of friends and love in spite of their circumstances.
How in the hell does this kind of story become such a lightning rod for criticism? It's not like it was endorsing the girl being sold. The most villainous dude in the anime did it, the MC tried to get her to leave almost immediately and she refused, and people still criticized him in the village for it. It clearly isn't endorsing buying child slaves for other children. It's just how the time was back then. Is Yuzu over-the-top sweet? Yes. But, these are anime characters. Not human beings. They aren't meant to behave like human beings. They are meant to be caricatures that amplify human traits in order to connect us emotionally to a story. Seriously, if Yuzu acted like a regular human, then where is the story? Because she immediately thinks the MC is a weirdo shut-in and then takes off episode one if she's a regular human girl. The second he offers her freedom from the arrangement, she's gone. And the anime ends in 10 minutes.
Hell, maybe it's because I'm older, but pedophilia never even crossed my mind. I just saw a 17 and 15 year old going through a puppy love stage that reminded me of young love I had when I was that age. It was sweet. And even managed to throw in some decent suspense at the end. How does liking an anime with zero sex or nudity and 2-3 kisses between two animated teenagers make me a pedophile of some kind? I don't get this world anymore and I'm not even a boomer. This was a great anime. It had character depth and development in its main character, it had a nice pacing to it, the music was lovely and story had the right blend of comedy, romance and drama. Animes like these are why I still give Slice of Life anime a chance.
Story: 10
Art: 7
Sound: 10
Character: 10
Enjoyment: 10
Overall: 10