If you prefer the childhood friend in Dagashi Kashi, you are bad and wrong

I’ve increasingly seen people watching the Japanese sweets show Candy Crus-sorry, I mean Dagashi Kashi, who are expressing their preference for the character Saya. This childhood friend archetype is indeed an agreeable character with her beady eyes, infectious smile and a snagle tooth that evidently runs in the family. She’s so cute, you just want to protect that smile. I feel like even the manga author himself must have been caught up in the love-fest for this character as the latest episodes have focused more on her. I am here to tell you that you people are wrong. You are everything wrong with anime. You are destroying the industry one waifu declaration at a time.

Let me ask you, what is Dagashi Kashi about? It’s about this kid who doesn’t want to take over his father’s candy shop but then this odd lady comes to their poky little village with the sole intent of convincing this kid to take over that shop by rekindling his love for Japanese sweets, or Dagashi. For those in Japan who grew up buying these dagashi, it’s probably an entertaining nostalgia trip for the sweets you used to buy as a kid with your little bits of pocket money. However for dirty gaijin like myself, it’s this interesting look at a foreign culture through a curiously specific lens. Because Hotaru, the odd lady in question, buys so far into the advertising intents of the dagashi, her shilling of the products bring each advertisement to their logical conclusion through each segment, whether that’s drug or alcoholic addiction or nunchuck battles using incredibly long gummies.

It’s an entertaining and original idea. There’s a good back and forth where Hotaru’s enthusaism for the product lets the more socially awkward teenagers get swept up in her games. It helps that Hotaru herself looks like she came from an alternate dimension or time period. The clothes she wears makes her look like a high class maid at a flower show. She seemingly sleeps nowhere in particular or has anywhere to sleep. She’ll just randomly show up at the candy shop to shill the latest and greatest sweets. I quite like the idea that she’s actually Coconut’s mother, come back as a ghost to convince him to take over his father’s shop. It would explain why she gets on so well with Coconut’s dad. In this girl Hotaru, they have the physical embodiment of what makes Dagashi Kashi unique.

Then there’s Saya, who is a tsundere childhood friend. That’s about it. Don’t get me wrong, she’s an entertaining one of them. But she also exists in 500 million other shounen romcoms. The segments involving Saya revolve around her not being able to tell Coconuts she likes him. Or about some memory they shared together as kids where he did something nice for her and she’s liked him ever since. The latest episodes have felt like they’ve been focusing increasingly on her and as a result have gotten a lot less interesting. We had a festival episode recently which had practically nothing to do with dagashi and almost entirely consisted of Coconuts and Saya having a romantic date together. It was the same episode we’ve seen in countless other series. If you liked this episode, what you are basically saying is that you prefer to see served the same generic pap you’ve been getting for years and years and years over something genuinely unique in the genre.

Yes I am truly going that far with this. Saya is cute and all and I actually kinda like her. But I must resist for I see what lies that way. It’s the endless circle of samey material. It’s getting plain white bread and cheering. I say to you now, do not accept this! Hotaru is where salvation lies. Hotaru represents change and innovation. Hotaru is where our future should lie. Do not accept any substitute. #Hotaru2016