Dagashi Kashi has potential, but fails in fully using it. Its cast is way too good compared to the rest of the show.

I feel that the show could have been really good if it weren´t for its focus on the candy - the core component of the show. What we got is a series of 24 minute commercials for japanese sweets with occasional good parts, the moment when the focus was on the characters and not on the sweets. The cast consists of only 5 people with a strong focus on Kokonotsu and Hotaru. There is a reason that Hotaru has more favorites on MAL than the show itself, she is a great character. While it seems at the beginning that she has some sort of higher goal you realize later that while she certainly likes Kokonotsu, she will forever only have one love: candy. As the daughter of one of the biggest Japanese candy producers, she knows EVERYTHING about every candy in Japan. That´s why she wants Kokonotsu to take over the store of his father, he has to operate the store with his own big knowledge of candy. Because Kokonotsu has no intention at all to continue the store while still knowing a lot about it, the majority of the show consists of the two candy pros arguing about candy. That´s the reason why the show is rated so low: It can be quite boring at times to listen to them talking about chocolate for the twentieth time in a row. The real highlight are the times when they meet the rest of the cast, the siblings Saya and Tou: With Tou´s ability to be impressed by the simplest things and Saya´s crush on Kokonotsu and her being constantly annoyed about the childing behaviour of everyone, we have everything we need to have comedy. But the comedy of seeing everyone´s personality clash together is interrupted by candy commercials which can be funny at times, but often feel a few minutes too long.

The character design is good, everyone looks like you would expect them by their personalities while the minimalistic art makes them rememberable(look at Hotaru´s pupils) and the animation is quite good.

Dagashi Kashi is a show that I would recommend for the great characters and the comedy, if you can look behind the bad to mediocre story. Personally, I think that this season should have been a 15-minute short while the second season should have gotten full 24 minutes because they realized that people wanted more Hotaru and others and less of the candy talk.