Content Warning: Bondage, Mild Sexual Content, Misogyny

I'll be the first to admit that a show like this is outside of my usual wheelhouse but that's because I was kinda duped into watching Dagashi Kashi. A few months ago, I went on a binge downloading as many yuri anime as I could find. And I didn't realize it until watching this show, but the tag "Mostly Female Cast" applies to run-of-the-mill heterosexual fantasy slop, doesn't it? That combined with the cover art having the two women front and center lured me in. And Dagashi Kashi turned out...fine?

The most damning thing I can say about Dagashi Kashi is that it's not bad enough to be bad, nor good enough to be good

Dagashi Kashi wants to be four different things; romance, slice-of-life, comedy, and edutainment.

The romance fell pretty flat for me. Hotaru Shidare is a fun - if eccentric - female lead, and while she's entertaining, she only ever gets to do one thing; infodump about candy. Every plot beat revolves around snacks. Every joke revolves around snacks. It's charming, but it gets to the point where it genuinely gets in the way of everything else. Saya Endou has some great character moments, and her cafe could pair well thematically with the protagonist's candy store, but they never get any lengthy emotional moments. Everything that happens is solely in her own head, and while that's relatable, it's also kind of sad as she's absolutely not the fan favorite (do an image search for this show if you don't believe me).

Tying this into the reason that the slice of life fails; it's the protagonist. A man so generic and bland that I won't even respect him enough to say his name. Over the span of twelve episodes, he gets zero meaningful characterization and zero growth. He wants to be a manga author, yet that comes up exactly four times and none of them are important plot beats beyond the setup. He's shy, sexually frustrated, uncomfortable around women, and dull as dishwater. Yet Hotaru and Saya fawn over him because - presumably - there's no other teen guys in town. I understand this is endemic to the genre. Protagonists like him are meant to be paper cut-outs you can stick your face through. But, if you're not a teen boy ~~desperately trying to ignore the gnawing gender dysphoria eating away at her~~, then this completely falls flat.

A good romance, in my opinion, needs both people to be actual characters. And because this protagonist sucks, the romance falls flat. Similarly, good slice-of-life needs a character to either be invested in the mundanity of their life, or to do something interesting. This protagonist doesn't want to manage the snack shop, and he doesn't go anywhere of note. There's no life to slice up here, he's just a kinda pathetic teenager.

So is Dagashi Kashi's comedy any good? Ehhhhhhh. Not really. The gags in this show boil down to three types; generic moment, reference, or candy advertisement. The generic moments are standard bits you'd see anywhere. A pool episode, a character getting sick, an easily scared character being shown scary things. They're harmless, but not exactly noteworthy. The references are more frustrating, as often the joke is simply the fact that something is being referenced. "Look! It's scenes from Gundam 0079 but with snack-themed zakus! Oh wow, look at that! She made a JoJo's Bizarre Adventure reference! Ahaha!" It gets old pretty quickly is all I'll say. And the final bleeds into the last segment.

Dagashi Kashi is fifty snack advertisements dressed up in a trench coat. There's no disguising it. The only other review even mentions as much. Huge chunks of this show are just Hotaru or the protagonist rambling on and on about the history behind a specific kind of candy, why it's so yummy and unique, and why you should buy it.

This is where the house of cards falls apart.

Each episode (twenty-six minutes) is actually split apart into two mini-episodes (eleven minutes, minus the intro, outro, and title cards). Each mini-episode has at least one, maybe two, sometimes three different candy advertisement monologues. Again, being generous, that's another two minutes of each mini-episode dedicated to factoids. That leaves nine minutes and only nine minutes. Those nine minutes are split roughly evenly, into gags, slice-of-life, and romance scenes. Gags often get their full time, but the slice-of-life and romance are sharing their time with the plot set-ups and pay-offs. Meaning each mini-episode only has _three to five minutes _of character moments, dialogue, and scenes divorced from bits and ads. That's absurdly little, and no wonder no-one feels like they've changed.

Which is kind of sad, because I kinda honestly like what's here.

Dagashi Kashi isn't rotten - or more aptly, middling - to the core. There's stuff here that could have worked.

For one, the opening and ending themes are excellent. They're both exciting and catchy pieces of music. The animation in them is also a lot more whimsical - I'm still wondering if there was any symbolism to the Alice in Wonderland stuff. The general soundtrack also wasn't too bad. It's probably pretty generic if you're into slice-of-life slop, but as an outsider, I noticed how cozy some of the songs felt.

While I did shit on the protagonist, the cast as a whole is pretty good. Hotaru and Saya are genuinely interesting characters, and I'd actually love to know more about them. Saya's brother is a bundle of frustrating character traits - I'm never a fan of one-note perverts - but he somehow manages to have some genuine conversational chemistry. And the protagonist's father, while hardly present after the first episode, is a fun foil to not just him, but to Hotaru as well. It's genuinely impressive how entertaining the few scenes the father had with Hotaru were, compared to how dry his son is in every social interaction.

And for what it's worth, the show goes down easy. This is some incredibly digestible slop. I got through the first season of Dagashi Kashi in only three days, and it's because this anime is prime low-stakes time wasting. I could look away to check an email, or idly grind levels in an RPG, and not need to worry about missing anything at all. I don't typically watch anime on a second monitor, but if that's your jam, you'll probably love this show.

To those bold enough to brave the mountains of goonslop, it's well known that this, too, can be yuri.

Love triangles where the lesbian pair has more chemistry than the straight pairs are a pretty common phenomenon, and I'm gonna be honest, I wish this was Dagashi Kashi was a lesbian show. Hotaru and Saya have such a fun dynamic, and they get some oddly emotional moments compared to the protagonist. Saya's constantly blushing around Hotaru, their conversations tend to feel more impactful, and I don't know. I truly think this would be better had it been a simple back-and-forth affair between these two.

And, I don't really have a better place to put this, but why do these two look like stick figures? Come on, Dagashi Kashi had such a good opportunity. Hotaru eats snacks 24/7 and Saya works a day job managing an entire cafe by herself. This could have been peak "fat and smart rich business woman stumbles into the arms of a simple hometown - oddly lucky - cafe manager!" I'll save you the fanfic, but I was genuinely disappointed that these two - while having some notable traits, like Saya's eyes - look so generic.

Dagashi Kashi really isn't worth watching. But it's also not worth avoiding. It's slop, plain and simple. If it's your preferred genre of choice,you'll eat it up. And even if it's not, it won't hurt you. While I ended up enjoying my time with this anime, I feel as if part of that was in spite of the actual show. I had fun with the character scenes, and doodled in my diary during the duller moments. And I probably had more fun drawing art of the two women than I did actually watching the anime.

It's a chemistry-less romance. An unfunny comedy. A lifeless slice-of-life. And probably a step below reading a wikipedia article on japanese candy. But, if you grew up watching random slop anime borrowed from your library like me, then it's comforting in the same way that those shows were.