Mitsuboshi Colors is about a group of three elementary school girls; Yui, Sacchan and Kotoha. They made a pact to protect and keep the peace of their town, more specifically Ueno park and its surroundings. And so they run amok causing all sorts of adventures upon themselves; from fighting trees and flowers so they stop causing people to sneeze to handing tissues near the subway entrance and selling strawberries to strangers in the park. To them, everything can become a call to adventure and a chance to explore their environment.
One of the people particularly interested in making their day interesting is Daigorou. He owns some sort of second-hand goods store and loves to come up with all sorts of mysteries to keep the trio occupied. One much less enthusiastic about the girls is the police officer Satou, who has to put up with their antics pretty much on a daily basis. He seems to be the most antagonistic character here, but this is an Iyashikei show, so that means he just tries to shoo away the kids from time to time. Another "quest giver" here is Sacchan's mother, Kise, who sometimes will ask the girls to run some errands for her.
Other people they deal with on a daily basis are the sisters Nonoka and Momoka; they own a bakery soon to be turned into an onigiri store and that's pretty much the cast. Yui is the leader, being probably the most serious and alert of the group. Sacchan is a ball of energy. Charismatic and always looking for something to do. Kotoha is a gamer with a lot of odd and funny theories about the world.
Watching this show was an interesting experience. It felt like it took me every minute out all of the 12 episodes for me to start to care about the characters. When I finally reached the point I felt like I could enjoy the show, it was over. I think there are two main reasons for this. First, the stories feel too scattered and catch-as-catch-can. I'm not talking about an overall sense of progress, this is not what this show is about, but how thin some of those episodes felt. It wasn't soothing, it wasn't funny, it wasn't endearing… it was just there. Felt like the whole script was written as a last minute thing. Some are interesting, for example when they follow their pet cat to figure out what it is doing during the day, or when Yui has to take part in a parade. Others feel like busy work, really, like sending the girls to hand some tissues to get some tickets for a lottery, just so they get more tissues as prizes.
The other issue for me was the lack of interesting supporting characters and a lack of a contrast between the main characters. Yui, Sacchan and Kotoha are just too similar to each other. Their friendship feels consumed by uniformity, there's very little for the viewer to follow in the characters themselves. Supporting characters could be interesting but ultimately they suffer from lack of screen time. I think Nono and Momoka would be great, if they had more development. In fact their relationship as sisters seemed a lot more interesting than the characters the show follows.
Also, watching this after watching Ichigo Mashimaro makes it very difficult not to draw comparisons. The characters here are way less interesting visually and feel superficial when you compare them with the girls in Ichigo. I'm still interested enough that I'll read the manga. We'll see how it goes.
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