Tamayura OVA – 01

Overcooled: Hatoooooo! You excited for our first team post?
Hato-kun: I am indeed! I remember reading team posts like this on Metanorn a while back and they were actually kinda funny!

Overcooled: Tag team posts. It’s like watching a panel of judges, especially if they start to fight~ kekeke
Hato-kun: We’re actually on American Idol right now. Or maybe Anime Idol…. that sounds weird.
Overcooled: Moe Idol comes to mind for some reason.
Hato-kun: YES.
Overcooled: I WOULD WATCH THAT SO HARD.
Hato-kun: We have to do a Metanorn Moe Idol sometime and I’ll enter so much. ANYWAY, moving on, was it called Tamayura?
Overcooled: Hato… you don’t even remember the series name…?

Overcooled: Tamayura opens with a rather sweet monologue about photography, and some sort of aura that instantly relaxes all those who are watching. It’s surprisingly soothing. Episode 1 of the 4 part Tamayura really starts off with our main character, Fu, who is taking a leisurely bike ride through the town. She gets a bit too enthralled by a floating dandelion seed and chases it around town, taking fake photographs by framing the scene with her fingers and going “click.”

As she hunts down the elusive dandelion seed, she explains a bit about moving into town, how her father loved it, and that he passed away. Hmm..no sign of sorrow yet. She seems fine. In fact, she’s outstandingly positive and perky. I thought she was going to be all depressed o.o

You will see this expression on her face a LOT

Fu gets a bit carried away and nearly falls off a bridge taking a pseudo-photo. Luckily, her friend Kaoru saves her. Way to go, random friend! She’s an outgoing girl who is used to her friend’s crazy antics, and basically looks after her. She also calls her friend “Potte” which somehow suits Fu perfectly. Kaoru playfully scolds Fu for being a lunatic, they laugh at her close encounter with death, and head to school.

Cue more of Fu’s thoughts explaining things! Fu tells us a bit about Kaoru, such as how when she moved here, Kaoru helped her out. This is a big deal since Fu is so awkward around new people, and completely botched up her introduction. Watching her fail to even say her name was nothing short of pure moe.

The charm of being the mysterious transfer student…ruined

MOMONEKO BAWWW IT’S SO CUTEEEE~ I think this is supposed to be some sort of mascot for the show, but it’s kind of..out of place?  But really, how could you even protest this fatty feline? Nyaaa~ ..OK, I’m getting sidetracked, better leave the rest to Hato~!

Meanwhile, Lucky Star had lost it’s mascot

Hato-kun: MOMONEKO BAWWW IT’S SO CU- Ahem. I’m above that childish behavior! We leave Momoneko and follow Fu to school (Someone really needs to tell Japan to change their school bells..) where she’s airheaded once again, looking a train ticket that surprisingly has no destination. Kaoru tries not to frighten her off her chair as she asks her about which club she’s joining, but alas, she topples (Potte~) anyway. To no surprise, there isn’t a photography club and Kaoru give Fu-chan the idea to start her own. Kaoru, you ask? She’s making / joining a scent club. Because she has a scent fetish. Yeeeep. Linton Studios is one of awesome site to check tips and tricks about photography.

Potte could never have foreseen the tragedy that would befall her soon~

After school they both head to the local camera store to pick up Fu’s camera which was damaged. Unsurprisingly, the owner of the store is a dirty old man, like ever other old guy in Japan it seems. Two other girls in the store are amazed at how old the camera is and it seems they don’t even know what film is. (Take note, I find it offensive when people think I don’t know what cassettes or floppy discs are -_-) We also find out that the photo at the front of the store was taken by Fu, and it’s a photo of her Father. In the photo, the shopkeeper explains, is the Tamyura, Children of the Light. They apparently show up in Fu’s photo’s sometimes, and appear in times of gentleness.

She’s not embarrassed at all. But Kaoru looks pretty out of it.

As they leave, Fu makes a new friend, the whistling girl! They all head of to a place called Hoboro (not as weird as it sounds), and have what seems like a mean feed. The cook there has an extremely annoying voice, but I assume cooks awesome food. What follows is some awesome dialogue where everyone sounds like they are completely out of it. I’m pretty sure when they did the lines for this episode, the ADR guys had a lot of fun with it. They look through Fu’s photo’s only to discover that moving things are actually really difficult to photograph (as if we didn’t already know that!)! However, there are also some really nice photo’s, including one of Fu’s little brother / sister thing. They take a nice group photo and Fu once again comes off ditzy and airheaded. Yay for stupid girls! (I did NOT mean that is a demeaning way, don’t kill me, ladies.)

Potte just makes me laugh. She looks so stoopid.

End Thoughts

Overcooled: Ok, so right when it started… what did you think? I was like.. instantly mellowed out and relaxed. I was wondering if I just psyched myself out since I knew it was going to be a relaxing anime. o.o
Hato-kun: Yeah, I know what you mean. The director said he wanted it to be a relaxing anime, and it struck me to be really relaxing. I watched it at like, 1 in the morning, fretting about an exam the next day, and it just relaxed me so much. Kinda like K-ON.
Overcooled: I was afraid to make that reference, but yeah, it’s kind of like K-ON! it makes cute girls doing cute things oddly entertaining.
Hato-kun: Everything is like K-ON now. And that’s not really a bad thing.
Overcooled: Yeah, it’s not bad if you like K-ON… which I do. Also, the lead character’s seiyuu  (Taketatsu Ayana) was the same as Azusa’s. I loved her though, she did an awesome job.  She’s in like 3 shows I’m watching now BUT THERE IS NEVER TOO MUCH AZUNYAN!
Hato-kun: Oh god, really…? There is too much of her nowadays. She’s a good VA, but she’s kind of like the Aya Hirano of 2010. Or 2009. Whatever, Anyway I guess it was a really simple style, and story. Chick likes taking photo’s, fathers dead. Kinda cliche, but subtle.
Overcooled: Mmm Hmm, when you summarize it, not a lot actually happens in the way of plot…
Hato-kun: I can relate to her though. Walking around pretending that I have a camera  But I don’t think I look that ditzy doing it…
Overcooled: I don’t think you’d fall off a bridge XD (Or at least I hope not…) The going around taking pseudo-pictures was kind of endearing~ because I do stuff like that too, so you’re not alone.
Hato-kun: Oh thank God. Though, I pretend I have a film camera. I’ll wait for a film anime xD
Overcooled: So Fu ended up being a really cute, ditzy character.
Hato-kun: Yeah, which was quite entertaining. When they took the group photo, her expression was so great. She made me laugh a lot, just the way she was portrayed, and also when she gave her introduction, that was great.
Overcooled: LOL YES. They made her shyness funny, despite there being like a bazillion other shy and awkward characters already.
Hato-kun: Ugh, tell me about it. LIKE SAE, GAH! Did you see that cat? It was awesome.
Overcooled: MOMONEKO I’m like WTF WHERE DID YOU COME FROM YOU BELONG IN LUCKY STAR!
Hato-kun: It did remind me of Lucky Star as well, is that bad? Is this done by Kyo Ani….? /goes to check. Also, Fu’s camera is awesome So old and badass. Old camera’s always take the best photo’s.
Overcooled: It was so old school~ I loved her camera case and that ticket with no destination, which will probably be used for something later.
Hato-kun: I actually really liked that, the whole ticket thing. I love simple plot devices like that. Narrative foreshadowing <3
Overcooled: Yeah, it made me want a ticket with no destination. Now let’s discuss the Tamayura!
Hato-kun: Children of the Light, lol. I thought that was a little corny, to be honest, but still kinda nice. As soon as I heard it I was like “Yeah, kinda like Boukeh?”
Overcooled: It reminded me of when you don’t develop a photo properly really. I like how there was just one on the picture of her brother and it looks like someone dropped water on the photo, yet they make a big deal over it. <_<
Hato-kun: Well, anything else about the episode?
Overcooled: That whistling girl.
Hato-kun: I thought she was a bit special at first. Like a mute or something. I’m kinda sad she’s not a mute though, I read some story about someone who made friends with a mute kid who only talked through Morse Code. I thought it would be something like that, which would’ve been cool but I guess not.
Overcooled: Oh wow, that would’ve been intense. So I guess final thoughts are basically that it was a nice, calming show with cute, quirky girls thus far.
Hato-kun: Yeah, I actually really did enjoy it. Well, more than Hyakka…
Overcooled: Oh God, Samurai Girls…
Hato-kun: …Which I’ll be giving my First Thoughts on soon.

Overcooled: I will… uh… look forward to that…

Hato-kun: So we’ll be covering all of the episodes of Tamayura in spectacular tag team fashion, and hopefully it’ll be a grand addition to the already awesome looking Fall season! Enjoy!

About Tag Team

We live, laugh, enjoy and strictly believe on "more the merrier". When together, we usually come up with very chatty, conversation-based episodics and interesting posts.