Bottle Fairy: Episode 3 Commentary
June
I wasn’t sure what to think of Bottle Fairy after two episodes, but the whole June Bride soap drama had me laughing, from beginning to end.
This episode kept a solid structure through the whole thing. Well, solid might be a slight exaggeration. I wonder if this kind of structure will continue through future episodes, or if they’ll become loose again when there are more holidays to be learned about.
The events the fairies go through, with the different outfits, and scenarios, reminds me of series such as Rugrats, Muppet Babies, and Bobby’s World. As a person with a strong imagination, I enjoy watching these series where young characters imagine things they know little about, trying to understand them, and enjoy them.
I’m curious as to whether Tamachan actually read the love letter, or if she assumed its contents from the heart on the envelope. The handwriting probably is suggestive of being from a girl as well. The reason I wonder this is because the letter probably uses a fair amount of kanji, Chinese written characters Japanese use in their writing. While I have no doubt Tamachan knows more kanji than I do, at her age she’s no match for Senseisan’s level, and that of his peers.
Initially, I had no idea if the hanging ghost dolls were supposed to mean something related to the rain. After researching it, I learned they are teru teru bozu, dolls meant to keep it from raining. I like this use of culture, as it leads to me researching things I didn’t know about before.
The Sempai story kept me laughing right from the start. When Hororo appeared, I wondered if she would turn out to love Kururu rather than Sempai. Still, I had to laugh extra when Hororo asked if she made a mistake. That Hororo is just one laugh after another. And she has an especially wonderful wedding style. Very traditional.
When Sarara and Sempai are talking over drinks, the red on their faces is commonly used in Japanese animation to show characters who have been drinking, or are drunk.
Humor in animation doesn’t just happen. It’s planned, written, and performed (drawn and voiced). I can see this being a favorite episode of mine. And yet, after all the humor, it’s still able to end with a provocative question: where does ones “like” go when the person they like turns them down? At first I wasn’t sure where Kururu came up with the moon as a possible location, but after re-watching the episode in Japanese, I realized the like/moon part is a play on words. The Japanese word for like is “suki”, and the Japanese word for moon is “tsuki”. There’s really no way to translate this into English without losing the joke, leaving English viewers with no idea how Kururu associated like with the moon.
The like going to the moon, as the airport divorce (which I don’t understand and haven’t researched into), are both examples of why a pamphlet with translation notes is essential for a release like this, which it unfortunately does not have.
