Bottle Fairy: Episode 5 Commentary
August
Not too noticable due to being shown only for a moment, but after the bottle faires do their poses and before the water lands on them, they’re still doing their poses for the moment before the wave hits. Quite funny as in many shows, the character do weird poses you can’t picture them actually doing, and here we see they’re all standing side-by-side in their stances.
The first volleyball scene involves a type of thin plastic “ball” filled with air, although I don’t know what it’s called. It should be hit hard enough to toss into the air, but lightly enough not to break it. I remember getting one of these in an activity manga magazine one time. It was red with a puyo design, from Puyopuyo.
The part of the episode I enjoyed most is the summer festival scene, with the bottle fairies in yukata, summer kimono. Too bad it was so short, but the focus of the episode was the fairies trying to enjoy the summer by swimming in their swimsuits, after all.
Some of those swimsuit and Japanese bloomers scenes, while innocent, could be difficult to explain to others. Some of us watch our anime on a daily vanpool commute. I suppose you can say I lucked out by being the only one sitting in the back of the van the day I watched this episode. At least this wasn’t nearly as bad at the episode of Nadia: Secret of Blue Water, where Nadia and Electra take a bath, and midway through Nadia stands up.
I mentioned “bloomers” above. In Japan, this word refers to the shorts girls wear in physical education class. It’s a debate for another day why they don’t wear the same type of shorts as the boys wear. I did almost expect Sararin to wear boy’s shorts rather than bloomers, which was a disappointment to see wasn’t the case.
I’m glad Senseisan appeared a bit more this time around. He has a good demeanor, and I’d like to see his interactions with the bottle fairies a little more often.
When it comes to eating, the fairies seem to have confirmed what I’ve been noticing: whether bottle fairies, Season Fairies, or otherwise, fairies have the ability to eat ten times their mass in food, and still go back for seconds and thirds. I wonder how Lala in Ojamajo Doremi feels about this.
It would have been nice to see the bottle fairies in unique yukata, rather than all wearing the same design. That would add personality to them, the same as their swim suits. (Actually, the same happened in Seven of Seven; the Nanas wore the same style of yukata, and different styles of swimsuit.) Naturally, Chiriri wears a one-piece outfit, and Sararin does as well (maybe because of a modest warrior spirit within her?) Kururu wears something two-piece, but still modest. And Hororin is Hororin.
The bouncing item Kururu is hanging onto is a water-filled balloon yo-yo. I remember those from carnivals here in the USA, and I see them a lot in Japanese animation at festivals, ranging from Seven of Seven to Hamtaro, and beyond.
And yes, I did sneak in a cute screenshot of Chiriri (a fairy very fond of wearing a hat) sitting by the fruit dish, without giving the other bottle fairies equal space.
