瓶詰妖精

BINZUME YOUSEI

TV_SHORT

STATUS
COMPLETE
EPISODES
13
RELEASE
December 26, 2003
LENGTH
13 min

DESCRIPTION

Kururu, Chiriri, Sarara, and Hororo are four little fairies that live inside bottles on their “Sensei”’s desk. Together, they have misadventures trying to understand the human world, seeking advice from the totally misinformed grade schooler next door.

(Source: Anime News Network)

CAST

Hororo
Ai Nonaka
Kururu
Nana Mizuki
Sarara
Yui Horie
Chiriri
Kaori Nazuka
Tama-chan
Haruko Momoi
Sensei-san
Kishou Taniyama
Kusachiho
Yui Horie
Oboro

EPISODES

Dubbed

| | |

Not available on crunchyroll

REVIEWS

TheRealKyuubey
50/100
Thankfully, these fairies did not leave me reaching for the bottle.
What does it mean to be human? Once upon a time, a magical blue fairy tasked a little wooden puppet with answering this question, so that he could pursue his dream of becoming a real boy. Now, it’s time for the fairies to answer this question, as four little bubbly bottle babies have been tasked with studying humanity, and learning what makes them human, in order to become human themselves! Kururu, the blue bottle fairy, represents Spring. She is energetic and imaginative. Chiriri, the yellow bottle fairy, represents Summer. She is friendly, but demure and polite. Sarara, the red bottle fairy, represents fall. She is quiet and tomboyish. Hororo is the green bottle fairy, representing winter, and she’s kind of the space cadet of the group, being shy and gluttonous. The man who watches over them, who is only known as Sensei, is kind and patient, and his five year old neighbor Tama-chan is always happy to play with the fairies and aid them in their misadventures. I hope you’ll join in on the fun too!

While I have reviewed multiple entries in the same franchise in a row before, this might be the first time I’ve ever accidentally reviewed two anime that were produced by the same studio and shared the same director back to back. Much like my previous review, Love Hina Spring Special, Bottle Fairy was produced by Studio Xebec and directed by Yoshiaki Iwasaki, and while Xebec is one of the least respected studios in the entire anime landscape, Bottle Fairy is probably one of their best looking titles, although I would like to attach a huge asterisk to that. I said last review that Yoshiaki Iwasaki did really great work when he had the right amount of money to work with, so I guess it should be no surprise that with Bottle Fairy, an anime that looks like it was produced on a budget that was thinner than an anorexic skeleton would wind up looking borderline perfect for what it actually is.

Bottle Fairy is a children’s show, and I don’t mean a cal arts early 2010’s kids show, I mean a Baby Looney Tunes level kids show, or a Muppet Babies level kids show. It’s about a small, never changing cast of characters using their imaginations and going on constant episode-length self-contained mini-adventures without ever leaving the same room, and the best part of all that is that you don’t need intricate visuals to do the job at hand. The aesthetic of Bottle Fairy is extremely simple, with very basic character designs interacting with one another against semi-detailed watercolor set pieces, and since there’s really no expectation of extra effort or budget management, the end product winds up looking basically perfect, and while I don’t personally find the series to be visually interesting, I do respect the approach the director took and all of the potential trouble he avoided by not biting off more than the studio could chew. The character designs are simple, but so were the ones from Alvin and the Chipmonks.

The English dub also does it’s job perfectly fine, despite sharing some of the same problems that most old Geneon anime suffered from; I spoke about this in my last review, but the old way of dubbing(Where you forced your actors to try and copy the Japanese performance, even when the cadence’s they used were so obscure that they came off sounding shrill and artificial. The fairies here don’t sound quite as bad as the ones in A Little Snow Fairy Sugar(Which is the only point I’ll give this show over that one) but it is still a few feet too far inside of the Uncanny Valley. The four main voice actors performed their roles well, and while I did like Sandy Fox and Karen Strassmen’s roles, the other two were still stronger by far. Stephanie Sheh was still somewhat new at this part in her career, but she plays Hororo like a slower, gentler version of Osaka from Azumanga Daioh, without the accent, of course. The late Philece Sampler played Sarara, and while portraying resting bitch face child characters can be a difficult tightrope to walk, I think she found a good balance between curiosity and cynicism.

It’s been a while since I’ve had to ask this question, so I hope you’ll indulge me in asking it one more time... How exactly does an adult review a piece of media that was clearly intended for children? On the one hand, I believe critics should always offer their sincere opinions, never holding back and never trying to spare anyone’s feelings. On the other hand, it feels kind of mean spirited for Siskel and Ebert to give Barney the Dinosaur two thumbs down. It’s like, I obviously respect your opinion, but dude, this show isn’t for you, so your opinion doesn’t really matter. Asking for an adult to rate or review a children’s show is like asking a vegan to review a steak. I’ve come across this dilemma in my reviews before, and to this day, the answer is still complicated. The approach that I’ve come up with is pretty much the same as the approach that I take when reviewing sexy ecchi anime as an asexual... I’ll try to understand it from the point of view of the intended audience, while also giving out my own opinion, in the best balance I can manage.

Here’s the problem though... Children will watch fucking anything. When you’re an adult judging the quality of kids' media, you want to uphold your own personal standards... Is it educational? Is it well written? Is it as sophisticated as the kids' content that I watched growing up? But let’s be fucking real, none of us knew what good writing was when we were kids, and when we wax nostalgic about how much better cartoons were when we were kids, we’re just putting the stuff we grew up with on a pedestal because we refuse to take off our rose colored glasses while looking at them. When I was a kid, I watched that shitty, shitty, shitty Christopher Colombus movie “The Magic Voyage” until the VHS was ruined. I didn’t care that it sucked. Even with shows I used to think were awesome, like Darkwing Duck and Garfield and Friends, when I tried watching them again as an adult, I wanted to slit my wrists with a plastic spoon.

Obviously, it’s easy to look at a kids show as an adult and pass judgement on it, but as a kid, whatever. Who cares if a show is just jangling keys in front of your face? Have you watched keys jangle? It’s not half bad. So yeah, on the one hand, it feels disingenuous for me to give my opinion on Bottle Fairy, a show I did not grow up with, that I have no nostalgia for, and that I have no previous relationship with, that duty should be left to someone younger and more qualified. On the other hand, I don’t see anyone else rushing to publish reviews of this series, so I guess I’m all you got, and if nothing else, I can at least promise to be fair. After all, it’s not like Bottle Fairy doesn’t have anything going for it. Like I said before, it’s well produced, and it’s cute looking, and it does kind of have a certain charm to it.
To judge Bottle Fairy, I’m going to look at it from a few different perspectives, and I’m going to have to use my imagination on both of them. I’m going to judge whether or not it would be entertaining to a child, and whether or not I, as the parent or guardian of said child, would approve of it. I’m using my imagination because I don’t have any kids, I have a cat, and he doesn’t care what’s on TV unless it’s one of those birdseed in the woods video streams on youtube. From a child’s perspective, I could see this going over well with little girls in particular. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe in gender roles or gender stereotypes, girls can play soldiers and boys can play with dolls and that’s perfectly fine, but let’s be real, demographics that have existed for generations have to have at least SOME truth to them. Bottle Fairy strikes me kind of like early My Little Pony, something slow, gentle and soft, with enough humor to entertain someone whose tastes haven’t evolved very far, with a slice of life tone and a focus on social dynamics over action or story-telling.

My first question as a parent would be, is it safe? Yeah, mostly. It goes without saying that Japanese children are used to slightly more mature fare than American kids, and there are little moments in this show that might raise a few eyebrows... For more conservative parents, two of the fairies wear bikinis on the beach, and there are a couple of moments of lesbian teasing. For more reasonable parents, there is at least one reference to Japanese samurai-style suicide, but it’s over really quickly, and would probably go over the heads of most children. With a little bit of necessary parental guidance, I’d say yeah, it’s safe enough. My second question would be, is it educational? I mean yeah, it touches a little on Japanese culture, but the problem is, it does so in a way that’s geared towards Japanese children who are already familiar with said culture. In context, it isn’t really saying anything about the cultural elements that it references, it just acknowledges them. Like, oh, sometimes when a kid is wearing a kimono, their parent will pull their sash to spin them like a top. To the Japanese, this is a fun little childhood tradition. To American children, this is probably confusing as hell.

My final question would be, if I was watching over a child for whatever reason, and they were watching this show, would I be able to survive watching it with them? Again, I don’t have any kids, but I’ve spoken to enough of them to know there’s a damn good reason they pray to God, every day, that their kid will pick Bluey instead of Peppa Pig. As for me, with Bottle Fairy... I think I’d survive? I don’t hate Bottle Fairy, it’s not like it’s annoying or anything, and it’s really easy for shows like this to be annoying. It’s boring, but at least it’s short, with only thirteen half-length episodes. I actually liked the ending, believe it or not. I'm not going to spoil it, but there’s a pretty funny and unexpected conclusion in episode twelve, and episode thirteen actually follows through on it in a pretty clever and satisfying fashion, so it’s not all bad. Having said that, for the episodes leading up to that ending, I would probably pull out my Nintendo Switch to play Pokemon Scarlet on mute so I could spam surprise trade while still paying most of my attention to the series. And once the kid notices, they’re going to lose all interest in Bottle Fairy and start begging me to hand over my Switch, because playing Pokemon is way more interesting than anything Bottle Fairy has to offer.

Bottle Fairy is long out of print from Geneon entertainment., but used copies are relatively easy and cheap to find secondhand.

I think it’s safe to say I gave Bottle Fairy a fair chance. I had some expectations for it, because a similarly saccharine looking show called A Little Snow Fairy Sugar had so much depth and complexity in its writing, characters and emotions, but I’m not going to hold that against it. When it comes to children’s media, you don’t always need all of that. Bottle Fairy isn’t particularly smart, or creative, or challenging, but for what it is, and what it’s trying to be, it’s fine. I didn’t like it very much myself, but for its target audience, it’s fine, and I don’t mean any disrespect to those of you who grew up with it and have fond memories of it. It’s not bad by any means, it’s just... Fine. It’s perfectly harmless, but the only things I personally liked about it were the ending and the handful of AMV Hell clips that it inspired.
I give Bottle Fairy a 5/10
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