3 Episode Taste Test: Kobato

The CLAMP power­house whirs back to anim­ated life after the jug­ger­naut of Tsub­asa Reser­voir Chron­icle and the most recent xxxHolic, this time with a prot­ag­on­ist that has a more than coin­cid­ental like­ness to a cer­tain green-haired girl cre­ated by Kiy­ohiko Azuma. Kobato is an undeni­ably twee pro­duc­tion but, unlike other out­puts by the all-female stu­dio, lacks a more enga­ging over­arch­ing story.

“whereas series like Chob­its had a dearth of pos­sib­il­it­ies, this seems inspir­a­tion­ally barren”

The tit­u­lar char­ac­ter Kobato drifts down to earth in a swirl of cherry blos­soms and flow­ing hair, finally exclaim­ing that she will “do her best”. Not the most ori­ginal of intro­duc­tions but the open­ing melody by the superb Maaya Sakamoto is reason enough to con­tinue. What fol­lows is relent­lessly sac­char­ine as the prot­ag­on­ist is set on a mis­sion — by her gruff and obnox­ious stuffed dog Ioryogi — to heal people’s hearts and col­lect the frag­ments — shaped like kom­petio — in a jar so that she can obtain her as-yet undis­closed wish. Sur­viv­ing on a mix­ture of luck and the grace of strangers, Kobato’s mis­sion intro­duces her to a med­ley of shrill voiced people, all with faces eas­ily recog­nis­able to those with even a passing famili­ar­ity with pre­vi­ous CLAMP works. Call­ing this a kids show would be redund­ant, but that it feels mildly deriv­at­ive and fre­quently vacu­ous is sur­pris­ing given the creators.

To pre­ma­turely load the show with the same expect­a­tions as series such as Chob­its or X is per­haps unfair, espe­cially with the know­ledge that des­pite a vocal minor­ity, CLAMP works are like gold dust and routinely prove excep­tion­ally pop­u­lar. Accept­ing the series at face value how­ever is made increas­ingly dif­fi­cult by re-used char­ac­ter designs for even incid­ental char­ac­ters such as the apart manager’s twin daugh­ters; it becomes part of a lar­ger con­glom­er­ate rather than being able to stand alone. Even the char­ac­ter arche­types feel worn, like the ill-proportioned and angu­lar male who hides his emo­tional trauma behind an unfriendly dis­pos­i­tion or the gen­ial nurs­ery owner har­bour­ing her own wounded past. Kobato her­self is aes­thet­ic­ally ori­ginal but her abject enthu­si­asm and naïve man­ner­isms lay some­where between homage and imit­a­tion of Yot­suba&! but never quite match­ing her likeableness.

At a full season’s length, there are few quan­ti­fi­able reas­ons to con­tinue watch­ing the series past the first three epis­odes. Hints of a devel­op­ing plot are non-existent and only the final seconds of the third epis­ode reveal there may be more to the story than the pre­dict­able intro­duc­tion, trauma, heal rhythm. Hav­ing no memor­ies or past bey­ond the flowery des­cent to Earth and no impetus other than the eph­em­eral prom­ise of wish ful­fil­ment makes the prot­ag­on­ist dif­fi­cult to like bey­ond super­fi­cial traits. With time the story may unfold and char­ac­ters develop but whereas series like Chob­its had a dearth of pos­sib­il­it­ies, this seems inspir­a­tion­ally barren.

CLAMP alumni Mad­house once again take up anim­a­tion duties and true to form the major­ity of the visu­als are clean and detailed, a shame then that the rest of the pro­duc­tion can’t yet live up to the qual­ity the stu­dio is able to pump out given the funds. Kobato doesn’t come across as a concept wasted but more of tal­ent squandered; if the rest of the series con­tin­ues to be so lacklustre then this will be the series crit­ics will use to sig­nal the steady des­cent of CLAMP. ¶