Series Blurb
It has been several centuries since human population has declined. Food has become harder to find and what little sources the humans have are considered highly valuable. The most prosperous species on the Earth are "Fairies", 10 cm tall creatures with high intelligence and a great love for sweets. A nameless girl, the main character, became a UN arbitrator between the humans and the fairies and had returned to her hometown to help her grandfather. One day, the village is sent some strange products made by a company called FairyCo. Since the villagers are wary of using the products, the girl, her grandfather, and a nameless boy decide to go to the factory to find out about the mysterious products and who is behind making them.
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Finished
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12Reviews
(4/5)July 13, 2023
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Man, this show is hard.
The speaking speed can be relentless at points, the airing episode order is non-chronological, the absurdist writing often makes a lot of horizontal connections, and since it is an adaption of a novel, often busts out a lot of obscure vocab and grammar. I try to avoid excessively pausing while watching stuff in Japanese except for brief look-ups or if something I'm not getting seems plot critical, and I can assure you that I broke this little rule of mine for almost every episode. While it doesn't come off as overly hard when you check out something like the JPDB stats, it is definitely the hardest show I've watched so far.
That being said, the show is really, really good. So good that I'm honestly tempted to say that you shouldn't watch it in Japanese unless you've seen it before or can comprehend it fully. I won't summarize the plot as that's been done elsewhere, but if you're even vaguely interested in art that tries to interrogate the human condition and society, give it a shot.
As for the show's viability as language learning material, I think it's a good "goal" show, in the same way that some people's goal is to comprehend shows like Tatami Galaxy. While definitely not as difficult, It serves as a solid benchmark of your listening, vocab, and comprehension abilities.
For the vocab side of things: I make flashcards daily from the content I consume, and so I found it was very helpful to load up an episode on days when I didn't have a lot of time to meet my daily quota. Some of the words I chose to mine were definitely questionable in terms of practical usability (such as 太陽系, 持論, 持参), but since I'm at the point where I'm not guaranteed to meet that quota from a lot of easier slice of life type shows that guarantee of finding 15-20 new words from a single episode was a relief.