Pastel Memories, If You are Going To Do Fanservice, At Least Do It Well!
Hello everyone and welcome to our place! 🙂
If you are into Anime and you have watched your couple of Anime shows, then fanservice is a very well known word for you. It’s something that will be there in most of the Anime shows. The panty shots, jiggly boobs, strange angle bodies so we can see the girls’ curves… All that jazz! On the other hand, if you prefer male characters (as me), then we will have the shirtless shots and, from time to time, we even get a scene with the guy in his underwear!
This way, after some thought, I decided that I’m not against fanservice and will change my point of view. It’s not that I don’t like fanservice, I want more male fanservice… There I said it!
However, I will continue to go against Anime shows which the thing they seem to have to offer is ONLY fanservice. Pastel Memories is like that. I will get to this down below, but, in general, the first episode was bland, period. The major thing about Pastel Memories is that not even the fanservice is that good…
Fanservice and How NOT To Do It
If you ever want to learn how you should not do fanservice, then you should watch Pastel Memories. For me, good fanservice is a subtle art. It’s there, it catches your attention, it may even arouse you… But, in the end, it’s something that it doesn’t take you out from what is happening.
Pastel Memories have some scenes like these. You have all the characters with good sized jiggly boobs when they talk. All of them except one of course! You need to throw someone almost breastless in there! We have to please everyone.
The show features 12 girls, yes 12… You even have the “cat” girl which will talk like a cat, use her hands like paws, and have the mouth drawn like she was a cat. Nobody is left out… And that’s a good thing!
My main problem with it is how much of the fanservice is right in your face. Really, you can see, by far, that what you are watching is just for the fanservice purpose. First of all, you will, 90% of the times, have boobs in the picture. It’s even funny if you think about it! Here’s a scene where a girl is talking, the picture focused on her… HOWEVER right in the corners of the screen, there are her friends’ breasts, just because…
Irina, if you ever review this, here’s an idea for your drinking game: take a sip every time a breast appears in the surrounding without showing its owner.
The Ultimate “Right In Your Face” Fanservice
But, the ultimate “right in your face” has to be the scene where our main character, Izumi Asagi, is changing clothes. They could go for a sneak pick of her figure, or they could even have her look at the mirror with only her bra dressed. But no! The scene is cut to a close up of her bra/breast for 2 freaking seconds. Nothing else is happening! There is no movement at all, it’s like Izumi just decided to rest her hand on her breasts and freeze for 2 seconds.
Gonna be honest, I laughed! I think that’s the first time fanservice actually made me laugh. Normally I like it, dislike it, feel uncomfortable, anything you may imagine… But, laughing… That was the first one! Yeah, those 2 seconds are probably the worst fanservice I’ve ever seen.
The Episode Review
Enough ranting for today! Let’s actually talk about the episode and what I think about it… Well, it’s an interesting idea, but not well executed. Plastic Memories happen in a world (future?) where everything Anime related has disappeared. Companies just went out of business and people nowadays can’t care less about Anime or Otaku life. Basically, a very depressing world for us to live in!
You start the episode with 3 girls working in a cafe. This cafe is Anime themed and basically will have old mangas and figures for the Clients to see and remember the good old days. The problem is, they don’t have many Clients. From the bat, I questioned myself how the hell is the owners capable of having 3 girls working without having any Clients… But then, 3 more girls appear… They also work in the cafe… Shortly after, 3 more girls appear, and, before you are even able to remember their faces… Yes! 3 more appear! 12 freaking employees without having Clients at all is something that is completely out of my comprehension…
The episode goes about some Client who went there the last day looking for a manga which they don’t seem to have. They look in the storage and they can find 2 volumes. From there, they go to the few Anime stores around to try to find and buy the remaining 5 volumes. They end up to find every each of one, except for volume 1… Why are they doing all of this, because of the fuzzy memories people have from Anime, of course!
But, wait! There’s more!
It seems these girls are also some kind of Anime protectors? Don’t ask me more about this because it’s not explained at all… I just know that, by the end of the episode, our main character enters the shop clock or something like that to go save the manga they were trying to get all volumes from some sort of virus (?)
I don’t really know, probably the creators thought it was a good thing to throw just right at the end of the episode. So, basically the Anime is not only about the shop, but also going to the past (?) and save Otaku art from being corrupted by some sort of virus which will make that piece of work to disappear from the World.
Not even once this is hinted! You know, s**t happens and now you have to enter inside a clock and save a manga from disappearing! Seriously though, it’s just way too random. In a positive note, I ended up the episode laughing!
Conclusion
In my opinion, the first episode is bad. Don’t know what is going to happen next, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to continue to be bad. With that ending, the plot just became a mess. Not that the plot was good, to begin with, but at least had some kind of logic, you know? In fact, most of the time I just cringed throughout the cheezy lines. Oh, and let’s not forget that it’s one of those Anime shows where every each character will have a line to say… Yeah, the 12 of them!
Just have to imagine when something extremely urgent happens… Like someone dying right in front of them… By the time they end talking the person has already died AND reincarnated in something else…
What about you? Have you watched Pastel Memories? Did you like it? Tell me all in the comments! 😛
Great Post!
thank you!
Well, you at least finished the episode. I got about half-way and called it quits on this one. I had zero interest in any character, the fan-service moments were terrible, and nothing was happening.
Well, I actually laughed here and there in how bad it was… I was able to finish the episode but not for the reasons the authors wanted I’m sure!
You know…despite the fantastic job you did selling this show…I might give it a pass. I think your current one queu drinking game will do just fine!
Oh cab you? I used all my selling arsenal with this one!!
Oh can you? I used all my selling arsenal with this one!!
I think the anime could still get more interesting. First episode was a complete flop for sure though, felt like a major waste of time. Episode 2 will really tell the full story I think, when they introduce / explain exactly whats going on and whatnot.
Funny, I must have not been paying attention to my screen for those 2 seconds because I completely missed that scene of Izumi changing! I definitely noticed all of the boobs strewn about, but didn’t think it was as in your face as many other anime out there considering their uniforms aren’t very revealing. I just want to see them all in their steampunk / fantasy outfits, whatever they decide to call them.
Yeah maybe xP though normally animes that start like this normally do not grow to be that good.
Ahahah! Probably you were because it’s just impossible to not see. Well, yeah there are other which also do it right in your face and normally those are also not that good either xD
But it’s true that their uniforms are not too revealing. Though it ansetuates the boobs a lot ahah
I’m new to the anime world and “Pastel Memories” was one of the first shows I watched. I try to overlook the “bad stuff” and focus on the positive. The opening song, for a start, has a very positive message. “Believe In Sky” reminds us to look up and not abandon our dreams. The overall theme of the show is your standard good vs evil and the good always wins out. To further that, the girls don’t want people forgetting about the “magic of the manga”; stories that we enjoyed, series that stayed with us, characters that we’ve formed an attachment to.
The girls all have their own personalities, shy, creative, calm, etc. They bring their strengths together in order to defeat the evil villains. (Forgive me, I don’t remember names and episodes well….) There was a recent episode that I watched about elementary school kids and basketball. At the opening, one of the girls was taking pictures of things that made her smile, so that she would remember them. Isn’t that what we all do? It helps the viewer relate to the character and story line. It draws us in to the rest of the story.
I could go on, but you see my point and where I am going with this. It’s all in the perspective and expectation. I choose to focus on what I like about the show which spurs me on to watch more.
Yeah I understand what you mean. I also try to always focus on the good part, but with Pastel Memories I just wasn’t able to. Maybe because I’ve been watching Anime for a long time I can see how the characters all fall into one of the Anime troupes, which for me is lazy writing. Moreover, I also prefer to call out Anime that are bad because other stories (better ones) could have been adapted instead.
Animes based on video games tend to be rather limited in their ability to make creative decisions. Pastel Memories the video game, released only in Japan, had 12 staff at the shop, so it’s no surprise that they all appear in the anime.
I didn’t really notice much fanservice myself, beyond the headscratcher that is Maya’s introduction. While most of the characters are buxom indeed, there was little in the way of bouncing, and only one cleavage shot, which is what I consider the thresholds of boob fanservice. I don’t recall any panty shots.
As for the boob appearing while cat girl Yuina is speaking, just two scenes earlier she and two others are shown three abreast (pun slightly intended), so I think that’s just an artifact of stage continuity and framing a line of tension between two characters’ eyes. The show looks to me to have been created at least in part by 3D modeling (note continuity during turns and head moving when phone brought to ear, for instance).
The striped blue bust wasn’t Asagi’s, btw. If you look at the upper right of the next scene, you’ll see the bikini clad figurine wearing that top. I think this was meant to be a “gotcha” joke. It worked on me, so I didn’t recognize it in the picture above until I rewatched.
Within my limited understanding, the girls seem intended to be cute, not sexy, and the show targeted for a young audience.
I found an English fansite for the game, which has been discontin-mew-ed:
https://pastel-memories.fandom.com/wiki/Pastel_Memories
Thanks for the thorough comment. You’ll probably right – I guess my limits for fanservice were too low at the time 😀 But I did notice that some scenes were made to portray them as cute, not sexy.