Shouwa Monogatari

For as much as Showa Era Story's premise seemed to interest me with its historical premise and the Olympics, I found myself disappointed and underwhelmed in how the anime chose to convey itself. The series is mostly a historical slice-of-life title focused on the everyday lives of the Yamazaki family leading up to the 1964 Olympics taking place at the time. The Olympics, for the most part, only serve as a backdrop on the everyday ordeals faced by the family from Kouhei's mischievous behavior to Yuko's complicated matters in love as a teen to the heavy ordeals that their craftsman of a father puts upwith in maintaining his business. From my understanding, this anime was supposed to be made in mind for a much older audience who lived through and experienced the times in 1960s Japan and it certainly shows with the title's simple approach in the exploration of the Yamazaki family and their everyday lives. The anime does believably depict the cultural norms, technologies, major events and trends that were commonplace in 1964 Japan, which would be a plus for fans of historical-based anime. However, the show's major issue for me is that it lacks a major hook to engage wider audiences considering the audience this was made in mind for. Kids on the Slope takes place in the same time period as Showa Era Story and had its engaging musical elements and complicated romantic developments to keep me hooked on the show throughout its run. Showa Era Story, however, is too mundane with its tone, which makes it kind of hard to engage me into caring for what takes place at many points of the series, making it somewhat dull for me to see throughout its run. Visually, Showa Era Story is of standard quality for an animated title having vivid color and plenty of visual detail in the designs of its settings and characters. The animation is decent in moments of character movements and there weren't many occasions I recall still frames being used, though animation certainly wasn't the highest priority in the making of this series. Music in the series mostly consists of light piano pieces and popular music of the time period which were catchy to listen to throughout the show's run. Overall, I found Showa Era Story to be a bit too much of an acquired taste for me, even with my interest in looking into obscure and not-so-popular anime titles. This was an anime that seemed to be geared too heavily towards its intended older audience as the lack of engaging elements and too mundane feel did make the series a test of tolerance for me at a number of points. Unless you have a huge interest in historical-based anime such as this, you may find yourself having difficulty in enjoying Showa Era Story.