Yatogame-chan Kansatsu Nikki (S1 - S4)

Title:Yatogame-chan Kansatsu Nikki (S1 - S4)
Yatogame-chan Observation Diary (S1 - S4)
八十亀ちゃんかんさつにっき
Overall:Rent
Keywords: , , , , , , ,
Notables: ICHIKI Mitsuhiro
KOMATSU Mikako
TOMATSU Haruka
TOUJOU Hisako
WAKAI Yuuki
After being raised in Tokyo, Kaito Jin moves to Nagoya and finds himself in the photography club of his new school. There he is intrigued by the strange cat-like demeanor of Monoka Yatogame and her highly accented Nagoya-speak.

12 four minute shorts per season
OverallArtAnimationCharacter Design MusicSeries StoryEpisode StoryReviewer
Rent Stretch [series:3809#628]
(All episodes of seasons 2, 3 and 4 watched):

Each episode of Yatogame begins with a disclaimer about how the anime intends no disrespect towards the people of Nagoya, but to a person who doesn't even speak basic Japanese (like me) the whole accent business remains a mystery and many jokes will fly completely over one's head. Still, there were interesting points, like the mild resentment citizens of Nagoya feel about bullet trains not stopping in their city, the fact that the Nagoya region is home to a good number of first rate Idol groups, that its fancy looking Samurai era castle is actually a recent reproduction, that it has a reputation for having some of Japan's ugliest citizens, and stuff like that. People who find this sort of thing interesting might also want to watch Boku no Imouto wa Osaka Okan. And this is an amusing little series which demands little time to watch. I did not realize until I did some research at ANN that what I was watching was actually the second season of this show; it is so lightweight and has such a superficial plot that it would be easy to miss that. I enjoyed this; I wish I could find a way to download season one as well.

This short must be popular in Japan, because Winter 2021 saw season three and in 2022 there was season four. Again, I don't completely 'get' a lot of the jokes but I get enough of them to have fun watching. There's the time a newcomer who loves Tokyo and hates Nagoya arrives and completely misunderstands who's Nagoya-phobic and who isn't. The final episode of season three was an amusing rap battle between singers from five different cities vying to become known as the third most important one in Japan (after Tokyo and Osaka). Somehow, it seemed to serve as a sort of summary of the season as a whole. I always looked forward to the short and silly episodes of this show and hope there will be a season five.

Last updated Saturday, December 10 2022. Created Thursday, February 13 2020.

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