What does it mean to be human? Once upon a time a magical blue fairy tasked a little wooden puppet with answering this question so that he could pursue his dream of becoming a real boy. Now its time for the fairies to answer this question as four little bubbly bottle babies have been tasked with studying humanity and learning what makes them human in order to become human themselves Kururu the blue bottle fairy represents Spring. She is energetic and imaginative. Chiriri the yellow bottle fairy represents Summer. She is friendly but demure and polite. Sarara the red bottle fairy represents fall. She is quiet and tomboyish. Hororo is the green bottle fairy representing winter and shes kind of the space cadet of the group being shy and gluttonous. The man who watches over them who is only known as Sensei is kind and patient and his five year old neighbor Tamachan is always happy to play with the fairies and aid them in their misadventures. I hope youll join in on the fun too While I have reviewed multiple entries in the same franchise in a row before this might be the first time Ive ever accidentally reviewed two anime that were produced by the same studio and shared the same director back to back. Much like my previous review Love Hina Spring Special Bottle Fairy was produced by Studio Xebec and directed by Yoshiaki Iwasaki and while Xebec is one of the least respected studios in the entire anime landscape Bottle Fairy is probably one of their best looking titles although I would like to attach a huge asterisk to that. I said last review that Yoshiaki Iwasaki did really great work when he had the right amount of money to work with so I guess it should be no surprise that with Bottle Fairy an anime that looks like it was produced on a budget that was thinner than an anorexic skeleton would wind up looking borderline perfect for what it actually is. Bottle Fairy is a childrens show and I dont mean a cal arts early 2010s kids show I mean a Baby Looney Tunes level kids show or a Muppet Babies level kids show. Its about a small never changing cast of characters using their imaginations and going on constant episodelength selfcontained miniadventures without ever leaving the same room and the best part of all that is that you dont need intricate visuals to do the job at hand. The aesthetic of Bottle Fairy is extremely simple with very basic character designs interacting with one another against semidetailed watercolor set pieces and since theres really no expectation of extra effort or budget management the end product winds up looking basically perfect and while I dont personally find the series to be visually interesting I do respect the approach the director took and all of the potential trouble he avoided by not biting off more than the studio could chew. The character designs are simple but so were the ones from Alvin and the Chipmonks. The English dub also does its job perfectly fine despite sharing some of the same problems that most old Geneon anime suffered from I spoke about this in my last review but the old way of dubbingWhere you forced your actors to try and copy the Japanese performance even when the cadences they used were so obscure that they came off sounding shrill and artificial. The fairies here dont sound quite as bad as the ones in A Little Snow Fairy SugarWhich is the only point Ill give this show over that one but it is still a few feet too far inside of the Uncanny Valley. The four main voice actors performed their roles well and while I did like Sandy Fox and Karen Strassmens roles the other two were still stronger by far. Stephanie Sheh was still somewhat new at this part in her career but she plays Hororo like a slower gentler version of Osaka from Azumanga Daioh without the accent of course. The late Philece Sampler played Sarara and while portraying resting bitch face child characters can be a difficult tightrope to walk I think she found a good balance between curiosity and cynicism. Its been a while since Ive had to ask this question so I hope youll indulge me in asking it one more time... How exactly does an adult review a piece of media that was clearly intended for children? On the one hand I believe critics should always offer their sincere opinions never holding back and never trying to spare anyones feelings. On the other hand it feels kind of mean spirited for Siskel and Ebert to give Barney the Dinosaur two thumbs down. Its like I obviously respect your opinion but dude this show isnt for you so your opinion doesnt really matter. Asking for an adult to rate or review a childrens show is like asking a vegan to review a steak. Ive come across this dilemma in my reviews before and to this day the answer is still complicated. The approach that Ive come up with is pretty much the same as the approach that I take when reviewing sexy ecchi anime as an asexual... Ill try to understand it from the point of view of the intended audience while also giving out my own opinion in the best balance I can manage. Heres the problem though... Children will watch fucking anything. When youre an adult judging the quality of kids media you want to uphold your own personal standards... Is it educational? Is it well written? Is it as sophisticated as the kids content that I watched growing up? But lets be fucking real none of us knew what good writing was when we were kids and when we wax nostalgic about how much better cartoons were when we were kids were just putting the stuff we grew up with on a pedestal because we refuse to take off our rose colored glasses while looking at them. When I was a kid I watched that shitty shitty shitty Christopher Colombus movie The Magic Voyage until the VHS was ruined. I didnt care that it sucked. Even with shows I used to think were awesome like Darkwing Duck and Garfield and Friends when I tried watching them again as an adult I wanted to slit my wrists with a plastic spoon. Obviously its easy to look at a kids show as an adult and pass judgement on it but as a kid whatever. Who cares if a show is just jangling keys in front of your face? Have you watched keys jangle? Its not half bad. So yeah on the one hand it feels disingenuous for me to give my opinion on Bottle Fairy a show I did not grow up with that I have no nostalgia for and that I have no previous relationship with that duty should be left to someone younger and more qualified. On the other hand I dont see anyone else rushing to publish reviews of this series so I guess Im all you got and if nothing else I can at least promise to be fair. After all its not like Bottle Fairy doesnt have anything going for it. Like I said before its well produced and its cute looking and it does kind of have a certain charm to it. To judge Bottle Fairy Im going to look at it from a few different perspectives and Im going to have to use my imagination on both of them. Im going to judge whether or not it would be entertaining to a child and whether or not I as the parent or guardian of said child would approve of it. Im using my imagination because I dont have any kids I have a cat and he doesnt care whats on TV unless its one of those birdseed in the woods video streams on . From a childs perspective I could see this going over well with little girls in particular. Dont get me wrong I dont believe in gender roles or gender stereotypes girls can play soldiers and boys can play with dolls and thats perfectly fine but lets be real demographics that have existed for generations have to have at least SOME truth to them. Bottle Fairy strikes me kind of like early My Little Pony something slow gentle and soft with enough humor to entertain someone whose tastes havent evolved very far with a slice of life tone and a focus on social dynamics over action or storytelling. My first question as a parent would be is it safe? Yeah mostly. It goes without saying that Japanese children are used to slightly more mature fare than American kids and there are little moments in this show that might raise a few eyebrows... For more conservative parents two of the fairies wear bikinis on the beach and there are a couple of moments of lesbian teasing. For more reasonable parents there is at least one reference to Japanese samuraistyle suicide but its over really quickly and would probably go over the heads of most children. With a little bit of necessary parental guidance Id say yeah its safe enough. My second question would be is it educational? I mean yeah it touches a little on Japanese culture but the problem is it does so in a way thats geared towards Japanese children who are already familiar with said culture. In context it isnt really saying anything about the cultural elements that it references it just acknowledges them. Like oh sometimes when a kid is wearing a kimono their parent will pull their sash to spin them like a top. To the Japanese this is a fun little childhood tradition. To American children this is probably confusing as hell. My final question would be if I was watching over a child for whatever reason and they were watching this show would I be able to survive watching it with them? Again I dont have any kids but Ive spoken to enough of them to know theres a damn good reason they pray to God every day that their kid will pick Bluey instead of Peppa Pig. As for me with Bottle Fairy... I think Id survive? I dont hate Bottle Fairy its not like its annoying or anything and its really easy for shows like this to be annoying. Its boring but at least its short with only thirteen halflength episodes. I actually liked the ending believe it or not. Im not going to spoil it but theres a pretty funny and unexpected conclusion in episode twelve and episode thirteen actually follows through on it in a pretty clever and satisfying fashion so its not all bad. Having said that for the episodes leading up to that ending I would probably pull out my Nintendo Switch to play Pokemon Scarlet on mute so I could spam surprise trade while still paying most of my attention to the series. And once the kid notices theyre going to lose all interest in Bottle Fairy and start begging me to hand over my Switch because playing Pokemon is way more interesting than anything Bottle Fairy has to offer. Bottle Fairy is long out of print from Geneon entertainment. but used copies are relatively easy and cheap to find secondhand. I think its safe to say I gave Bottle Fairy a fair chance. I had some expectations for it because a similarly saccharine looking show called A Little Snow Fairy Sugar had so much depth and complexity in its writing characters and emotions but Im not going to hold that against it. When it comes to childrens media you dont always need all of that. Bottle Fairy isnt particularly smart or creative or challenging but for what it is and what its trying to be its fine. I didnt like it very much myself but for its target audience its fine and I dont mean any disrespect to those of you who grew up with it and have fond memories of it. Its not bad by any means its just... Fine. Its perfectly harmless but the only things I personally liked about it were the ending and the handful of AMV Hell clips that it inspired. I give Bottle Fairy a 5/10