Strawberry Marshmallow

Strawberry Marshmallow(Japanese:Môi ましまろ,Hepburn:Ichigo Mashimaro)is a Japanesemangaseries written and illustrated byBarasuiabout the adventures of four elementary school girls and their older sister-figure. It began serialization inASCII Media Works' manga magazineDengeki Daiohin 2002. In 2005, the manga was adapted into ananimetelevision series and aPlayStation 2video game. Threeoriginal video animation(OVA) episodes were later released from February to April 2007. Another two-episode OVA project titledIchigo Mashimaro Encorewas released in 2009.The manga's tagline is "Cute is justice."

Strawberry Marshmallow
Volume 1 of the English version of the manga.
Môi ましまろ (Ichigo Mashimaro)
Genre	Comedy,slice of life
Manga
Written by	Barasui
Published by	ASCII Media Works
English publisher	AUS:Madman(formerly) NA:Tokyopop(formerly) UK:Tokyopop (formerly)
Magazine	Dengeki Daioh
Demographic	Shōnen
Original run	February 15, 2002– present
Volumes	9
Anime television series
Directed by	Takuya Satō
Written by	Takuya Satō
Music by	Takeshi Watanabe
Studio	Daume
Licensed by	NA:Sentai Filmworks
Original network	TBS,Anime Network
Original run	July 14, 2005–October 13, 2005
Episodes	12
Video game
Developer	ASCII Media Works
Publisher	ASCII Media Works
Genre	Visual novel
Platform	PlayStation 2
Released	August 11, 2005
Original video animation
Directed by	Takuya Satō
Written by	Takuya Satō
Music by	Takeshi Watanabe
Studio	Daume
Licensed by	NA:Sentai Filmworks
Released	February 23, 2007–April 25, 2007
Runtime	25 minutes each
Episodes	3
Original video animation
Ichigo Mashimaro Encore
Directed by	Takuya Satō
Written by	Takuya Satō
Music by	Takeshi Watanabe
Studio	Daume
Licensed by	NA:Sentai Filmworks
Released	January 23, 2009–March 25, 2009
Runtime	27 minutes each
Episodes	2

There is an unrelated manga by Touko Mizuno with the similar title ofIchigo Mashumaro(Môi ましゅまろ).

Plot

Themes

According to the manga,Strawberry Marshmallowis set inHamamatsu, Japan.Seasons play an important role throughoutStrawberry Marshmallowas the characters are involved in many normal seasonal activities.

The series is speckled with numerous small, music-relatedallusions,such as Ana's dog Frusciante being named afterJohn Fruscianteof theRed Hot Chili Peppers,while episode eight of the anime sees two goldfish calledRichard and James(with Aphex Twin appearing in other comics by Barasui as well). Other referenced musicians includeRadiohead,Sigur Rós,theBee Gees,Oasis,Moby,Outkast,The Police,Arctic Monkeys,The Black Eyed Peas,andSquarepusher.The title itself was inspired by "Mashimaro", a single by Japanese rock artistTamio Okuda.

Cover ofThe Strawberry Marshmallow Drama CD Volume 3.The characters, from left to right: Nobue, Miu, Matsuri, Ana, Chika, and Satake (the dog).

Characters

Nobue Itoh(Y đằng thân huệ,Itō Nobue)

Voiced by:Hitomi Nabatame(Japanese);Carol-Anne Day(English)

Nobue is the eldest main character. She is Chika's older sister and usually has final authority on all matters. She often tries to "borrow" money from Chika to buycigarettes.Nobue is perpetually searching for a part-time job to earn money for more cigarettes to calm hernicotine addiction.She has been described as akogal.

The story suggests that Nobue derives some kind of sensual pleasure from watching the girls do cute things. In this respect, Nobue appears to appreciate themoeaesthetic.It is seen during the anime that Nobue prefers Matsuri and Ana over Chika and Miu.

The Nobue character changed from the manga to the anime. In the manga, she is a sixteen-year-old high school freshman,while in the anime she is a twenty-year-old junior-college student.Her age is presumably changed because of her smoking and drinking habit, both becoming legal in Japan at age twenty. In the first episode of the anime, she initially introduces herself as a sixteen-year-old, intended to be a joke as she quickly states that she is really twenty. She tends to act somewhat less mature in her manga incarnation, doing things such as tricking Matsuri into thinking that Miu is dead. Her appearance changes radically in the early stages of the manga, especially her hair, which goes from blonde to dark brown (and is black in the anime).

Chika Itoh(Y đằng thiên giai,Itō Chika)

Voiced by:Saeko Chiba(Japanese); Wendy Morrison (English)

Chika is one of two twelve-year-olds in the story. She is the same age as Miu, and attends the same class as her neighbor Miu. Chika is a cheerful girl who shows more common sense than the other girls. Her main role in the series is that of an average, twelve-year-old girl, which is emphasized in the first manga volume, where her older sister Nobue describes Chika as specializing in "being totally generic." Her special skill is cooking, especially baking cookies. Her nickname is "Chi-chan" or just "Chi".

Miu Matsuoka(Tùng cương mỹ vũ,Matsuoka Miu)

Voiced by:Fumiko Orikasa(Japanese);Caitlynne Medrek(English)

Miu is another twelve-year-old girl who is depicted in the story as having a problem child personality. A childhood friend of Chika, she lives next door to the Itoh house and attends the same class as Chika. Miu likes to say random things out of the blue and often plays pranks on Matsuri and Ana, but is most of the time interrupted by Nobue (and sometimes by Chika), ending up lying face-down on the floor. She has the least common sense or manners of the girls, and is rarely taken seriously because of her weird ideas and comments. She seems to harbor some sort of jealousy of Ana and Matsuri due to the fact that Nobue finds them cuter. She tends to have no delicacy and often does things that bother people around her. Her nickname isMicchan.Miu has been described as "Yotsuba Koiwaiwith fangs ".

While she is often causing trouble for the other girls, an interview with the cast that was published in volume 4 of the manga series reveals that Miu is extremely fond of Chika, whom she dubs as her "one and only." The interview also states that Miu derives satisfaction from amusing Chika, and that she will never go to bed before making sure that Chika's room light is turned off. Lightyurithemes between Miu and Chika occasionally appear in the manga.

Matsuri Sakuragi(Anh mộc mạt lị,Sakuragi Matsuri)

Voiced by:Ayako Kawasumi(Japanese);Kylie Beaven(English)

Matsuri, nicknamed "Mats" in the manga, is an eleven-year-old glasses-wearing girl with a petferretnamed John. She is depicted as having a very timid personality, and is often the subject of Miu's teasing, which often results in her crying and hiding behind Nobue. She is one grade below Chika and Miu, and in the same class as Ana, with whom she quickly becomes friends. Matsuri discovers that Ana can speak Japanese fluently and helps her hide both her Japanese language skills and her lack of English language skills from the rest of their class. While she has gray hair in the anime, her hair is white in the manga.

Ana Coppola(アナ・コッポラ,Ana Koppora)

Voiced by:Mamiko Noto(Japanese);Katie Rowan(English)

Ana is an eleven-year-old girl who originally came fromCornwall,Englandfive years before the series, but seems to have forgotten how to speak English. She at first pretends that she speaks only English, but it is not long before she is discovered by Matsuri while speaking very polite Japanese. Matsuri tries to help her re-learn English. Ana is often teased by Miu because of her last, which in Japanese sounds like a typicalpsychomime(a form ofonomatopoeicsound). As such, Ana dislikes her last name and becomes angry when Miu calls "Coppola-chan". Miu also often spells her name inkanjito mean "hole", "bone", and "cave"(Huyệt cốt động).Ana's "proper Japanese" personality is reflected by her very traditionally-feminine and polite speaking style, and her impressive knowledge of Japanese words, customs, and traditions makes her seem more "Japanese" than most native Japanese people (which she also tries to hide). Later in the series, her ability to speak Japanese is discovered by the other students in her class. Ana owns a pet dog named Frusciante.

Media

Manga

Nobue's character design evolved rapidly in the first volume before achieving a stable model for the rest of the series.

TheIchigo Mashimaromanga,written and illustrated byBarasui,began serialization inASCII Media Works'sDengeki Daiohmagazine on February 15, 2002. The firsttankōbonwas released on January 27, 2003, and nine volumes have been released as of February 2023.TheFrenchcompany Kurokawa has an ongoing license of the manga under the titleLes petites fraises,whileSiam Inter Comicspublishes the series inThai.Tokyopoppreviously licensed the series for publication in theUnited States(in English, asStrawberry Marshmallow) and inGermany(in German, asErdbeeren & Marshmallows),but the series was canceled in 2008 after five English volumes and four German ones due to low sales, and is now out of print.

Early chapters of the manga break thefourth wall,especially in the first volume, where Chika often turns to face the readers when describing her plight. The manga currently publishes on an irregular basis with an inconsistent number of pages per issue.

Volume list

No.	Original release date	Original ISBN	English release date	English ISBN
1	January 27, 2003	4-8402-2292-4	July 11, 2006	978-1-59-816494-7
2	July 26, 2003	4-8402-2445-5	November 7, 2007	978-1-59-816495-4
3	March 27, 2004	4-8402-2623-7	March 13, 2007	978-1-59-816496-1
4	May 28, 2005	4-8402-2981-3	July 10, 2007	978-1-59-816497-8
5	April 27, 2007	978-4-8402-3872-4	June 8, 2008	978-1-42-780469-3
6	February 27, 2009	978-4-04-867634-2	–	—
7	March 27, 2013	978-4-04-891453-6	–	—
8	November 27, 2017	978-4-04-893394-0	–	—
9	February 27, 2023	978-4-04-914774-2	–	—

Anime

See also:List of Strawberry Marshmallow episodes

A 12-episodeStrawberry Marshmallowanimeseries produced byDaumeand directed byTakuya Satōaired in Japan between July 14 and October 13, 2005 on theTBSJapanese television network. A 4-minute special was also broadcast prior to the start of the series. The anime series was licensed forEnglish languagedistribution byGeneon.Threeoriginal video animation(OVA) episodes were later released between February 23 and April 25, 2007. A two-episode OVA series titled Ichigo MashimaroEncorewas released between January 23 and March 25, 2009. After going out of print due to the shutdown of Geneon's anime division, the series (including both OVAs) was later re-licensed bySentai Filmworks.

Audio CDs

FiveIchigo Mashimarodrama CDswere released between July 22, 2005 and August 25, 2006 on theFrontier Worksrecord label. They use the same voice actresses as the anime.There have also been fourcharacter songsingles (one for each girl except Nobue), two soundtrack albums for the original anime, multiple "Toy CDs," and two soundtrack albums for the OVA.

Visual novel

Screenshot from the visual novel featuring Matsuri.

Thevisual novel,under the original title ofIchigo Mashimaro,was developed byASCII Media Worksfor thePlayStation 2based on the series under an all-agesCEROrating. The game was first released on August 11, 2005and was re-released on March 8, 2007 at a lower price. Players take on the role of a college student, a childhood friend of Nobue who has come to visit. Over the course of a month, he gradually gets to know one of the girls and begins to go on dates with them.

Differences between media

There are several, large differences between the manga and anime versions of the series such as the much earlier introduction of Ana in the anime than the manga. In the manga, Ana does not appear until the second volume, while she makes her debut in the second episode of the anime. Events that take place in the manga never appeared in the anime, and chapters that were adapted were mixed together or were altered. For example, episode seven of the anime, "Going to the Sea", mixes elements of volume 1 manga "episodes" (chapters) nine, "Critical Investigation", and ten, "Beach Challenge". While Ana is present in the anime episode, she was not in the manga versions at all.

Character designs were extremely inconsistent in the early stages of the manga, before Barasui knew thatStrawberry Marshmallowwould become a series, a fact referenced at the end of the first volume. Character designs are even more inconsistent with the visual novel, which uses a mix between the manga and anime's styles along with its own unique changes. For example, Matsuri has blonde hair in the visual novel, while she has white or gray hair in other mediums. Early chapters of the manga also had Miu drawn almost identical to Chika, with their hair length being the only visible difference between them.

In addition, some of the girls' personalities are slightly different in each media: Matsuri is shown to be a little more defensive in the manga than her anime counterpart, which was demonstrated by her slapping or shoving Miu away when the latter got overboard with her pranks, while she never (deliberately) laid a finger on Miu in the anime. There are also subtle differences in Miu and Chika's personalities between the manga and the anime, e.g. Miu is more random and unpredictable in the manga compared to her anime counterpart. Chika is also targeted by Miu more often in the manga as compared to the anime (but not as much as Matsuri is), resulting in more outbursts of anger from her in the manga.

Reception

Strawberry Marshmallowhas received positive reviews in English. Carlo Santos fromAnime News Networkhas describedStrawberry Marshmallowas "a clever little comedy that delivers laughs via its straight-faced approach" and has mentioned that "There is something uniquely appealing aboutMarshmallow's deadpan delivery ".Dirk Deppey fromThe Comics Journalstated that "Barasui sets up his comic situations with little if any extraneous padding and plays out the resulting gags with the skill and grace of a master craftsman".The phrase "cute girls doing cute things", a subgenre of theslice of lifegenre, was used by fans to describe the series as early as 2004.

Erica Friedman ofYuriconhas called the series "too-cute-to-hate",but criticized the now out-of-print English language publication of the manga for not providing any translations for sound effects, and for not providing explanations for some puns.Jason Thompson,writing aboutThe Last Uniformfor the appendix toManga: The Complete Guide,contrasts the two series and callsStrawberry Marshmallow"purely juvenile gaze-into-the-girls-world stuff".

External links

• Strawberry MarshmallowatDengeki Daioh(in Japanese)
• Strawberry MarshmallowatTBS(in Japanese)
• Strawberry Marshmallow(manga) atAnime News Network's encyclopedia