Prequel

Movie, 1995, 1 ep,6.16(355),7.04(362)

high school love story, love polygons

Kodomo no Omocha, or Kodocha for short, is Marmalade Boy on crack. The romantic and problematic themes are in fact very similar, well they are both long-running shoujo manga after all, but Kodocha's main character is completely hyper in both her actions and speech.

high school love story, love polygons

Light-hearted and sweet romantic comedies. Both have similar animation styles. In both shows the main characters live together along with their parents.

Love Comedy with a weird twist :) Definately would recommend to Marmalade Boy fans.

Similiar romance.

Marmalade boy reminds me alot of suzaka

byprte007 on2023-01-16 14:05

Really must see for any romance (romcom) fan.

bymihara on2021-07-24 08:17

I noticed this seems largely forgotten today, so I decided to write a recommendation.

This show should be the benchmark against which all other romcoms are to be judged. A great many will be found wanting. It might not be as pretty to look at as they are, being some twenty years older, but it still beats the pants off most of them.

When you watch it, it seems tame, cute, and slow. Yet on average, once about every five episodes, a wham moment comes in out of the blue and upsets the fragile balance of interpersonal relationships the cast had just achieved, something entirely believable in the framework of the plot and yet, it's something you didn't expect. The constant impression of "what the hell just happened" keeps you coming back for more when it's long past time to go to sleep.

If you plan to only ever watch one romcom anime, watch this one. If you don't plan to watch romcoms at all, watch this one anyway.

byCakeChan on2021-02-27 21:09

Ideal world with no poverty and fat people. Main characters are local "sex idols", tho it still well done anime

byMemiii on2013-10-16 10:39

The series that made me start watching romantic/comedy animes :)

by13thhiko on2012-02-12 22:52

since I watched it some time back now that i write a recommendation, it didn't leave that big impression however, definitely fun and worth the watch.

byaztec92 on2011-07-02 04:54

Definately superior to boys over flowers which gained alot more popularity than this show. Personally this is one of the best school romance shows with an unusual plot.
This show will always remain in my heart as one of the best animes I have ever seen.

by123456789o on2010-06-23 04:11

After a recent re-watch of this, I would go so far as to say that this is likely the greatest anime of the romantic/comedy genre of all time. They just don't make 'em like this anymore. Not since anime has become as main-stream and cliché as it is these days.

byaztec92 on2011-07-17 10:08

OVERVIEW:

Marmalade boy is one of those shows that will always have a special place in my heart. It is an extremely heart warming anime that is quite unusual and deals with family issues that aren’t in the ‘normal’ spectrum. This anime is one of the greatest family oriented romance anime in history in my opinion. So, Now I shall go over the awesomeness.

PLOT:

The plot is not as basic as one would first think. At first glance it looks like a typical school life romance but after the first few episodes you can tell it is quite different.

The main characters name is Miki Koishikawa a typical high school student with not so typical parents. One day her life is turned right around when her parents say they are getting a divorce and switching partners with another married couple. Along with that she finds out that they will all be moving in together and the other couple has a teenage son called Yuu Matsuura. They soon fall in love.

CHARACTERS:

Miki Koshikawa - Miki Koshikawa is a high school student, who is on the Toryo High School tennis team. She is cheerful, friendly, supportive, outspoken and good-hearted. On the other hand, she can also be insecure and very emotionally dependent on others.

Yuu Matsuura - Matsuura Yuu is the male protagonist of the series. Miki gives him the "Marmalade Boy" moniker as she thinks that he is like marmalade - pretty looking, and sweet only on the surface, yet bitter. Compared to Miki, Yuu's character is almost a complete opposite to hers, as he tends to be more detached, less emotional, and less open about his feelings. He admits to admiring Miki's ability to show her emotions clearly, and it being one of the reasons he fell in love with her.

Meiko Akizuki - Miki's best female friend, Meiko is the only child of wealthy parents and very much the beautiful and mature type. Her family life is troubled. Her parents are unfaithful to each other and constantly argue. She has a secret that she hides from everyone.

Satoshi Miwa - The president of the student body and a third year . Many girls are obsessed with him but he is only interested in Meiko Akizuki, and tries to get her to like him in place of Na-chan. His crude sense of humor however, do not sit well with Meiko, who believes him to be irresponsible and a playboy.

Suou Ginta - Ginta is Miki's best male friend and a member of the Toryo tennis team. Miki has had a crush on him since junior high and confessed her feelings to Ginta in a note. The note was found by his classmates and Ginta brushed it off without knowing at the time that she was watching... although he felt the same way about Miki.

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT:

The character development is the show. Besides the lack of development for miki's character the other characters changed alot through the series and it was really well done. It is a coming of age show so most of the characters are going through the changes of puberty and the anime really portrays it perfectly.

STORY DEVELOPMENT:

The show is 76 episodes long with a movie which covers yuu's perspective of the first few episodes of the show. The show has alot of drama and I rarely thought it was boring.

ART:

The art is very 90's. The character designs in my opinion are good, same with the background artwork and such. The one thing that gets me is the atrocious colours and clothes that are used in the show. Some of them made me want to throw up.

ANIMATION:

Again, Very 90's. The show does develop better animation as the show goes on but for it's time it was very good. Some of the random sparkles and bubbles got a bit old but thats a pretty typical thing to see an any shoujo anime.



SOUNDTRACK:

I LOVE THE MUSIC. It definately fits the show perfectly. But for such a long series they didn't really have that much music to work with. So that was a bit disappointing.

VOICE ACTING:

Japanese = BAD.

English = Fantastic.

Surprisingly enough the english dub is far superior to the sub simply because the recording quality of the voices was alot better and nicer on the ears. The japanese audio would have been better if the recording quality wasn't so bad.

byxraytp on2005-03-23 18:33

O.K., so it is my first review here, so forgive me any possible mistakes and language errors (English is not my national language after all).

"Marmalade Boy" is what can be called classic romance anime. We have high school girl, high school boy, love between them and their everyday life with their friends and families. For details, go to the 'Story' section of review.

Animation:

Some technical details first: there are sometimes strange movements of picture at the bottom, but it's only problem, I noticed. The quality - well this anime is more than 10 years old so do not expect diamond sharp picture (I mean even in DVD rips).

Now to the point: this is standard animation from that time, nothing really brilliant, nothing really bad, with standard tricks which can be found in almost every anime of that kind: changes of background when something important is about to happen (you know, mellow colors and light in romantic scenes, etc.), weird face looks when surprised (good that nobody hits the ground when surprised as in some comedy animes). People are drawn as expected, women and girls are pretty, men and boys are good-looking, moves are fluent. Backgrounds are rather well drawn, colorful with all details necessary for nice watching.

Sound:

Again some technical details first: the quality of sound in Animecha version is poor. The episodes are in .ogm container format with English and Japanese audio tracks (and English subtitles). When Japanese track is loud and clear, English one is not (ep. 1-24), and when English is loud and clear, Japanese one is not
(from ep. 25 on). So doesn't matter which you choose you will be dissapointed with what you hear through the part of series (not to mention that some first episodes have weird third audio track inserted, I don't really know what for).

O.K., to the point: (1) Voice actors - Japanese seiyuu did good job, voices are well chosen and fit the characters, but English voices... I watched many animes in English/Japanese versions and English version always hurts my ears. Same here - English voice actors recite their lines with childlish intonation. I don't know why there is always the same matter - Japanese voices are far better fitted to characters and are much more convincing and mature (with regard to character actual age, of course). (2) Background music - as usual in anime, good for the mood, maybe not unforgetable, but does its job. (3) Songs - very catchy opening song, not bad closing ones. Some other songs introduced through the series did not catch my ear, with one exception - song played at school festival which has very good synth solo.

Regarding Animation and Sound: I wasn't taking into account the technical issues based on the copy I watched, when rating these categories.

Story:

Miki Koishikawa is normal high school girl who lives with her mother Rumi and father Jin, goes to school with her best friends Meiko Akizuki and Ginta Suou, and likes to play tennis. But one day, her parents return from trip to Hawaii and announce that they met there other married couple - Youii and Chiyako Matsuura, fell in love and decided to divorce, switch partners with them and remarry. Additionaly, Matsuuras have a son named Yuu, who is same age as Miki and is very handsome guy. To avoid the problems with separation parents and children, all six of them are going to live in same house, and Yuu transfers to Miki school and class. And that's where story begins...

As I wrote before, "Marmalade Boy" is romance anime, so the main axis of series is of course love between Miki and Yuu with its ups and downs on the way, with some (better or worse) side stories. It could be told that plots are based basically on love triangles. So at first we have triangle between Miki, Yuu and Ginta; then between Yuu, Miki and Arimi, etc., etc. Each triangle is resolved during the course of series, and immediately emerges new one (with old persons in new configurations, or with new persons which are continously introduced through the series). The side love stories follow roughly the same pattern and are good for the series (especially my personal number one - story of Meiko and Na-chan) as we do not observe only love affairs between main characters (O.K., there must be something added when you make 76 episodes series). If you like such construction of plot - it's up to you, watch for yourself. I like it, but I can understand that somebody can feel annoyed when authors just repeat the pattern, introducing every few episodes a new character (Arimi, Kei, Suzu, et.) which in any way starts messing up with Miki and Yuu relationship (and when they introduce something new, they must close the series...).

Characters:

Characters in the series are constructed in usual way (Miki is very pure-hearted, honest and unable to hide her feelings well; Yuu pretends to be tough guy with poker face, but inside is warm-hearted and very caring - rather normal in romance anime, isn't it ?). Of course main characters have most detailed personalities with many features, when side characters have few characteristics detailed (these ones which are needed for their role in a plot), and the rest is more or less sketched. But as in life, every person has own story, past and unrevealed secrets, sometimes hard.

Value:

Rewatching value... well "Marmalade Boy" is a type of anime which, if you like, you can watch anytime you feel for it with pleasure, whole of it or even single episodes or moments you like best.

Enjoyment:

I enjoyed this series very, very much. I like romance anime generally, so I was happy that I found long, heart-warming series with many twists and turns (even if they are rather predictable), many characters which you can like, identify with, and understand.

Some last words:

I will be glad if somebody watches the series and comes to like it after reading my review. But of course, all what is written above is my personal opinion concerning the series. You do not have to agree with it. If you have other opinion concerning any part of this anime, please write your own review and present it to the world.
Happy watching for everyone !!!