wenty-year-old Atsuko Akenegi says she'd like to go to college, or spend time hanging out with cute boys, like other girls her age. But she doesn't have time: She's busy helping out at the small fresh-fish shop her father left to her and her bossy, overbearing mother. She makes the deliveries and brings in the stock while her mother runs the place, but the two of them are strained trying to keep the place going on their own, and the money just isn't coming in—the bank is ready to foreclose on them. Atsuko's rich, flashy young fiancé Minoru keeps offering to help—to pay off their debts or hire more help for them—but she proudly refuses. It's clear that her arranged marriage doesn't sit well with her, and that her fiancé and his offers annoy her. And her burning attraction to an easygoing friend, 40-year-old jazz fiend Mr. Kurata, sits equally poorly with Minoru, who feels Atsuko is shaming him.
Elsewhere on Hokkaido, 15-year-old Karin Shiraishi has been stuck miserably in the hospital for two years with a worsening lung condition. She needs surgery, but she's terrified and refuses to accept the diagnosis. Instead, she finds comfort in her dreams, where she's a princess in a land high in the clouds, and her handsome prince—whose face she can never quite see—comes to her rescue. She recreates these dreams as stories, which she posts on her blog, to a growing Internet fandom. And through them, she forms a friendship with an unseen admirer. But that doesn't help her deal with her new doctor, who offends her in ways that seem to change every day.
These two stories are par for the course in Diamond Daydreams (also known as Diamond Dust Drops), a 12-episode series about six women and their relationships, which all connect via a single thread: The magical legend of the "diamond dust" of the Hokkaido sky, which supposedly unites lovers and makes dreams come true.
Downbeat and different
Diamond Daydreams is an unconventional romance show, in that it tells a series of short, self-contained stories with a common setting and a common link, but about characters who don't know each other and don't interact. This initial volume tells two tales, in two episodes each, but while it's engaging and in some ways intriguing, it doesn't necessarily whet appetites for more: The lack of an ongoing plot leaves no hooks to pull viewers back. And the other natural incentive for return—the story quality—is a bit erratic.
Of the two tales, Atsuko's is more involved and more unusual, particularly in its choice of protagonists—Atsuko's complete and forceful rejection of her handsome, well-to-do, solicitous, attentive would-be husband—who isn't grasping or evil, he's just not the one she wants—flies admirably in the face of decades of wish-fulfillment anime tradition. And when she sets her sights on a man twice her age, the story actually starts to feel admirably close to messy real life rather than like predictable fantasy. By contrast, Karin's story has a much stronger fantasy element and a correspondingly more straightforward plot. Karin is also a more familiar anime type, with her sad dreams and her internal barrier to overcome. Her segment often feels trite. But both stories share a similar problem: Their protagonists are arbitrary and volatile, sometimes to an annoying degree. Both leap to attack and reject people who are trying to help them, without considering any feelings but their own, and both seem self-centered as a result. That tends to curdle the show's sweet, melancholy tone.
The animation of Diamond Daydreams is pretty basic, with cute character designs but low-key, somewhat drab and simple images; very little stands out, apart from Karin's striking castle-on-a-cloud sequences, with their elaborate costumes and rich painting. For the most part, the animation isn't a special draw. The main attraction is simply how unique the show feels. But that flavor is unusual enough to appeal only to a very small number of viewers.
The hefty extras package on this DVD is a bit unusual—there's a director's interview, a Hokkaido travelogue and featurette, a radio show with the Japanese voice artists, and more.
— Tasha
Back to the top.
