Dagashi Kashi Is a Lightweight Sweet Treat

What do new friends, obligatory part-time jobs, and an obsessive love for penny candy have in common? You’ll find all of them in Dagashi Kashi, a goofy, earnest, and sweet anime from 2016. Much like a cheap sugary treat, this series was so straightforward as to feel almost plain at times, and yet I still found myself wanting more.

Funimation

Dagashi Kashi centers primarily around Kokonotsu Shikada (nicknamed “Coconuts” due to the similar sound of the Japanese pronunciation of his name and the English word). Despite coming from a long line of candy shop owners—nine generations, to be exact—he just wants to practice his art skills in peace so he can fulfill his dream of becoming a manga artist someday. Kokonotsu, much to his chagrin, spends a lot of his time helping his dad run their dagashi (Japanese penny candy) shop, surreptitiously sketching whenever he can find a spare moment. It’s a fairly peaceful life, if not exactly what he wants to be doing—peaceful, that is, until Hotaru Shidare comes onto the scene. Her father owns a popular snack company, and he’s bound and determined to hire Kokonotsu’s father, Yō, to manage a chain of shops he plans to open. Yō’s not interested; all he wants is to keep his candy shop legacy going, with Kokonotsu as his successor. However, he knows that Kokonotsu has no plans to take over for him, so he strikes a deal with Hotaru’s father: if he and his daughter can convince Kokonotsu to take over as owner of their family’s dagashi shop one day, then Yō will agree to sign on as chain manager.

For the most part, that’s where the plot of this anime begins and ends. A combination gag anime and slice-of-life series, it has just enough story to keep things rolling along, but its true focus turns out to be Hotaru’s all-consuming (pun intended) obsession with dagashi and cheap snack foods of all kinds. Throughout the series, she describes how different dagashi came to be, why they became popular, and, mostly, why they’re yummy, and how she just wants to eat them all the time (which she usually proceeds to do). Most episodes feature a particular dagashi or snack that Kokonotsu and his friends are either trying to sell, learn more about, or just nosh on. In many ways, this framework often makes the series feel like one giant commercial for Japanese penny candy, with a lot of great jokes and a shoestring plot thrown into the mix.

As silly as that sounds, and as much as I would not have expected to like a show of this description, I really enjoyed this series. Were there moments when it seemed like Hotaru had been going on and on about a single type of dagashi for ages? Yes. Was it hard to latch on to what on earth the point of the story was sometimes? For sure. But was it a blast to join Kokonotsu and his friends as they filled their days with various candy-related shenanigans? Most definitely (also, the series made me want to try some dagashi so badly that I made a one-time purchase of a Japanese candy subscription box, so . . . point to the series creators?). Aside from the overall goofiness, my favorite aspect of the series was that, like many other gag anime, it uses well-known over-the-top anime tropes to tell an otherwise simple story, and the juxtaposition of high-emotion/high-drama moments with mundane themes leads to tons of funny moments, not to mention an element of cleverness that I didn’t expect to find in this anime.

If you’re looking for an anime series with depth, you’ll have to look elsewhere, but if you’re in the mood for some lighthearted, low-stakes fun, and a story with a great (and surprisingly varied) cast of characters who, despite all the silliness going on in their lives, genuinely care about each other, you’ll find it in Dagashi Kashi. It’s a great end-of-summer anime—something about the no-holds-barred silliness has that “last hurrah before school starts” feel to me. No matter when you watch it, though, Dagashi Kashi promises a zany, frenetic, wholesome good time.

So far, there’s only two seasons of Dagashi Kashi, and they end on a bit of a cliffhanger. Finishing the episodes is like getting to the bottom of a tube of Pringles—you’re not entirely sure what was in those things besides air and flavor, but you know you want some more. Time will tell whether more seasons of Dagashi Kashi are still to come, but in the meantime, you can stream the series on Hulu, Crunchyroll, and Funimation.