Castle Town Dandelion Final Thoughts--I Always Feel Like Somebody's Watching Me

A huge royal family holds elections to find out who will become the next king, and shy daughter Akane wants to win so that she can outlaw the use of security cameras.

This show was pretty adorable. Despite being born with supernatural powers and working individual election campaigns to become the next king, this family is pretty down to earth. This is not a political intrigue show; it’s a family-centric comedy that puts a lot of focus on the relationships between the siblings and sometimes their friends with some slapstick via superpowers occasionally thrown in. Thanks to the large cast, things never got boring, and it’s easy to find a character to root for.

The show also breaks itself up into short episodes-within-an-episode similar to the American cartoon style, where an “episode” is about ten to fifteen minutes long, but the show itself runs for half an hour. Castle Town Dandelion ran about two to three “episodes” a week, so on the off-chance that something fell flat for me it was easy to wait it out or skip forward to the next part.

I also enjoyed the superpowers, some of which are pretty unique. I’m still not entirely sure how someone can be born with an ability that drains a bank account (Was she born with the bank account? Does her power take physical cash into consideration?), but others were an interesting spin on powers I’ve seen elsewhere in media, like the one where the doppelgangers have individual personalities. It gave a unique twist to the show, and I think other series that employ superpowers could learn from it.

But the relationships where the part of the show that I enjoyed the most. The family members are genuinely kind and caring to each other and have some great sibling banter. If you want to restore your faith that anime can have some heartwarming family interactions without weird undertones, then this show has some great scenes for you!

However, all of that runs counter to the one problem that I had with the show—the random sexualization of Akane. Early episodes seem to take pleasure in putting her in compromising situations, to the point that I completely understand her fear of cameras. There’s even a short episode dedicated to her entire school obsessing over whether she forgot to wear a skirt or not (in the episode, she’s wearing a long shirt that just barely covers everything).

Did she wax her legs and then dip them in oil? Sorry, but legs do not work like that...

While this sort of thing is unfortunately standard for anime, it stands out in this series since everything else is pretty tame and cute in comparison. None of the other female characters are focused on in this way, so it becomes clear that Akane has been singled out to be the fan service element when it wouldn’t have changed the show at all if those scenes had never been there in the first place.

Still, I looked forward to watching Castle Town Dandelion every week this past summer because of its cute style and genuine character interactions. If you’re looking for a slice-of-life comedy that a little different from the norm, this is a good title to look at!

Images from Funimation.com and Hulu.com. Please support the official simulcast.

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