#”Tamako Love Story”: romantic contrast program

After the “Tamako Market” series has found its way to the German Disc shelves, Polyband Anime is now completing the release with the associated sequel film. But does “Tamako Love Story” offer a coherent finale in film format? We find out in this review!

• Label: polyband anime
• Publication: 28.02.2025
• FSK: Released without age restriction
• Duration: Approx. 83 min
• Image format: 16:9
• Resolution: 1920 x 1080 p
• Genre: Romance, Slice of Life
• Languages: German, Japanese (DTS-HD 2.0)
• Subtitle: Deutsch
• Number of discs: 1
• Packaging: Ordered
• Extras: Storyboard booklet, bonus feature “Dera von der South Sea island”, Clean Opening, Clean Ending

Ending-Song des Films

Story

While everyone else is looking forward to the fact that the school will soon be over, Tamako has a sad experience: getting older means losing contact with friends because they plunge into a new life. Tamako’s friends seem to have all big plans and fantastic dreams, only she herself never thought about anything other than staying where she is and working in her family’s Mochi shop. But maybe she is not as alone as she thinks, and there is someone who wants to make the future plans that take the Tamako.

(Description: Polyband Anime)

Personal assessment (Attention, spoiler!)

In my reviews of the series (Vol. 1, Vol. 2), I already found that the Romance genre in “Tamako Market” was practically not represented. So the anime made no secret of Mochizouus true feelings for Tamako, the complete ignorance of which, together with Mochizous, resulted in a stagnating relationship. As the name suggests, “Tamako Love Story” takes on this gap. The film plays in the series after the events, but emotionally makes completely different tones. The speaking bird Dera, who still played a central role in the anime, has now returned to his home country on a South Sea island. If “Tamako Market” was mainly designed for gags around the voracious bird, the coming-of-age film, on the other hand, takes a look at the emotional worlds of the two main characters.

Tamako and her friends are now about to graduate, which inevitably asks the question of their own future. The topic is certainly not new and has already been dealt with in numerous other films and series. “Tamako Love Story” combines the motif with the relationship between Tamako and Mochizou. I liked that the film takes enough time and pursued my own pace. In my opinion, Tamako’s reaction to Mochizous love confession was implemented very realistically. Already in the course of the series I wondered how Tamako would react to love. There she was shown completely unsuspectingly in terms of Mochizous feelings. Accordingly, it is completely through the wind after the confession and has to sort her own thoughts first. Surprisingly, despite its moderate term of 83 minutes, the film has a few lengths in this phase, but they are necessary so as not to overhale the story development.

So much can be revealed: the sequel skillfully manages to add Tamako’s answer to Mochizou without being unnatural or forced. This requires a lot of sensitivity in the character traits specified by the series. Only the end comes a bit abrupt. Here the bonus clip “Dera from the South Sea island” contained on the disc is apparently intended as a litter to let the film sack with something comedy. The approximately 5-minute extra shows again briefly DERA, Choi and the prince, and refers to a gag in the film.

If you look at the image design of the film, the changed lighting for the series immediately stands out. While the latter was still very colorful, many scenes in “Tamako Love Story” are deliberately overexposed and therefore have a significantly pale color palette. As with some other films by Naoko Yamada, a blurring effect on the image edges, which is reminiscent of a real camera lens, is also used. All of this underlines the somewhat more serious atmosphere of the film to mentally switch to the series. The animations and backgrounds move typically at an even higher level than the already very well implemented anime.

The German synchronization from TNT Media in Potsdam ties up seamlessly to “Tamako Market”. Thanks to the series, the speakers have already gotten into their roles. However, any criticism of some unfortunate casts remains due to the unchanged cast. Based on the Japanese soundtrack, we only get stereotone, but this is completely sufficient with regard to the film content. The mixing of German synchronization presents itself as a craftsmanship. Changing positions of the characters were pushed accordingly on the left or right channel. The dialogue book is still quite inconspicuous, but caused me in a scene in which Mamedai speaks to his father with “grandpa”, but for a short brushing.

I was also somewhat surprised by the pricing of the DISC publication. The Blu-ray is currently available for around 33 euros. In the packaging, the price, which I think is upscale, does not reflect again: This is only a somewhat wider amaray cover, which, however, does not contain anything apart from the disc. A 64-page storyboard booklet is included as a separate extra. Personally, I can only gain storyboards to a limited extent, since the drawings contained therein are very roughly outlined and sometimes only at a line level level. Unfortunately, there are also no explanations or other German text. The film itself is also quite short-even with the 5-minute bonus clip, which is why the price-performance ratio fluctuates somewhat. Nevertheless, I am a poly band anime for the publication, so some “Tamako Market” fans can now completely close their gap on the shelf in this country.

Conclusion

With its calm way and almost complete, the film offers a clear contrast program to the series. Here you take enough time for the relationship development of Tamako and Mochizou. At the same time, the characters remain loyal to their actions in the series, which leaves the finale a positive overall impression. Only the end may be a bit suddenly hits the viewer.

The German publication by Polyband Anime presents itself analogously to the series, but cannot fully justify its price in direct comparison to other anime film publications.

Evaluation

>> Here you can buy “Tamako Love Story” on Blu-ray! <<

We would like to thank poly band anime for providing the review copy!

The contribution “Tamako Love Story”: Romantic contrast program was first published on manime.de.

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