"Castle Town Dandelion" review
The anime starts off with an interesting premise and approach to a super-powered main cast. The usual approach in anime is to either have a whole society integrated with super powered beings like "My Hero Academia" or "Soul Eater" but in this anime, it's solely royalty with super powers. Those powers are treated as evidence that they're royalty. This isn't a drama series in the slightest, no tensions with a resentful underclass at how unfair the disparity in power is, both in economics and actual human ability. It's a happy go lucky slice of life where the series follows the royal family as the father of the household decides to hold an election so that the people can effectively vote for the next heir to the royal crown. The whole election is treated as a media event with popularity polls and random check ins with all candidates, yes even the children are candidates though their "campaigns" are treated as cute ventures and nothing more. The children of the royal family make promises to "vanquish evil and spread joy" as third graders do. The majority of the series follows the 9 kids as they live their lives hanging out with friends, living up to their responsibilities at home and at school (some of them are involved with clubs and so on). The only real "plot" aside from the slice of life everyday hijinks is the election which hangs over their head as they reflect on what they would do if they were king. The emotional center of the show is Akane who due to a certain trauma when she was younger, hates being on camera and being in the spotlight in any capacity. It triggers what amounts to a panic attack and her goal in becoming king would be disassemble all surveillance, cameras and PR so she can go on to live as a hermit. Long term she has no plans on how to deal with issues like national security or the economy. The fan service is mostly minimal except for a few parts in the first few episodes.
The anime as a whole is a very cute and almost sitcom like setup for an interesting take on the "what if people had superpowers in this day and age" idea we see so often. The slice of life antics remind me of something like "Full house" or "iCarly" more than something like Invincible or Kickass. The manga on the other hand is evolving in a very interesting way. For the first 5 volumes it was in a 4 panel structure meaning each page had 4 panels to establish quick jokes set in the everyday antics of the Sakurada royal family until a change in management grants the author "Ayumu Kasuga" the freedom to change the manga how they see fit. Their choice was to pivot to a more action-centric approach where the main story arc is a battle royal arc where the Sakurada family has to fight the Fahrenheit royal family for the right to host an international event held only every 20 years. The winning family gets to have their wish granted so if you decide to catch up on the manga, you'll see the same cozy comedy established in the anime until it's suddenly a battle action series. Personally I enjoy both approaches but this change in style and story focus left a lot of fans with a feeling of whiplash.
