Tamako Market

## Tamako Market *Tamako Market* is Kyoto Animation at its most quietly inventive — an original series that commits fully to the pleasures of a single shopping arcade and the people who call it home, and discovers that commitment is more than enough. Tamako Kitashirakawa is the eldest daughter of the Kitashirakawa family, who run a mochi shop in a traditional covered shopping arcade called Usagiyama. She is cheerful, a little clumsy, devoted to her friends and her neighborhood, and completely uninterested in growing up — or in the obvious feelings of her childhood friend Mochizou, whose family runs the rival mochi shop across the arcade. Into this comfortable world arrives Dera Mochimazzi, a plump and self-important tropical bird who claims to be searching for a bride for the prince of a distant island kingdom. Dera installs himself in the Kitashirakawa home, immediately becomes obsessed with eating mochi and watching television, and manages to bring everyone in the arcade into progressively stranger situations. *Tamako Market* uses its comedic premise to explore what a community is — how a place holds its people, how people hold each other — with a warmth and visual artistry that has made it one of the sleeper treasures of the KyoAni catalog.