Spoiler Alert: Yumeiro Patissiere

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Yumeiro Patissiere is a feel good anime about a girl, Amano Ichigo, whose only talent is her ability to eat infinite amounts of sweets. During a sweets festival, Ichigo stumbles upon Henri Lucas, a genius patissier from Paris, who discovers her amazing taste-buds and invites her to join St. Marie Academy to become a patissiere. Ichigo, decides to transfer to the academy without realising the level of excellence expected in the classes. She has trouble adjusting but with the help of the Sweets Princes and her Sweets Spirit partner, Vanilla, she soon learns to hone her skills and with practice, tries to catch up to everyone else.

Now, I know what you’re thinking – this is just some mindless, cutsie, shoujo for five year olds still into fairies and tiaras. To be honest, the anime almost makes an effort to make sure that image never leaves your mind. On the surface, it is a reliable anime to watch when you need your spirits lifted and what a bit of fun. However, this anime is extremely layered and deals with stories and characters with several dimensions. The story is consistent and characterised extremely well. Unlike anime such as Uta no Prince-sama, Ichigo is constantly learning new things about sweets and hasn’t miraculously become the best patissiere in her year. Of course, there are some talents that are discovered, of course, they weren’t ever hidden, just unacknowledged. The story uses sweets to solve its problems and express many an emotion.

We are often too focused on the bad things in the world, the negative traits that people posses. The question these days always seems to be, what’s wrong? Yumeiro Patissiere, in its subtle ways reminds me that it’s not about the bad or the negative, those aren’t actual entities. It’s about the good and the positive. Every character in the show is flawed in more ways than one and some seem more flawed than other, but, at the end of the day the flaws are just there to make them human and relatable. What they are is the collection of the good. They are incredible at making sweets and many other things.

I would recommend giving this show a chance. As much as we all like to portray dark things and serious and important and cheerful things as silly and shallow, the world isn’t black and white and Yumeiro Patissiere does a good job of reminding us that. It is cheerful and cutsie, and it is serious and full of valuable “lessons”.

Share your thoughts in the comments.

Signing off

Pigment Editor