Miss Monochrome, the Animation

Number of Episodes: 13

What Wikipaedia Crunchyroll says: "In this short animated series, Miss Monochrome is an android who decides to try and become a top idol singer in the ever growing competitive market."

tTPO says: I love me a short anime series. And by that I mean the magic 4 minute ones. Including the credits. That is not to say they are all good by any means but I find it pleasantly surprising what can be fit into such a short time frame. It just goes to show how much fat there can be in a full length show.

Miss Monochrome is mostly a lightweight slice of life series, but along the way they manage to squeeze in very decent slabs of humour (mostly based around Miss Monochrome's being an android in a human world), pathos (not least of which is for Ru-chan, her robotic vaccum cleaner) and an epic backstory (which only takes part of a couple of episodes - economic storytelling at its best).

How About the Music?: Here is the irony. Miss Monochrome is an original design by singer and voice actress Yui Horie (who also voiced Miss Monochrome via heavily effected autotune on her voice) so she could, amongst other things, compete with virtual idols. Very post-modern.

There is only one song, the ED ("Poker face" by, er, Yui Horie), and it is a sweet bit of J-pop.

So How Does it End? (Spoiler Free): Satisfactorily. With lots of room for a season 2.

Overall Grade: There is much joy in this show, and for tTPO, its hard to argue with the 4 minute investment. B+