Sixty Years Since Mighty Atom: 2007

After having the sudden impression Azumanga Daioh was a bit too comedic to really feel like a “cute girls doing cute things” anime (much less “a prototype for that genre”), I could at least suppose Hidamari Sketch would be cuter. As I watched the first episode of that later series, though, I did find myself taking particular note of the “dotty backgrounds, character closeups, and real-life collages,” which befitted the “cute things” being high school art but just might have nudged towards that dangerous thought “now if it’s interesting, it can’t be ‘cute girls doing cute things.’”
( At the Hidamari Apartments )