Anime Hajime Review: Rokuhoudou Yotsuiro Biyori

***Warning, the following may contain spoilers for Rokuhoudou Yotsuiro Biyori. Reader discretion is advised.***

Series Synopsis

Welcome to the Japanese style coffee shop Rokuhoudou. Every day, this tiny, tucked away, bamboo-laden paradise welcomes customers who just want a moment to relax with a hot meal and delicious sweets. Ensuring that every visit is a pleasant one is the accommodating staff of this small café.

Kyousui Tougoku (voiced by Junichi Suwabe) inherited Rokuhoudou from his grandfather. To maintain the store’s reputation, Kyousui relies on his friends Tokitaka Nagae, Gregorio Valentino, and Tsubaki Nakao (voiced by Yuuichi Nakamura, Daisuke Ono, and Daiki Yamashita).

These four men love their work, and they are extremely good at what they do. Along with serving their customers’ orders, the staff of Rokuhoudou is more than happy to listen to whatever troubles someone is going through.

All year round, the employees of Rokuhoudou are always trying to improve themselves. Kyousui and his team don’t dream of being the best and fanciest restaurant in Tokyo. However, if they can make sure that every person in their establishment leaves with a smile, to them, that is a job well-done.

Series Positives

Initially, I was going to slowly lead into what my thoughts on this show were. I wanted to set things up to make it seem like I was going in one direction, but then suddenly, BAM, hit you with what was really going on in my head. However, when I sat down to write this review, I realized something.

I can’t be bothered to beat around the bush with Rokuhoudou Yotsuiro Biyori (RYB). This show was not good. I won’t use a term like “awful” to describe this series. Except, I will use phrases such as “frustratingly boring” and “wholly uninteresting.”

To you, dear reader, here are some words of advice should you decide to check out RYB:

First, don’t.

Second, don’t watch this series if you intend to stay up late at night. I’m serious. I was barely through the first episode, and I was finding it difficult to stay awake. As for the rest of this show, there were parts where it was almost impossible to pay attention to what was happening because, frankly, nothing was.

RYB went about its business as though it was a light-hearted slice-of-life anime with plenty of charm, wit, and silliness. In reality, though, this show had zero consistency, and it had no idea what it actually wanted to be. Therefore, what we were left with was a giant mess of a series that was about twelve episodes too long.

I’m getting ahead of myself. This is supposed to be the Series Positives section of this review. And yes, there are some positive things I can say about this show.

For starters, the voice cast did as good a job as possible given the material they had to work with. Do I think this show completely wasted talents such as Daisuke Ono and Yuuichi Nakamura? Absolutely. If you want to watch far better series that came out the same year as RYB – 2018 – with the two actors I mentioned, please check out Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens for Mr. Ono and Tada-kun wa Koi wo Shinai for Mr. Nakamura.

The voice cast of RYB was able to bring some personality to this series. That was critical, too, because (so help me god) the actual characters of this show didn’t do that. Every time I heard someone speak, I thought to myself, “That’s right, I could be watching something better.”

Again, now is not the time for this. I should be focusing on positivity.

There was one element to RYB that did have a lot of appeal, and that was the titular tea shop itself, Rokuhoudou. I totally believe that this small family owned shop could exist in Tokyo, and if it did, I would want to check it out. This café did have a relaxing, very nostalgic atmosphere. If you don’t believe me, don’t worry. This show will shove this point down your throat at every chance.

Fortunately, when this series decided to stop stroking its misplaced ego and stayed quiet for a second, the true majesty of this place came out.

Rokuhoudou would be the perfect little hiding spot I would want to visit for a quiet cup of coffee. Moreover, I would one-hundred percent make this my go-to place after a hard day’s work. It was no surprise that this tiny café was the center of this series.

I think someone could get a nice story surrounding this store, and it’s kind of astonishing how bad this show missed such an easy opportunity.

Disregarding RYB’s overwhelming lack of engaging content, this series wasn’t completely void of memorable instances.

For example, there was an episode that covered the journey store owner Kyousui took to become the face of Rokuhoudou. At first, he was hesitant to take over, despite having always loved the shop. Kyousui’s reasoning for his trepidation made a lot of sense and this did help humanize him a bit. Not only that, during the same episode, we learned how head chef Tokitaka came to be Kyousui’s loyal business partner.

Getting these backstories helped illustrate that there was history with some of these characters. We even got small snippets of what barista Gregorio and patissier Tsubaki were like before they were a part of Rokuhoudou.

HOWEVER, RYB never discussed when either Gregorio or Tsubaki joined the store; both of backgrounds remained spotty at best. In addition, that entire episode that focused on Kyousui and Tokitaka. Yeah, that was the first bit of interest I felt towards this show - AND IT CAME IN EPISODE SIX!

The entire first half of this series was utter nonsense. After episode six, only then did a few decent moments begin to pop up here and there. It was also after this point that RYB started taking the time to settle on critical components like purpose and direction.

While there were some okay scenes in the latter half of this show, they weren’t great and they sure as hell weren’t worth sitting through the mindless slog that came before.

And with that, I think this is where we need to end the niceties. Let’s really talk about what kind of show Rokuhoudou Yotsuiro Biyori was.

Series Negatives

I’m not sure exactly where I want to start with this section. There was a lot wrong with this series, so much so, I know I’m going to forget to mention something.

To begin with, I try not to watch any series while on an empty stomach. While that does sound like a weird policy, there is a reason behind it.

Meals in anime have a tendency of looking as though they came straight from heaven’s kitchen. Whatever a character happens to be eating, it often appears to be the most delicious thing ever made. Even in series where the animation isn’t that remarkable, extra special attention will usually go into the appearance of the food. This is especially true in anime that focus on restaurants and eateries.

That is, unless, that anime is RYB. The animation and visuals in this show were bland and unremarkable. This was kind of a problem since this series was always showing off what the chefs at Rokuhoudou were cooking.

If I had to guess, the people behind RYB were aware of this, too. If they weren’t, how else would you explain why we got a two-minute description of what everything tasted like. If the food actually looked appetizing, we would not need the verbal rundown. Our eyes and our stomachs would be able to do all the work.

All that notwithstanding, am I really saying I didn’t care for RYB because of what the food looked like? Not at all. I am using this to make a much bigger point. This series couldn’t get the most natural things right, even if those things were essential to the entire premise of what this story was.

Elements that should have been no-brainers were instead dull and left no impact. This was not only true for the food but damn near everything else in this show.

There were four main characters in RYB, Kyousui, Tokitaka, Gregorio, and Tsubaki. They were, more or less, always around. Thus, they all should have had some kind of constant presence. Right?

One episode was a Gregorio-centric story, and it covered a small bit of what Gregorio’s youth was like. For what it’s worth, it wasn’t a bad episode. However, when the next episode started up and I saw Kyousui – arguably the main character of RYB – it took me a second to realize, “Oh that’s right, you’re in this show, too.” These characters were laughably forgettable, and these were the people we were supposed to follow?

By the way, this wasn’t just a problem with the main four. Regarding the secondary characters – which for some reason there were a lot of – you could tell me none of them had names and I would believe you.

Again, RYB turned this into a much bigger issue because this series kept trying to give a ton of attention to these secondary characters. And by “try,” I mean this show kept haphazardly forcing plotlines to cross.

In a given episode, one story would focus on our main group doing general café business, and the other would be the problem of the week. Somewhere in the middle of said episode, these two stories which had nothing to do with each other would meet. And they would meet so that the staff of Rokuhoudou could help “solve” what was going on. Too bad our main group never needed to solve anything, because the problems this show would bring up tended to get taken care of on their own.

Similarly to that, if you were to believe RYB, then every single character in this story was important. Spoilers: they weren’t.

In episode one, there was a character whose name I think was Tsubasa Kondou, and thus, I think she was voiced by Ms. Hibiku Yamamura. It doesn’t matter what her name was because she ended up doing nothing, but you would never know that if you only watched episode one.

RYB did everything in its power to make it seem like this person would be a recurring character. Now if your definition of a recurring character is someone who just needs to show up once and only once after their introduction, even if their second appearance is in the final episode, then I suppose this series did at least that.

To be fair, some secondary characters had more significant roles after we met them the first time. Some weren’t even annoying. Nevertheless, this show went overboard in this area. Had RYB spent the same amount of effort getting to know its four main characters, then that may have given me a chance to remember at least one person in this series.

Even if RYB had kept its characters in check, this series’ problems still wouldn’t be anywhere close to being dealt with.

This story’s tone was all over the place. You really have no idea what type of show you are going to get when you start an episode.

For the most part, this series was on the light-hearted side. It never took itself too seriously. That was, until it did.

To go along with this show’s attempts at slapstick, RYB would try its hand at more somber topics. These were never too intense. Usually, this series would focus on things like a lonely widow, overwork, a friend moving away, and as you might expect, spiraling depression thanks to a combination of low self-esteem, a troubled home life, and bullying.

One of those is not like the others.

Show, you gave me no confidence that you had any business touching this subject. Yes, this type of heavy material is something a story can cover, but not all stories need to cover this. And certain stories should definitely not cover this when there is zero thought put into anything else.

In episode three, the guys of Rokuhoudou got invited to take part in a high profile sweets exhibition. Other than seeing this as a fantastic way to grow their business, this group of geniuses almost declined the offer. Then again, I guess I can sort of understand why they would say no since the guy making the proposal was being shady as hell. I have no idea what this shmuck’s end game was. Everything he did was clearly in Rokuhoudou’s best interest, and yet he was always giving the shifty-eyes.

By the way, at this point in the series, nothing was known about any of the characters. Not their backstories, not their interests, not why they were working at Rokuhoudou; I can’t stress enough that we knew nothing about anyone. Therefore, this was apparently the perfect moment to drop the biggest bombshell of the show.

This came out of nowhere with precisely zero context established, and yet I was meant to care about this? Why?

What RYB did was something most other competent stories would at least try to hint at before saying, “Yeah, this is a thing.”

To give you a better idea of how stupid this was, the revelation in question was about Kyousui. This was the first thing we learned about him. Afterward, we then found out he had a playful personality, was a decent cook (maybe), and that he liked cats. But hey, as long as you have your priorities straight.

I was not happy that this show was twelve episodes long because I was done with RYB by the end of the first.

Final Thoughts

Long story short, I might have been a little disappointed with this one.

I don’t know what I expected going into this show. I can guarantee you this, though, I wasn’t expecting a dull, uninteresting waste of half a day. If this series had just decided what it was going to be early on, and not near the end, then who knows what could have happened. I’m going to give this story the benefit of the doubt and say that it might have been decent.

I say that because once this show did have some idea of what it was, that was when it started being not as bad. Unfortunately, this was way too little, way too late.

Rokuhoudou Yotsuiro Biyori is a series you can skip.

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours? Have you seen this show? What would be your advice concerning Rokuhoudou Yotsuiro Biyori? Leave a comment down below because I would love to hear what you have to say.

And if you liked what you read, be sure to follow me on my social media sites so that you never miss a post or update. Also, please share this review across the internet to help add to the discussion.

I’m LofZOdyssey, and I’ll see you next time.

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