Shoshimin: How to Become Ordinary

 Shoshimin: How to Become Ordinary (小市民シリーズ) is a 10 episode slice of live drama based on the Shoshimin novel series by Yonezawa Honobu.  The anime aired during the Summer of 2024.

    Kobato Jogoro and Osanai Yuki are high school students who strive to blend into the background and live ordinary lives.  They met in middle school and formed their pact/friendship after suffered peer rejection due to their personalities.  Jogoro in particular is meddling and conceited, interjecting himself into everyone's lives, proud of his intellect and abilities of deduction.  Osani on the other hand is calculating and withdrawn.  As they enter high school together they renew their resolve to resist attracting unnecessary attention through their actions and behavior.  This ruse only lasts so long as a fellow student and childhood friend of Jogoro's, Dojima Kengo, actively courts his abilities for the greater good.  Kengo is an upstanding and respected student, imposing in stature and countenance.

    After Dojima whets Kobato's love of investigation he can't help himself as more and more mysteries demand his attention around him.  Osanai attempts to distract him by focusing on touring their small towns many confectioneries, including a summer long quest to eat the best limited available deserts possible.  While they try to remain simple people the draw of the mystery and the rush of correctly solving them continue to push Kobato to stick his nose where it may not always belong.  Unbeknownst to him, something has been brewing in secret around Osanai that will come to define their summer of sweets and alter their relationship.

    I've come to enjoy a good mystery anime from time to time and this one seemed like it would be a nice return to that format.  I wasn't prepared with how mundane the mysteries themselves would be.  The meat of the story truly revolved around Kobato's uncanny deduction abilities, akin to Sherlock Holmes, yet the things he was putting so much effort towards were mundane and largely inconsequential.  I can't say for sure how long I would have stuck with the series if it was not one of the shows being reviewed for the 2024 Summer season of the Otaku Network Podcast.  But each week I watched every new episode and discussed it at length for the podcast.  I welcomes the mundane aspect of the show though and the final arc of this series brought everything into focus with a quality pay off and a non-ending that will lead us into the second season in the Spring of 2025.

    The writing isn't bad, with interesting is detached main characters.  Based purely on how well the animation and directing lent to the story being more interesting, I am not sure if I would ever be interested in reading the source material.  The artwork is fantastic and the atmosphere of the show is...rare.  There is little background music, no tropes or gags.  It is a straitlaced and by the number slice of life series that leans heavily into realism.  The must unbelievable aspect of the series though is how goddamn calm and collected the main characters are.  They have little joy in their life...well outside of Osanai's concerning addiction to sweets.  Kobato himself seems more like an android than a hormonal imbalanced teenager.  By the end of the show I was glad I watched it, even if that was due to the podcasts content.  While we don't plan on revisiting the show when the second season airs for the podcast, it will be on my watch list when it comes out.

    The series was simulcast on Crunchyroll.