I am currently only 10 episodes in and I think I am falling in love with this show the more episodes I watch of it. The show aired back in 1986 and as far as I know it's still going strong. It's about a little girl who lives with her parents named Maruko-chan who shares a room with her sister in rural Japan going about her daily life.
The show is meant for children and each episode tries to teach you some kind of lesson but I am quite sure that even now older folks in Japan to this day watch it from time to time. What really got me hooked initially was how fluid the animation was despite being drawn in a very simple format.
I will try to describe a single episode in the hopes of getting some people interested in it.
Episode 3 "Today is Sensei's Home Visit"
Maru-chan walks home with her friend who complains to her about home visits that teachers tend to do and upon arriving back at her house she noticed that her mother came very prepared for this day making sure to straighten out the house before the teachers visits and asks Maru-chan to go back to her room and clean it up because he will be also inspecting her room.
Instead of cleaning her room Maru-chan decides to bag up all of the mess in her room and asks for her grandpa to look after the stuff until the teacher is gone but when the teacher arrives he doesn't go past the entrance of the house saying that this is enough for him and quickly leaves after a short talk with Maru-chan and her mother.
After leaving Maruko-chan goes to the kitchen and sees sweets that her mother prepared for the teacher that was coming but since he already left she couldn't let them really go to waste, could she, and instead gobbles all of them up with some tea. Then she goes back to grandpa to grab all of her stuff that she took out of her room and returns it back into place making a mess of the room again.
Then it turns out that there is another visitor at the door which was the teacher of Maru-chan's sister which goes past the entrance way into her room and sees the mess that her room is and everyone looks completely shocked with a complete freakout from Maru-chan's sister, her mother quickly takes the teacher to the kitchen for the snacks that she had prepared but as Maru-chan ate it there was none left for her.
The episode ends with Maru-chan thinking she can escape this situation by repeating "I don't know" to her mother.
You can torrent the show here with English subtitles: https://nyaa.si/view/1387836
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Episode_9.webm
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This is from Episode 9 the 2nd part called "I want to eat snow." It's a flashback she is having while going on a trip with her school to play in the snow about eating candy mixed with snow a few years back or so. It's my favorite scene by far because after the flashback ends she repeats this exact same thing with her new friend despite having grown up a bit from that time.
Episode_...webm
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>>64
Here's that part I was talking about
>>64
>>65
That's cute. My father taught me to mix snow with syrup instead, and it's pretty neat as well
I saw many Japanese comments on niconico say that song sounds similar to Redbone's Come and Get Your Love.
https://youtu.be/bc0KhhjJP98 [Play]
Episode_...webm
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This is from Episode 12 from the 2nd part. It's a guide about buying candy for a school field trip for 200 Yen and under.
ChibiMar...webm
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Episode 14, 1st part. Maruko-chan wants to be popular by having a nosebleed and playing with a toy called Kan Pokkuri.
ChibiMar...webm
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00:03:31)
I'll try and see if I can post a few more clips that I find throughout the show even though I am a bit slow but honestly I don't know how to express the amount of joy I am having with each new episode that I am watching. A lot of it reminds me of my own family house hold and that this anime in all seriousness is able to represent the average house hold with children growing up with a lot of thought put into it.
It makes me smile and laugh out loud remembering moments in my life where I also experienced a lot of the similar things that Maruko-chan experiences. I'm also unsure about this but it seems that the quality of the animation only goes up with each episode.
This particular clip is from episode 16 the 2nd part. It's episode about fortune telling that initially starts off with Maruko-chan's sister using cards to tell the fortune of how well she did with her math test but eventually starts telling the fortune of her entire family while Maruko-chan says she doesn't believe in fortune telling. Migiwa in school also wants her fortune to be told about a guy called Hanawa who she admitted publicly to that she loved him.
This particular fortune telling is based on using Japanese wordplay with numbers called Goroawase where in Japanese you can convert any character into a number: https://osomanga.wordpress.com/appendi-x/goroawase-語呂合わせ/
Here is a generator for Goroawase you can try out for yourself: https://www.nin-fan.net/tool/goro/
I am now 90 episodes in and I should probably start posting a bit more about this anime again since there's quite a lot of interesting stuff to share that I have come across.
One thing that's been bothering me a bit is the fact that Maruko-chan doesn't seem to age or change grades, even though the anime has progressed 3-4 years. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but it's still a bit strange. What's even weirder is that the characters often reference previous episodes and the things they've experienced. For example, in episode 81, Maruo (surprisingly whom I haven't introduced yet.) mentions going out hunting for tsuchinoko with Maruko in an episode that happened at least 3 summers ago. It's odd that nobody questions this despite how there were episodes about their last days of school in the current grade, and it's definitely not like they're stuck in a time loop. Still I like that it's different from the regular shows that follow the same format where they never ever reference previous stuff that happened in previous episodes.
Begging_f...mp4
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From episode 58 Maruko's idea on how to properly beg your parents for toys you want.
113.mp4
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From the latest translated episode 113.
This scene has to be one of my favorites now due to how it actually feels real if you had a sibling growing up going to the same school as you. I absolutely love the scenes where Maruko-chan's older sister appears they are always really fun to watch.
ハミングがきこえる...mp4
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This needs to be seriously restored but this is most highest quality version of this OP available as far as I know which was way too HARD to find. I absolutely love this despite how half a year or more has passed and I keep coming back to it.
Here's a version sung by Maruko-chan and Tama-chan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJcHGvLCTLo [Play]
The singer goes by the name カヒミ・カリィ (Kahimi Karie)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgxmgtJ2Lc8 [Play]
NHK.mp4
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https://youtu.be/n3LqQ6FefXI?t=73 [Play]
Have you been paying your monthly fees to the NHK? Yes, this is similar to not paying your TV license in the UK.
I really hate how awful some of the episodes were 100 episodes in it felt like everything had become completely static in the sense that you'd basically see one cookie-cutter episode after another where nothing of interest happens you'd see the same background, same shots just with mouth movements changed which honestly it felt unwatchable. I think the Nagasawa house burning down episodes were absolutely unwatchable, cringe you could even say, the bad type, that made me quit watching for two months at least. Seriously what were they thinking? Kind of glad I got to episode 121 which finally felt like the dynamic slice of life again that I fell in love with.
This episode I particularly loved the shots of the town that they show that Maruko-chan goes to explore to because she wanted to take a solo trip somewhere nearby and meet a kind stranger.
ちびまる子ちゃんED2.mp4
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There's something about the 100 yen line in this ED that makes me extremely happy.
I spent an hour looking for this god damn ED which isn't available basically fucking anywhere (most likely due to copyright strikes) only a shitty low quality nicovideo reupload. I finally found it by going to Indonesian Youtube and manually finding the episodes where it aired. You might notice the characters are drawn differently it's because of the awful style they went to for season 2 of the series (which still makes me wanna puke when looking at).
The song is called "Arara's Spell" and apparently this year Momoko Sakura's VA (Tarako) died and there was a special aired (https://nyaa.si/view/1805629) where this song was used to close her last performance (March 24, 2024). This ED ran from episode 481 (July 4, 2004) to episode 850 (March 25, 2012) and was renewed in 2010.