Time Travel Shoujo: Mari Waka to 8-nin no Kagakusha-tachi

Literally a Saturday morning show ( airing at 7 AM JST ) it tells the story of Mari, a middle schooler, and her friend Waka as they travel to different times in our history and meet some of the most influential inventors in human history while trying to find Mari's dad.

The show is aimed at children so don't expect any mature themes from it, but it's still well made and fun enough that it can be enjoyed by everyone. This also means the show avoid the usual anime cliché tropes and instead gives us a very likable cast of characters who are very fun to ... watch and easy to like.

As I mentioned above the show revolves around Mari a middle schooler who's dad has been missing for three years. Before leaving, her dad gave her a necklace that, as it turns out, is a part of a time traveling machine. By pure accident Mari ends up traveling back in time to 1600 and meeting William Gilbert, who amongst other things tells her that he has met her father. The show then revolves around Mari traveling back and forth in time to unravel the mysteries of the time machine and find her time traveling dad.

The show strongest point is the characters, all of them very likable, and the appearance of several inventors and their stories and interactions with the cast, as the show likes to show not only the inventions but give you some personal information about them, like how Bell invented the telephone because of his work with the deaf ( as his wife was deaf ) which helps give their inventions context and makes it feel less like just a history book and more like a proper story.

Animation wise the show is quite well done and while it's not going to blow your mind, it's always consistent and you won't see any QUALITY. What's noteworthy in the visual aspect is the excellent reaction faces the characters use when they are surprised, sad, etc. Maybe it's because it's aimed at children but this aspect is very well done and their faces are all very expressive and funny to watch.

The music in pretty average, it doesn't really stand out but it's never intrusive. The VA work is quite good with lots of familiar names. Overall the audio aspect of the show is slightly above average.

The show also has small clips at the end of each episode where they show a real life video of one of the inventions featured during the episode and give small explanations on how they work.

Overall the show is quite easy to enjoy if you want something that's pretty relaxing and funny, especially if you like to see time travel stories that feature historical figures related to electricity and magnetism.

"Edutainment" series, ones that both exist to teach and to entertain, are something not everyone enjoys. While I think Time Travel Shoujo would not be completely immune of this from some people, I do think it's possibly the strongest Edutainment series I've seen to date, and could still be something those that generally don't care for them would enjoy.

~STORY~ (7/10)
Believe it or not, this is easily the strongest part of this series, as it actually manages to tell a quite adept story all things considered. While it's not immune of plot holes and logical flaws, as nearly every time travel story is, the other aspects ... manage to prevent it from being a frustrating mess. For what I can only assume is an anime directed at younger audiences give it's educational touch, it throws some relatively darker elements at the viewer in some unexpected ways. While the specific single episode stories with each scientist Mari visits can be hit or miss, the over-arching plot manages to remain interesting and keep the viewer hooked from a fairly early point in the anime.

~CHARACTERS~ (6/10)
With a few exceptions, the whole cast is quite likable. For younger audiences they seem like they'd be quite easy to relate to and provide as decent "role models", which is good for an Edutainment anime, while for older audiences they play off the events and lessons well to bring you back to younger days. When it comes to how they work with the more serious, over-arching plot, they do tend to shine a little less though, as most fall into fairly standard roles. And while the primary antagonist brings about some pretty adult themes for an anime directed at this kind of audience, he still doesn't manage to be anything all that special compared to most villains in anime. Still, the characters are not by any means bad, they simple just don't stand out as much as they could've.

~ART~ (4/10)
The art and animation of this series can get pretty lazy at times. When characters are just standing around and talking it's usually not that noticeable, but in any high action moments it becomes much more obvious as the inconsistencies begin to shine through. Heck even the opening sequence, which usually in anime has some of the best animation, is quite questionable. It doesn't manage to distract from the enjoyment of the show too much, but once in a while you take notice, and there's really never any moments of impressive animation to make up for it.

~SOUND~ (5/10)
While I don't have much negative to say here, I also don't have much to say positively either. The voice acting and music do their job and that's about it, nothing more or less. The only thing that really stood out to me is one insert song that sometimes plays before a character travels through time. It's actually quite nice, but it loses it's charm after you've heard it a few times.

~ENJOYMENT~ (6/10)
Despite some iffy aspects to the production side of things, this was still a really nice watch. I didn't have terribly high hopes for it going in as Edutainment stuff generally doesn't have a lot to offer, but the surprisingly well written story it offered outside of those educational elements definitely deserves a bit of praise. Hopefully we see more anime like this in the future, as it might be enough to open the doors of anime as a medium to more audiences.

I watched all 12 episodes of Time Travel Shoujo: Mari Waka to 8-nin no Kagakusha-tachi. Here are my thoughts:

I have very little to say about this anime. This is basically the Japanese equivalent of an educational TV show that a school teacher might throw on when they're feeling lazy or something. It literally aired on Saturday morning and is targeted to a child audience. I mainly just watched it while I was eating breakfast.

The educational focus of the show is on electricity and magnetism. There are various relevant experiments that get incorporated into the show, and there are also some short educational segments at the ... end of each episode. For me, the most amusing aspect of the anime was the incorporation of various western historical figures into the cast, like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison. The use of these characters in an anime was entertaining enough to keep me watching.

Otherwise though, the anime was pretty bad. I mean, it's literally a kid's show. The plot was groan-worthy. The characters were very simplistic. The art style and animation were unremarkable. It seems perfectly fine as a kids' "edutainment" show, but for me personally it was bad.


My rating: 4/10

Worth it though to see Benjamin Franklin as an anime character. Lol.