Ichijouma Mankitsu Gurashi!
Slice of life by PRA
Based on a manga by Kumako Hisama
Length: 11 episodes (covered from #53 to #63)
Aired: 2026 (Spring)
Rating: C
Plot: Meiko Morita is a very poor country girl who comes across a great opportunity: to join a prestigious girls-only school in the big city. To her surprise, she was accepted, but the surprises kept on coming: the "dorm" is in the Hedgehog manga cafe, and she's working for Rie Amamiya, the daughter of the chairman of the school and who created the cafe to store her manga collection, and may have pulled some strings to accept Meiko, believing her to be a an up-and-coming mangaka with the same name. There, she meets her other two co-workers: Marika Suzuki, a streamer escaping from her strict family and who is often too cold but at the same pantless and Neo Nakano, a tiny girl who dreams of being a pro gamer.
Thoughts: There's shows I sometimes don't know why I added, this may have been because I was fresh off Denki-gai and this seemed thematically similar. Anytime I look at the "similar shows" recommendation for some stuff I like, it feels there's always a Kirara adaptation not that far off, something that I noticed reading a list of them and noticed a lot were either covered here or were already on the list. I have to admit first impressions weren't great, but it had that chaotic cute girls energy to keep me coming back, and before the usual episode 3 deadline I was convinced it was worth seeing until the end.
It is very much a workplace comedy centered in the main cast of four characters: Meiko is the country girl who left for the big city hoping to give her 4 younger siblings a better life after coming across a once in a lifetime opportunity: enrolment in a prestigious girl's school, where not only tuition and boarding was covered, but she would also get a 250 thousand Yen salary she could send home to improve their life, which her younger sister Miori does to a comedic difference, turning their ran down traditional Japanese home into a regular one. On the other side of wealth is Rie, who started the manga cafe to store her manga collection, and is so rich she has absolutely no concept of money, her manga cafe being constantly in the red due to her reckless spending, and was not even keeping a ledger. As this was an something her mother came up to make learn how business works, Meiko comes to her rescue, but the real reason she was admitted was because Rei believed her to be an up-and-coming mangaka of the same name and prefecture, and Meiko's attempts to confess before it got out of hand were just shrugged of. The other two are the streaming gremlin Marika, who requires a tropical fish level of temperature control and who is often too cold and layered up, but without pants, and falling asleep showing her panties on stream has been a common problem for her, and finally Neo, a smaller girl Meiko wants to pamper like a little sister (making her very uncomfortable) and who's aiming to be a top pro-gamer. Joining them on occasion is Michika, who runs a cat cafe in the same building and came to the cafe demanding to see those hedgehogs... believing that they were also a pet cafe. Embarassed, she ends up staying in a very tsundere manner after being told they have an whole aisle of cat manga. Majikarumomorin Gouda is the youngest expert art appraiser who can see the aura of objects (coming in handy anytime someone tries to sell fake antiques to Rie) and started to very much live inside Hedgehog because she loves history and samurai stories, and she almost created a commotion inside Hedgehog because she refused to show her ID... because she's too well aware of her magical girl kirakira name and would rather go by "Suzu". The last of cast is Berna, the maid/bodyguard of Gao, a girl who is a fan of Marika because she looks like Kirakira Moon (I mean, look at Marika's hair and I don't even need to tell you who that is) but thought she has been letting herself go since she moved to Hedgehog and decided to kidnap her.
The stories are exactly what you would expect from this sort of characters, there's little to no surprise on what you'd expect from them. They come up with business plans, Rie throwns money at any problem, like renting space for additional storage Michika wanted to expand the cat cafe , Marika falling asleep on stream with the family crest panties on full display and making her family force her to show she has continued to practice ikebana or being kidnapped by one of her fans who think she looks like Kirakira Moon, go on a beach episode, a school festival, and the big reveal where Meiko's LIES are exposed in the last episode, in the all the tense, dramatic fashion you'd expect from a show like this. Visually it's also a very standard Cute Girls show, everyone looks appropriately very cute, they all do the great faces and reaction shots while the VAs have their fun as well, about halfway Hana Hishikawa (Meiko) suddenly decides some random sound and it always contributes to the energy of the show, the regular stuff you expect from this sort of show, but where it shines is, like with Denki-gai, is when it has to show stacks or shelves of manga volumes, where they don't just hint at something resembling covers and spines, they overwhelm you with detail. I do wonder how many of them are real, because I saw what I think was a cover of Mono in there, which is published on a sister publication also owned by Hobunsha, so I take it at least some of the very detailed manga is real? On one episode one of the characters is even holding a Manga Time Kirara issue with the back cover announcing... the Ichijyoma Mankitsu Gurashi! adaptation.
This is a show I started to enjoy more as time went by, and after it clicked how it occupies the same space as something like Bad Girl, a show (also from another Kirara publication) that ended up sneaking in my top 10 in 2025, the same high energy stories, occasionally perverted in the name of a joke, but unfortunately, while Bad Girl had quite a few incredible moments and little details in the animation, this one falls just a bit short. In the end, you can imagine this as the softest of B's or a really strong C, but overall it's a show that does enough to entertain, but probably not much to come back.
A good collection of weird girls
"There's something relatable with the girl who's pantless when she's cold", says the gun who dislikes wearing socks at home during the winter.
Like many shows of this genre, it's worth seeing once, but maybe not revisit
A few bits rely too much on the characters being cute than actually funny.