fragaria memories: red bouquet (💻)
the strawberry king has ruled over his kingdom in peace for many, many years. each continent has lived a wonderful life, with a respective sanrio character ruling over each kingdom, until monsters called SEEDS have begun to take away the things each kingdom holds dear. now it's up to the fragaria knights to stop them!!
just finished the red bouquet arc todaaay :p i've taken my time, and i haven't exactly watched the music videos either, but i wanted to log an entry regardless. fragmem (shortened name) is an interesting project. not sure if i'll fully commit to it, since i haven't been a huge voice drama person, but the concept of anime sanrio boys (while not new) still makes me wanna check it out. after all, it's not often that sanrio acknowledges usahana! she's my favorite! i'm glad she's slowly getting more love in more recent years! second to that would be my melody, but that isn't too surprising... either way, these boy designs are scrumptious. i remember seeing the initial teasers for them around twitter 2 years back... but i never really stuck around!! i want to give it a shot, though. but i just worry that the lack of translations for the extra stuff may just make me feel detached. ahhh but this entry isn't about that!!
we follow hallritt, hello kitty's fragaria (fancy name for knight), as he ventures with his fellow knights through each continent and stop the seeds together!! it's... your typical "something is trying to destroy the world, and we need to work together to stop it!" kind of scenario, with nothing that's ABSOLUTELY hooking me in the story just yet. the draw, for me, is mostly the characters... the red bouquet arc introduces us to their members: hallritt, romarriche, rimichan, puruth, sanah, merold... my favorite would be rimichan cuz he's soo cute and relatable... and sanah, because i love usahana and he is very filipino-coded. because we filipinos also have bad weather. LOL. but they're all lovely in their own right, despite the fact that they can come off as trope-y sometimes. hallritt is the courageous but naive kind of knight, that falls into bouts of insecurity and doubt because of his inexperience as a fragaria... romarriche is the cool-headed older brother figure, rimichan is the cute little weirdo... like yeah, i'm sure they all have their motives - which mainly boil down to protecting their lord and their respective kingdoms and preserving the culture of their home - but i feel like i need to stick around a little more for it to STICK ith me. after all, this first arcs are more of an introduction!!
still, there were definitely some heartwarming moments in each episode!! puruth's episode definitely resonated with me, as someone who enjoys art, and knowing that his home was a kingdom who valued artistic freedom and expression to the point where anyone can create anything despite their skill... and moreso the fact that they loved it and found happiness in that sort of freedom. i find that very beautiful, and so it was a little heartbreaking to see that the seeds in his home were wiping away their love for the arts (even if the abducted did come back). the seeds... they're really interesting. i think they're onto something with the fact that the seeds are only specifically erasing each kingdom's very culture, their very identity and happiness in turn. there was speculation among the fragaria whether or not the seeds were taking these and the memories of these objects away as a means to shield people from the grief of losing them one day. after all, you can't be sad about art or the sea or yummy food if you don't remember anything about them, right? i don't knowww, i don't know much yet!!
i can't tell their motives, but grief is natural and shouldn't stop people from enjoying the things they love while these things are still around. it's precisely because of their impermanence that we should hold onto these things more fondly instead of denying ourselves the joy of having at least experienced them.
... is what i think!! i wonder if they'll stick this message somewhere, hehe... it would make me love the project sooo much more. i really absolutely LOVE messages like these, which is precisely while i really enjoyed stuff like delicious in dungeon and limbus company's hong lu canto :] !!
butttt at the end of the day, it looks more like a music project too. i still have to check out the outher bouquets / subgroups, and then the music videos. i see the thumbnails of the "second season" (which they call the lost kitty arc) and they all look veeeery angsty. so i'm holding onto that hope... may this project be something that interests me!! if not, i still enjoy seeing it around a ton :) i wouldn't mind being a casual fan!!