Rick's Brea- I mean,
Shining Hearts 1
Meet Rick
He's just your average, everyday baker. Of course, in this world's universe that means he's the toast of the town, and he naturally works with three beautiful young ladies who most likely wish for him to put buns in their ovens.
Their little business has been on a roll lately; it's established early on that they're really raking in the dough.
But owning your own bread show is hard work, with no time to loaf around, and thus our heroes must go on a long and arduous journey to the farm of dreadfully generic ingredients. Fortunately, nothing goes awrye and they make it to the farm successfully.
Unfortunately, plot point x dictates that they take a detour to the ELVEN FOREST OF FOREBODING MINOR HAZARDS. That is where they meet... this thing.
Its injuries may seem daunting, but for our intrepid heroes, fixing it is a piece of cake.
However, when they return the creature to edge of the forest, they meet this crusty old fellow.
It seems he is the one person in the world who is not enchanted by the pungent aroma of Rick's bread. After a tense and thrilling showdown in which the elf and one of Rick's haremettes exchange slightly terse words, our heroes escape unscathed.
Really? I guess you've like never read a single book with Elves in it.
Before they can return home, however, the Elf's little sister shows up.
After stuffing herself with Rick's bread, she provides us with expository setup dialogue for future events. Red moon, a storm is coming, blah blah blah. Our heroes finally return home with their baking ingredients to wrap up the show.
While I think the concept of a slice-of-life show based on baking bread in a fantasy world has the potential to be interesting simply because it goes against the grain, the script simply doesn't rise to the occasion. None of the characters in the show have any appreciable character traits; Rick's haremettes all have personalities as flat as a pancake, with no substantial way to differentiate between them other than appearance. And if the stale and generic setting wasn't bad enough, it also appears that they are setting up some kind of half-baked dramatic arc as well.
Of course, if this bland and wafer-thin story was sandwiched between good direction and interesting sound design, it could still be watchable. But there are only maybe two or three interesting shots in the entire episode, such as this one where there just happens to be an out-of-focus castle in the background:
It's not much, but I'll settle for crumbs at this point.
There is one exception, of course, to this exceedingly bland presentation, and it's what you've all been waiting for: excessive amounts of bread porn.
