is an anime

Anime

is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....

 series about four fairies who discover the secrets of the world from inside their little house. The show originally aired from October to December 2003 on UHF syndication in Japan, and each episode has a run time of only 12 minutes. It has been licensed in North America by Geneon

Geneon

is a Japanese music, anime and home entertainment production and distribution enterprise headquartered in Akasaka, Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Geneon has been involved in the production and distribution of several anime in Japan...

 and was released on two DVDs during 2005 and 2006.

Synopsis

Bottle Fairy is a comedy series. The most common formula for the shows humor consists of the Bottle Fairies misinterpret the culture in which they are learning to live. The fairies learn about Japanese culture with each episode taking place in a different month.

Plot

The Bottle Fairies, who have come from another world, are attempting to learn many things about the world so they can gain knowledge and turn into humans - a feat they finally achieve in episode 12, set in the twelfth month, thus making the series span a whole year. However, as their wish to stay together is stronger than their wish to become human, they merge into one human, while retaining their several personalities. The thirteenth episode shows the fairies attempting to function as a single human girl, before eventually splitting into four fairies again. This extra episode makes Bottle Fairy the typical length of a small anime series.

The Bottle Fairies

The Bottle Fairies are identified by their eye color, their individual quirks, and their association with the seasons (represented by season songs). They sleep in appropriately colored jars.

• Kururu is the blue Bottle Fairy; she has pink hair and blue eyes. She is associated with spring
  Spring (season)
  Spring is one of the four temperate seasons, the transition period between winter and summer. Spring and "springtime" refer to the season, and broadly to ideas of rebirth, renewal and regrowth. The specific definition of the exact timing of "spring" varies according to local climate, cultures and...
  
  . Kururu is hyperactive, and what she imagines is often very extreme.

• Chiriri is the yellow Bottle Fairy; she has blonde hair and yellow eyes. She is associated with summer
  Summer
  Summer is the warmest of the four temperate seasons, between spring and autumn. At the summer solstice, the days are longest and the nights are shortest, with day-length decreasing as the season progresses after the solstice...
  
  . She is friendly and slightly reserved, with a surreal imagination. She is obsessed with soap opera
  Soap opera
  A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...
  
   and hat
  Hat
  A hat is a head covering. It can be worn for protection against the elements, for ceremonial or religious reasons, for safety, or as a fashion accessory. In the past, hats were an indicator of social status...
  
  s. She can also turn wishes into reality.

• Sarara is the red Bottle Fairy; she has grey hair and red eyes. She is associated with autumn
  Autumn
  Autumn is one of the four temperate seasons. Autumn marks the transition from summer into winter usually in September or March when the arrival of night becomes noticeably earlier....
  
  . She is quiet, but what she imagines tends to be tomboy
  Tomboy
  A tomboy is a girl who exhibits characteristics or behaviors considered typical of the gender role of a boy, including the wearing of typically masculine-oriented clothes and engaging in games and activities that are often physical in nature, and which are considered in many cultures to be the...
  
  ish.

• Hororo is the green Bottle Fairy; she has black hair and green eyes. She is associated with winter
  Winter
  Winter is the coldest season of the year in temperate climates, between autumn and spring. At the winter solstice, the days are shortest and the nights are longest, with days lengthening as the season progresses after the solstice.-Meteorology:...
  
  . She is a somewhat distant character, with a slow, rambling personality. Hororo is always thinking about something and is usually shy meeting new people. She is often caught thinking about food.

• Kusachiho, the combined human form of all four Bottle Fairies is called Onee-chan by some fans and Uni-chan by others. Her name is a contraction
  Contraction (grammar)
  A contraction is a shortened version of the written and spoken forms of a word, syllable, or word group, created by omission of internal letters....
  
   of the fairies' names by using the first Japanese character of each. Predictably, she has what may be classified as dissociative identity disorder
  Dissociative identity disorder
  Dissociative identity disorder is a psychiatric diagnosis and describes a condition in which a person displays multiple distinct identities , each with its own pattern of perceiving and interacting with the environment....
  
  , and has the personality traits of all the Bottle Fairies. Which fairy is in control is indicated by the color of her eyes and her voice. Her color is orange. She only appears in the final two episodes.

• Rere is the purple Bottle Fairy; she appears in illustration book Bottle Fairy Funbook illustrated by Tokumi Yuiko (ISBN 4-7577-3099-3). She is not associated with the seasons. She has an energetic, serious character and almost always repeat her phrases twice with another different way of talking. Although Rere is serious-type and tried to push other fairies to work in order to become human, she always swayed or distracted by other fairies' happy-go-lucky and ended up running gags with them.

Other characters

• Oboro is a small feline toy with wings that was enchanted by the Bottle Fairies. Oboro is white. It floats gently up and down when it is not being held or played with (usually it plays with Hororo). He is a silent character, and has only one facial expression, the one that it was made with (generally suggested to be bored or exacerbated).
• Sensei-san, Bottle Faeries Papa, who is never given a real name, looks after the bottle fairies. He is represented by the colors brown and green. It is given that his character teaches them things about the world, but his appearances in the series are rarely significant. However, a love letter in the third episode is a crucial plotpoint to the third episode. Though his job is never stated, the last episode shows that he is a teaching assistant at a university. Kururu also develops a crush on him by the end of the series, although it is hinted that the other fairies develop feelings for him as well.

• Tama-chan is the (approximately 10 year old) next door neighbor of the Bottle Fairies and Sensei-san. In the 12th episode, March, she graduates from first grade. She is represented by the color purple and wears crayons in her hair with a large white ribbon down the back. She is happy to help the Bottle Fairies, who trust her (usually misleading) advice since she seems so self-assured. She occasionally expresses surprise at how childlike the fairies are even though they are supposed to be older than she is. Additionally, she was the mascot of the magazine Magi-Cu
  Magi-Cu
  was a Japanese manga magazine published by Enterbrain and was sold monthly on the twenty-fifth. The name comes from the phrase Magical Cute. The magazine was first published on April 27, 2001 under the title Magi-Cu Premium. It kept that title for three years until 2004, when it was changed to...
  
  .

• Hanana is a plant that appeared in only one episode, and was cared for by the Bottle Fairies. It was enchanted to be immortal and stay in bloom forever, but they removed the spell when they realized Hanana would want to have children and spread around other flowers. Hanana does not have a color.

Music

The series has one OP, "Oshiete Sensei-san" composed by Sora Izumikawa

Sora Izumikawa

, is a Japanese artist, singer-songwriter, seiyū, composer and producer currently based on Japan. Also Ex-CEO for Dog-Rights Co.,Ltd.- Biography :Born in Hiroshima, Japan to a chorister father and mother who taught electronic organ, Sora started playing the piano at the age of two...

, and five variations of the ED. The ED has the same music and melody, but different lyrics for each version. The first four versions are named after the four seasons and are sung by a different Bottle Fairy according to her season. The final version, "Four Seasons Song", features all four of the Bottle Fairies. All five EDs are used in the anime, the first four playing three episodes each to roughly correspond with the progression of seasons and months and the final song playing in episode 13. Each episode of the anime also features a different ED animation corresponding to the month shown in the episode. Episode 13 shows multiple images to feature not only the fairies but also Sensei-san and Tama.

An OST, Bottle Fairy ~Four Seasons~ was released in both Japan and North America. It features image songs, the OP and the EDs, and instrumental music for the entire series.

External links

• Bottle Fairy Anime official site at ABC Asahi tv