Themes

According to the manga, Strawberry Marshmallow is set in Hamamatsu, Japan. Seasons play an important role throughout Strawberry Marshmallow as the characters are involved in many normal seasonal activities.

The series is speckled with numerous small, music-related allusions, such as Ana's dog Frusciante being named after John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, while episode eight of the anime sees two goldfish called Richard and James (with Aphex Twin appearing in other comics by Barasui as well). Other referenced musicians include Radiohead, Sigur Rós, the Bee Gees, Oasis, Moby, Outkast, The Police, Arctic Monkeys, The Black Eyed Peas, and Squarepusher. The title itself was inspired by "Mashimaro", a single by Japanese rock artist Tamio Okuda.^[4]

Cover of The Strawberry Marshmallow Drama CD Volume 3. The characters, from left to right: Nobue, Miu, Matsuri, Ana, Chika, and Satake (the dog).

Characters

Nobue Itoh (伊藤 伸恵, Itō Nobue)

Voiced by: Hitomi Nabatame (Japanese); Carol-Anne Day (English)

Nobue is the eldest main character. She is Chika's older sister and usually has final authority on all matters. She often tries to "borrow" money from Chika to buy cigarettes. Nobue is perpetually searching for a part-time job to earn money for more cigarettes to calm her nicotine addiction. She has been described as a kogal.^[5]

The story suggests that Nobue derives some kind of sensual pleasure from watching the girls do cute things. In this respect, Nobue appears to appreciate the moe aesthetic.^[6] It is seen during the anime that Nobue prefers Matsuri and Ana over Chika and Miu.

The Nobue character changed from the manga to the anime. In the manga, she is a sixteen-year-old high school freshman,^[7] while in the anime she is a twenty-year-old junior-college student.^[8] Her age is presumably changed because of her smoking and drinking habit, both becoming legal in Japan at age twenty. In the first episode of the anime, she initially introduces herself as a sixteen-year-old, intended to be a joke as she quickly states that she is really twenty. She tends to act somewhat less mature in her manga incarnation, doing things such as tricking Matsuri into thinking that Miu is dead. Her appearance changes radically in the early stages of the manga, especially her hair, which goes from blonde to dark brown (and is black in the anime).

Chika Itoh (伊藤 千佳, Itō Chika)

Voiced by: Saeko Chiba (Japanese); Wendy Morrison (English)

Chika is one of two twelve-year-olds in the story. She is the same age as Miu, and attends the same class as her neighbor Miu. Chika is a cheerful girl who shows more common sense than the other girls. Her main role in the series is that of an average, twelve-year-old girl, which is emphasized in the first manga volume, where her older sister Nobue describes Chika as specializing in "being totally generic." Her special skill is cooking, especially baking cookies. Her nickname is "Chi-chan" or just "Chi".

Miu Matsuoka (松岡 美羽, Matsuoka Miu)

Voiced by: Fumiko Orikasa (Japanese); Caitlynne Medrek (English)

Miu is another twelve-year-old girl who is depicted in the story as having a problem child personality. A childhood friend of Chika, she lives next door to the Itoh house and attends the same class as Chika. Miu likes to say random things out of the blue and often plays pranks on Matsuri and Ana, but is most of the time interrupted by Nobue (and sometimes by Chika), ending up lying face-down on the floor. She has the least common sense or manners of the girls, and is rarely taken seriously because of her weird ideas and comments. She seems to harbor some sort of jealousy of Ana and Matsuri due to the fact that Nobue finds them cuter. She tends to have no delicacy and often does things that bother people around her. Her nickname is Micchan. Miu has been described as "Yotsuba Koiwai with fangs".^[9]

While she is often causing trouble for the other girls, an interview with the cast that was published in volume 4 of the manga series reveals that Miu is extremely fond of Chika, whom she dubs as her "one and only." The interview also states that Miu derives satisfaction from amusing Chika, and that she will never go to bed before making sure that Chika's room light is turned off. Light yuri themes between Miu and Chika occasionally appear in the manga.^[5]

Matsuri Sakuragi (桜木 茉莉, Sakuragi Matsuri)

Voiced by: Ayako Kawasumi (Japanese); Kylie Beaven (English)

Matsuri, nicknamed "Mats" in the manga, is an eleven-year-old glasses-wearing girl with a pet ferret named John. She is depicted as having a very timid personality, and is often the subject of Miu's teasing, which often results in her crying and hiding behind Nobue. She is one grade below Chika and Miu, and in the same class as Ana, with whom she quickly becomes friends. Matsuri discovers that Ana can speak Japanese fluently and helps her hide both her Japanese language skills and her lack of English language skills from the rest of their class. While she has gray hair in the anime, her hair is white in the manga.^[10]

Ana Coppola (アナ・コッポラ, Ana Koppora)

Voiced by: Mamiko Noto (Japanese); Katie Rowan (English)

Ana is an eleven-year-old girl who originally came from Cornwall, England five years before the series, but seems to have forgotten how to speak English. She at first pretends that she speaks only English, but it is not long before she is discovered by Matsuri while speaking very polite Japanese. Matsuri tries to help her re-learn English. Ana is often teased by Miu because of her last, which in Japanese sounds like a typical psychomime (a form of onomatopoeic sound). As such, Ana dislikes her last name and becomes angry when Miu calls "Coppola-chan". Miu also often spells her name in kanji to mean "hole", "bone", and "cave" (穴 骨洞). Ana's "proper Japanese" personality is reflected by her very traditionally-feminine and polite speaking style, and her impressive knowledge of Japanese words, customs, and traditions makes her seem more "Japanese" than most native Japanese people (which she also tries to hide). Later in the series, her ability to speak Japanese is discovered by the other students in her class. Ana owns a pet dog named Frusciante.

Manga

Nobue's character design evolved rapidly in the first volume before achieving a stable model for the rest of the series.

The Ichigo Mashimaro manga, written and illustrated by Barasui, began serialization in ASCII Media Works's Dengeki Daioh magazine on February 15, 2002. The first tankōbon was released on January 27, 2003, and nine volumes have been released as of February 2023.^[11][12] The French company Kurokawa has an ongoing license of the manga under the title Les petites fraises, while Siam Inter Comics publishes the series in Thai. Tokyopop previously licensed the series for publication in the United States (in English, as Strawberry Marshmallow) and in Germany (in German, as Erdbeeren & Marshmallows),^[13] but the series was canceled in 2008 after five English volumes and four German ones due to low sales, and is now out of print.

Early chapters of the manga break the fourth wall, especially in the first volume, where Chika often turns to face the readers when describing her plight. The manga currently publishes on an irregular basis with an inconsistent number of pages per issue.

Anime

A 12-episode Strawberry Marshmallow anime series produced by Daume and directed by Takuya Satō aired in Japan between July 14 and October 13, 2005 on the TBS Japanese television network. A 4-minute special was also broadcast prior to the start of the series. The anime series was licensed for English language distribution by Geneon. Three original video animation (OVA) episodes were later released between February 23 and April 25, 2007. A two-episode OVA series titled Ichigo Mashimaro Encore was released between January 23 and March 25, 2009. After going out of print due to the shutdown of Geneon's anime division, the series (including both OVAs) was later re-licensed by Sentai Filmworks.^[14]

Audio CDs

Five Ichigo Mashimaro drama CDs were released between July 22, 2005 and August 25, 2006 on the Frontier Works record label. They use the same voice actresses as the anime.^[15] There have also been four character song singles (one for each girl except Nobue), two soundtrack albums for the original anime, multiple "Toy CDs," and two soundtrack albums for the OVA.

Visual novel

Screenshot from the visual novel featuring Matsuri.

The visual novel, under the original title of Ichigo Mashimaro, was developed by ASCII Media Works for the PlayStation 2 based on the series under an all-ages CERO rating. The game was first released on August 11, 2005^[16] and was re-released on March 8, 2007 at a lower price. Players take on the role of a college student, a childhood friend of Nobue who has come to visit. Over the course of a month, he gradually gets to know one of the girls and begins to go on dates with them.

Differences between media

There are several, large differences between the manga and anime versions of the series such as the much earlier introduction of Ana in the anime than the manga. In the manga, Ana does not appear until the second volume, while she makes her debut in the second episode of the anime. Events that take place in the manga never appeared in the anime, and chapters that were adapted were mixed together or were altered. For example, episode seven of the anime, "Going to the Sea", mixes elements of volume 1 manga "episodes" (chapters) nine, "Critical Investigation", and ten, "Beach Challenge". While Ana is present in the anime episode, she was not in the manga versions at all.

Character designs were extremely inconsistent in the early stages of the manga, before Barasui knew that Strawberry Marshmallow would become a series, a fact referenced at the end of the first volume. Character designs are even more inconsistent with the visual novel, which uses a mix between the manga and anime's styles along with its own unique changes. For example, Matsuri has blonde hair in the visual novel, while she has white or gray hair in other mediums. Early chapters of the manga also had Miu drawn almost identical to Chika, with their hair length being the only visible difference between them.

In addition, some of the girls' personalities are slightly different in each media: Matsuri is shown to be a little more defensive in the manga than her anime counterpart, which was demonstrated by her slapping or shoving Miu away when the latter got overboard with her pranks, while she never (deliberately) laid a finger on Miu in the anime. There are also subtle differences in Miu and Chika's personalities between the manga and the anime, e.g. Miu is more random and unpredictable in the manga compared to her anime counterpart. Chika is also targeted by Miu more often in the manga as compared to the anime (but not as much as Matsuri is), resulting in more outbursts of anger from her in the manga.