Alternative title(s): Yakunara Mug Cup mo, Yakumo
Manga Adaptation by Nippon Animation
Streaming on Crunchyroll

Premise

Himeno Toyokawa’s family run a small café in the city of Tajimi, and she’s eager to encourage her new classmates to visit as she introduces herself on the first day of highschool. After showing off some of the café’s unique mugs, she’s approached by the energetic Mika Kukuri, who wants to show her around the pottery club.

Euri’s verdict is Sponsored by the Tajimi City Tourism Board

I try my best not to judge an anime before actually watching it, but getting another show about a group of highschool girls joining a club doesn’t inspire much confidence from the outset. On top of that, the uninspired show title and the opening animation’s impressive ability to look like a fake anime within another anime made me fear the worst.

From the outset, you’ll notice that this show has been made in partnership with Tajimi city’s tourism board. They are very eager for you to see how pretty the city is among the cherry blossoms, and no doubt we’ll be seeing some glimpses of real-life landmarks and pottery-related things as the show goes on. As such, a lot of the scenes set outdoors really look quite good.

As for the show itself, it does have more going for it than your typical “highschool girl joins a club” show. Himeno’s late mother was apparently quite a renowned potter, and had in the past attended the very same pottery club that this show is focussing on. She’s certainly well known enough for her work to be recognised when some of her mugs are examined in the pottery club.

While I’m sure this show will give us plenty of info about the art of pottery, it also seems like we’ll be seeing Himeno learn more about her mother through her time at the club. The older student in the club is already feeling a bit like a motherly figure, and with a rather down to earth dad and grandma in the picture, I’m hopeful this show will be offering a bit more than cute girls doing cute things.

That’s a lot of assumption and hoping though, and as for episode one as it is… it’s fine? The four main girls haven’t done much yet so there’s not a whole lot of characterisation to talk about, though I do have to mention that Mika, the blonde-haired girl with the PreCure hairdo, is already bordering on insufferable. She appears to be running at 120% when the rest of the show wants to be nice and chill, and it feels like I’m getting whiplash whenever she’s about.

Let’s Make a Mug Too is not a bad show, and it seems to have the ingredients to be more than a tourism campaign. I hope that it has an interesting story to tell, but there’s just too many other, more interesting shows this season that I’d personally rather prioritise.

On a side note, each episode appears to be accompanied by a 9-minute long live-action piece featuring the voice actresses of the four main girls exploring Tajimi. Might be worth checking that out if you fancy seeing a little behind the scenes content.