Angel's 3Piece!

Is it already the year 2017 and you still haven't converted to the church of lolicon yet? That is very unfortunate, but maybe this anime will manage to enlighten you. At least it did a good job of reminding me of why I became one in the first place. Tenshi no 3P is more or less the spiritual sequel to Ro-Kyu-Bu, coming from the same author and adapted by the same animation studio. So if you've seen that show, you can consider that a rough baseline on what to expect here too, merely that instead of loli basketball we here have a loli rock band. However,it must also be stated that Tenshi no 3P is generally a bit more serious and wholesome than RKB was, but on the flipside it has less ecchi elements instead. As for whether that's a good or a bad thing... well that's up to you to decide. The story mainly follows three orphaned elementary school girls, ostracized from their school classmates and living inside a church. In an attempt at spreading some joy both for themselves and for the local kids, they decide to form a band and then host a concert for them. In order to do so, they seek the help of the anime's high schooler protagonist Nukui Kyou—an independent music producer they found on the internet who lives nearby—and asks him to become their manager and help them fulfill their modest dreams. Now it should be said that while the show is clearly made for lolicons primarily, it's not like it's totally unwatchable even if you aren't one because content-wise Tenshi no 3P actually has mostly more wholesome key plot elements in it. For one, the music is a rather central theme over the course of the story, and while it doesn't exactly go into detail about how the girls' are improving on a technical level, there is at least a respectable amount of effort put into the musical department of the anime, with numerous live performances and songs done by the main seiyuu cast. I guess you could argue that the girls are perhaps a bit *too* good at it considering their ages, but well that's anime for you. Mind you though, this is *not* an idol anime by any means; the girls are not trying to become professional musicians at all. This is only a small scale spare time project of theirs. We also have a decent amount of drama and characterization in the form of these girls' rather miserable life situations as orphans and outcasts in their school, and there are some genuinely touching moments every here and there. I especially find the rather noble intentions behind the girls' musical ambitions to be rather heartwarming. There are also some secondary characters introduced over the course of the anime who add some additional perspective on the strange relationship between Kyou and the kids and end up influencing the story in various ways as time goes on. That said, even though there are numerous more serious merits to the show, in order to get the full intended experience of Tenshi no 3P then I think you pretty much have to be a lolicon in the end. Take my word for it: if you're not feeling some sort of subconscious desire to split Jun in two and attempt to make babies with her half the time she's on screen then you're missing out on about half the potential enjoyment value of this anime. Not to mention the dominant and sexually aggressive HanaKana loli Kiriyume that is introduced in the latter part of the show; I'd lick her toes any day of the week. It's definitely not as lewd as Ro-Kyu-Bu was and in general it does have a more serious atmosphere, but in the end the show's main selling point naturally lies with its lolis, especially the main trio consisting of Jun, Sora and Nozomi. They are rather different from each other with Jun being the ultra-moe poster girl, Sora being the comic relief character and Nozomi being the more vocal and emotional of the trio, so they balance each other out quite nicely as a group. Amongst the side lolis we also have the MC's jealous little sister Kurumi (who unfortunately doesn't get as much screen time as she probably deserved) as well as the rather forceful aforementioned Kiriyume who they end up meeting in the second half of the anime. To add a bit of variety there are also a pair of non-lolis involved in the form of the MC's childhood friend Sakura and Kiriyume's caretaker Yuzuha, the latter of which is supposedly an elementary schooler too but she looks way older than that so I'm not sure what that's about. So that makes seven girls in total, but as for whether that makes it a harem or not is a bit debatable since it's pretty unclear what kind of feelings the little girls really have for Kyou considering that they're still prepubescent (they probably don't understand what love is yet). Either way, their general depiction is leaning more towards moe than ecchi though—which is another difference from Ro-Kyu-Bu I think—as while there certainly are some occasional shots with a lot of underage skin showing (like bathroom scenes), for the most part the girls are presented as more cute and adorable than alluring. Most of the "lewd" scenes of Tenshi no 3P basically just consist of sexual innuendos in the form of some intentionally ero-sounding dialogue which in reality describes something totally innocent (you probably know what I'm talking about, it's a pretty common narrative trick in romcoms and stuff), usually as the opening scene of an episode. This pattern does admittedly change a bit towards the end of the show (episodes 10 and 11 to be exact) as then the more serious arc that was ongoing has just ended and apparently they decided to round that out the anime with being a bit more light-hearted and harem-like than the rest of the show, and it does have more ecchi elements in it. However, considering that this show was ultimately made for lolicons primarily, I can't say this was a very unexpected development, nor did I mind it at all. It's difficult to say whether or not that means that the anime would've been better as a whole if the rest of the show had been more ecchi-oriented as well or not, but I'm fairly happy with what we got so I won't think too much about it. That being said I still certainly hope we'll see some doujins of these girls in the future. The last episode does provide a quite satisfying finale though. All-in-all I would probably still say that Ro-Kyu-Bu was a bit better than Tenshi no 3P but this is still something I would wholeheartedly recommend to other lolicons or people who just like moe girls in slice of life shows in general (as the show doesn't really have much ecchi other than the last few episodes). Unfortunately anything remotely loli-themed is bound to get slammed by prejudiced and narrow-minded westerners for no other reason than that "it's creepy" so I'm sure there'll be a bunch of clueless statements thrown around in some places, but hopefully people will be sensible enough to not pay them too much heed. But at least the show is obscure enough to be able to dodge most of the obligatory hate bandwagon, so maybe not all hope is lost.