Grow Up Show -Sunflower Circus- Anime Series Review

With all the issues plaguing modern society, one has to pick and choose which causes they pour their energy into. As an educator, I worry about the world our children will inherit, with looming environmental collapse, marginalization and oppression, and a growing wealth gap. One where self-expression has become increasingly difficult, and creative industries concern themselves only with what they think will make the most money.

That's why I've decided to advocate for original series longer than 13 episodes.

I jest, but only somewhat – the fact is that this Summer 2026 anime season had two original series that deserved longer runs to flesh out their worlds and characters. While everyone is talking about Goodbye, Lara, I would argue that Grow Up Show: Sunflower Circus-, while not nearly as phenomenal, suffered just as much, if not more, from its abbreviated run. With a large cast and novel premise, it required at least twice as many episodes to reach its full potential.

As the title implies, Grow Up Show: Sunflower Circus- takes place in a circus. It envisions a version of 1950's Japan where traveling circuses were the dominant form of entertainment for the general population as the nation rebuilt after the devastation of World War II. Mizuka is the daughter of the Black Lotus, a once-prominent trapeze artist who disappeared years ago. She resents her father and resolved never to perform despite being gifted herself, until one day she is picked up off the side of the road by Maria, the ringmaster of the Sunflower Circus. Maria explains that the Black Lotus was deeply in debt to her, but since he's not around, Mizuka will have to join their act to work off what he owes.

What is a circus without an ensemble of quirky characters? Maria recruited most of her performers from orphanages, so the cast is largely teenage girls with a variety of issues. As one would expect from ensemble shows, each girl or pair of girls gets a focus episode, after which they fade back into the background, until the big twist comes halfway through the run and the larger plot kicks in. I found the characters to be largely forgettable: a magician who needs help building confidence and showmanship, twin clowns who are dealing with their relationship to each other and others evolving, and a standoffish acrobat. 

The most interesting secondary characters by far aren't children at all, but Svetlana and Shizuku, a pair of adult women who were forced to leave their previous circus when one of them sustained an injury from pushing herself past her limits. They were the only ones with a story that didn't feel boilerplate and uninspired, and who were at least somewhat believable as human beings with multiple dimensions. Their devotion to one another, even in the face of their fall from prominence, felt far more sympathetic than yet another story about one twin being jealous that the other is starting to build connections outside of their relationship. Svetlana's aerial silks were by far the best-realized of the circus performances outside of Mizuka and Ouka's trapeze work.

One of the show's greatest flaws is how it fails to really make either the time period or the circus conceit come alive. There's nothing about the setting that really screams “1950's,” other than a lack of modern technology like computers and cell phones, and the one time they show an old cup ramen commercial on a black-and-white television. The character design doesn't do anything to stand out from any other modern generic cute girls anime. The circus sequences are barely animated, relying heavily on stills instead of portraying the pure skill and spectacle that their audience comes to see. 

It's supremely disappointing, especially since A-1 employs skilled animators who have proven to be plenty adept at the kind of character acting that fully realizing the concept would require. Indeed, the animation outside of the circus sequences is bright, colorful, and pleasing to the eye; the tendency to suddenly place the characters against a background of a single bright color at key moments really makes things pop. There are flashes of brilliance around the trapeze animation, which is appropriate considering Mizuka is the main character, but it's a toss-up whether they'll reuse the same long-distance CG shot or hand-animate it with a real sense of weight and motion. Trapeze is, after all, a heavily physics-driven act, and it only looks impressive when there's a sense of what it means to have actual physical bodies flying through the air like that.

Then, halfway through the story, the big twists come fast and heavy: within a few episodes, everything we know about Mizuka and Maria is overturned, and the show races to wrap up what it just now introduced. Poor Ouka, who has worked so hard to be a match for Mizuka, is pushed to the wayside, and their partnership barely mattered in the end. After spending half the season on one-off antagonist circuses, a wealthy rival circus with a connection to the Sunflower Circus becomes pushed as the main opposition with emotional stakes.

This could have worked if the story had some time to breathe: to build up the ensemble, their personalities, and their interpersonal dynamics. Not just give characters single development episodes, but spend some time with them farting around as a group. To foreshadow more strongly. To build up the Blue Rose performers and their connection to the Sunflower Circus. To show Mizuka's growth as a leader. To explore Maria's declining health. There's so much they could have done with a full two-season run instead of trying to cram everything into one!

While more anime recently have been getting longer runs, whether split-cour or continuous, original series have been largely left to keep everything to 13 episodes at most. While a few directors and writers manage to tell a satisfying serialized story in that time, most would benefit from a slower pace and more time to unfurl. I don't know if Grow Up Show: Sunflower Circus- would have been great, given more time, but it certainly could have achieved more than “Pretty good, but forgettable.”