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- BirthdayApr 26
- LocationCalifornia
- JoinedJun 2, 2012
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Jun 18, 2013
I like my comedy simple.
The thought never really crossed my mind until I finally decided to read Wa! around yesterday or so, as it had been on my PTR for months. How I found Wa! back then will forever be a mystery to me. I didn't think much about the series anyways because of the average rating and low amount of users. However, after continuously laughing the whole time I was reading it, I changed my mind.
Wa! is severely unknown and underrated.
Wa! reminded me of the comedy that I love so much from titles such as Nichijou and from characters such as ones from Baka
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to Test. In fact, if you loved either of those series, you'll thoroughly enjoy reading this.
What's so great about Wa! is how simple yet enjoyable it is. You don't have to worry about a complicated story or character development or worthless side characters.
Wa! is essentially a blend of moe, slice of life, slapstick comedy, and additional romance. As the synopsis indicates, it's a story about crushes. Each character likes another character and eventually it forms a circle(and a whole bunch of misunderstandings). However, each character has a very distinct and cliche personality that defines them, which Wa! uses to its advantage as it relies heavily on quick, random interactions between characters.
To make it simple, Wa! is able to weave all the your most favorite and hated cliche character personalities into a hilarious romantic comedy. Rather than focusing on individuals, Wa! uses each of these character archetypes to help lay out hilarious interactions and gags. Watching how the tsundere student president interacts with the eroge gaming vice president adds a level of predictability on their behaviors but also unpredictability on the outcomes of the situations. Inserted between these scenes are inserts of random and witty references to Japanese pop culture, adding more fuel to the slapstick comedy.
Wa! isn’t great because of its complex story or characters, but because of its simplicity. If you want something lighthearted with a hint of romance, I highly recommend reading Wa! Thanks for reading and please post any thoughts on my profile so I can improve my future reviews! Thanks, and have fun guessing who ends up with who at the end :P
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Mar 13, 2013
To all you Key and Little Busters! VN fans out there, at least have the courtesy to read this before you down vote it. If you're a sucker for tons of melodrama and cute girls, by all means watch this. If you're the latter, read on.
Anyways, the moment I watched a character cry over her favorite park bench being destroyed, I finally gave up after struggling through 15 episodes of this anime. No matter how much I wanted to love this, I couldn't. And since this anime has 8 and 9 reviews as its top reviews, I'm going to shed some light on this anime
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so people won't waste their time with this.
Right off the bat, I have not played the VN. If this was seriously true to the VN, then that's great for all you VN fans who have been waiting for this. If I have a nostalgic feeling for something, I also can be subjective to favoritism and like things more than I should. However, in this review, I will be treating the anime and VN as different entities and therefore make this an anime only review.
Before I start off, this is my personal opinion and only my personal opinion, so I'm not trying to say that I've watched every great masterpiece out there and know what "true" masterpieces are. I honesty have a high enjoyment factor with most things, so low ratings are rare for me.
Little Busters! desperately tries to combine sports, slice of life, melodrama, comedy, and a whole array of concepts, and to be quite frank, it doesn't work at all. Our main character Riki is your "I had a terrible past as a child" type of deal but quickly made friends with a group known as the "Little Busters" that helped him through his tragic times. Riki is essentially as bland as you can get. He's weak, indecisive, but when girls are in trouble, he'll magically gains confidence and become a legendary savior. Yeah, one of those guys. Anyway, the group has some pretty interesting characters that weren't all that bad, however, things pretty much go downhill from there.
Fast forwarding to high school, The group all decide to recruit baseball players to form some baseball team that later on becomes almost non-important, but that's beside the point. So this "baseball" team basically gives our MC Riki an excuse to walk around campus and talk to random girls, because obviously a manly baseball team would suck. And you guessed it! He definitely picks up quite the amount of females. Your female cast that is slowly introduced is your typical bland, generic, "I've seen this stuff too many times to care" type of deal. We have the perfect cool beauty, the short little adorable girl who shouts "wafu!", your silent, unemotional bookworm, blahblabhalbh
And sure enough, each of these females has some terrible awful past that totally seems out of place. Now we suddenly shift from recruiting baseball members into a full blown melodramatic case involving unbelievable sob stories complete with cheesy Key production supernatural twists. Riki, being our main character, is obviously devoted to helping all these females out with the best of his abilities, and of course, he always manages to fix everything. And in the end, they all go back to playing baseball and happy story all over again.
Oh right, and there's also some major important "secret of the world" plot while all of this goes on, but after 15 episodes, all we know is these secrets are notes tied to cats. Yeah. cats. And the slips say your generic ambiguous "what the hell does this even mean" quotes that in the end, you honestly don't care about this secret of the world.
The comedy is at best, mediocre. Gags get repetitive and used over and over. Most of the comedy is focused on the muscles freak Masato, who is always losing in fights due to his stupidity and getting himself in silly situations. Our little adorable character Kud offers some Engrish and adorableness that isn't exactly innovative, but still provided a few bright spots here and there. Riki gets himself involved in all sorts of situations with the ladies, and Rin becomes catlike and scared of people who try to befriend her. Besides the fact, these happy carefree episodes in between the serious dramatic episodes feel really awkward and out of place. I admit that one cooking episode was fun to watch, and was probably my favorite episode out of the whole series.
So what did we get in the end? Generic characters, generic and cheesy melodrama, decent and overused comedy, and some random ass baseball theme behind all of it. What am I suppose to like? The dramatic scene of a student council president breaking a school bench? The slice of life elements, even though they don't associate with anything SLIGHTLY related to school besides their baseball team?
I wanted to like this so much, which is why I watched up until half of episode 16. But I really can't take this anymore. The execution is terrible and I'm just going to play the VN and not waste my time. Thanks for reading, and please comment on my profile so I can improve my future reviews.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Nov 3, 2012
Once in a while, it's nice to be pleasantly surprised. Going into something with a synopsis like Sakurasou, I honestly wasn't expecting much, but the end result was nice way to finish such a great series like this.
Keep in mind this is my first review. I'm not going to dive into why I picked numbers for each category because I find it pretty repetitive, but more strictly my enjoyment and impressions I have towards this anime. So by all means, I'm no expert in anime, I just watch what seems enjoyable for me.
One of Sakuraou’s most redeeming factors is the atmosphere from the characters/ setting.
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Sakurasou is not a typical setting like your group of friends or a school club. Our setting is that of Sakurasou, a rather different dorm that is home to individuals that are quite “unique” yet extremely talented. However, it’s in this sense that Sakurasou offers a large and diverse, and while rather cliché, cast that provides a lot of depth and humor.
Most noteworthy is our oblivious and rather emotionless female lead Mashiro, who brings the concept of a girl who has for all her life painted pictures and has no clue how to take care of herself. Her character overall works well with the over exaggerated actions of the male lead in charge of her, Sorata, and provides a humorous dynamic that many slice of lifes lack. The many other residents also play a vital role in this series, ranging from the tsundere friend who also likes Sorata, Nanami, to the random, jubilant, and talented animator Misaki. All of these characters complement the duo rather well, and are accompanied with their own meaningful back stories.
So by reading this far, it seems all this anime would have a rather shallow plot with the normal cliché characters. That’s where I was largely surprised by this anime. I was fearful of this anime just in the sense that it had 24 episodes, which always suffers from pointless fillers that deters viewers from watching it. However, this anime is unique in the sense that it juggles many different ideas and maintains it well.
Although the first three episodes were quite slow and lacked much plot movement, episode four was one of these first indicators that showed that even a show like this can have depth, and displayed drama and development that some series take 12 episodes/finales to reach. The introduction of Sorata’s ambitions at the start to be a game maker contrasts beautifully with Mashiro’s brilliance. While Sorata faces the hardships and realities of being a newbie game maker, Mashiro eases her way to the top as new manga artist. And Sorata experiences those feelings of when somebody is better than you.
Jealously. Hatred. Frustration.
I found it to be quite relatable and understandable. Does one give up if they can’t be successful at something? Or is there something beyond failure? Many of the characters of this series meet this question and ask themselves the same thing.
Sakurasou’s pacing is pretty solid, allowing it to nail its melodrama while also maintaining its comedic feeling. While I’m not a huge fan for melodrama because it’s always overdone and cheesy, I felt a lot of drama in Sakurasou was on-level and believable. The balance of comedy and drama, switching from serious moments to ones full of sexual innuendos and jokes, really helped the pacing out. The comedy is revolved around the character’s personalities, so if you have a liking towards all the characters, you’ll enjoy the sexual and awkward moments of Sorata and Mashiro or the embarrassing outburst of Nanami.
As you would expect, you’re going to have your moments of fan service and perhaps overdramatic moments to the point where it’s silly, but I don’t think it really deters the series as a whole. Yes, sometimes the fan service is a bit silly and unneeded, but as long as we’re not getting panty shots every 5 minutes, it doesn't affect the series as a whole. As the series progresses into a more serious mood, the quite attractive scenes of Mashiro fade out (sorry if you enjoy them). And yes, Mashiro is a love and hate character. If you hate her, you probably won’t like this series.
End result? Something that catches you off guard. A romance comedy with a unique feel that truly hits home. Great atmosphere of characters and cast, and solid pacing that intertwines comedy and drama. If you’re a romance comedy fan, by all means watch this if you want something with a change of pace.
Sakurasou no pet na Kanojo was quite the ride and I’ll sincerely miss this series. Even though it won’t happen, I’d love a season 2.
Thanks for reading my block of text, and if you survived this far, please leave any comments or criticism on my profile so I can improve my future reviews.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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