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Have you ever been at the scene of a horrific car accident? You know you shouldn't look. Most likely, you're driving yourself and you need to keep your eyes on the road, anyway, but you just can't help it. The sights of miscellaneous debris, a twisted heap that's barely recognizable as a car anymore, and possibly even emergency responders on the scene, all draw your eyes in. It's too horrible not to look.

This is the rough manga equivalent of that phenomenon. Words cannot do it justice. It has to be seen. Even so, for me seeing was not ... believing. I could not understand what I was seeing for most of an entire chapter. Finally, it dawned on me. This manga was rendered with some kind of computer-generated imagery software.

It had never occurred to me before now that this was a thing someone might try. Furthermore, that it would be printed in an ordinary manga periodical, and blithely reproduced on Crunchyroll's website. The result is horrifying. One might chance upon this manga on CR's site, or on an aggregate site such as this, if he is unlucky. It is deservedly obscure. Even if one does happen upon it, he is likely to shy away from it because of its terrible promotional image. As far as I can tell, it only has the one.

The promotional image is baffling in how it is both indicative and nonindicative at the same time. It is indicative of the general quality of the manga, but it doesn't seem to be made using the same model as it appears in the manga. The poor promotion seem to have extended even to the adaptation work. Some obvious mistakes were left in, some panels weren't cleaned appropriately, and there was even an image that wouldn't load.

Considering how slipshod the work itself is, I can hardly blame them for the lack of effort. There are backgrounds that are obviously just photographs. This isn't unheard of in manga, but it's just egregious here. There's even one that appears to be from a timelapse photograph, which is a really bizarre choice. Was it the first picture he found? The CG models are desperately lacking in detail. It really doesn't make a lot of sense in a situation like this where rendering is barely even a consideration, so the only reasonable explanation seems to be a simple lack of effort and/or skill.

I've barely talked about the story itself to this point, but to be blunt these visuals made the story sort of moot. Even putting them aside, it's like a bad version of Hell Girl. But even this comparison highlights the main failing of this manga. Hell Girl nailed the aesthetic qualities. Hell Girl had style. This is liable to make one bleed from the eyes. I hope I won't be spoiling anything by mentioning there are murders in this manga. Those are probably the most important scenes of all, but they look retarded. It looks like somebody's stabbing a goddamn mannequin. It's impossible to take them seriously, much less with the gravity they're supposed to possess.

So, in the end, what even is this manga? In the first place, is this actually manga? Even the aggregate sites don't seem to know what to do with this thing; there are almost no tags used. It's only a "psychological" manga in the sense it's likely to drive one insane. The only thing horrible about it is the way it looks. In the end, perhaps it is only a freak show.

P.S.: Do not read Crunchyroll comments for any reason. You are liable to lose some of whatever little faith in humanity you had left. Even MAL users have eyes.

"I've grown complacent in taking many things for granted. But when others look at those very same things, they brood on each one and stumble. Looking at Amakasu agonizing over finding her own answer, I think that there might not be even a single thing in this world that can be taken for granted." -- Haruto Okonogi, episode 10

"I was complacent. But when others look at those very same things ..." -- Haruto Okonogi, episode 12

Repetition is one key to memory. Advertisers use it to make you remember their product. My teachers in school would frequently repeat themselves when ... saying something important that was likely to appear on the exam. So when a character in a show like this, which smacks of very deliberate construction in every area, repeats himself nearly verbatim in a span of three episodes, it must be important. Surely it must speak to something with thematic weight.

What had I taken for granted as the viewer? Looking back on it now, there were clearly some things. I'd like to think that now I have the benefit of the full picture for context, but I can think of a few things in particular that I actually took for granted. Firstly, Hisone Amakasu is a woman. This is a pretty minor thing to overlook, because it usually isn't very relevant. It does turn out to be so in this case, though.

In fact, all the D-pilots are female. This is something anime has trained us to take for granted. All-female casts are present in hundreds of anime, and usually this doesn't have any meaning in the context of the story. This isn't an all-female cast, though. There are many male supporting characters, and one I'd even consider a lead even though he doesn't appear so at first. In fact, the interactions between man and woman is a major thematic element in this story.

Romance appears in many anime and this is no exception. It's familiar and thus we can take its presence for granted. However, the interplay of the sexes does a lot more here. It wasn't until I was writing this review that I realized the general level of power disparity between the men and the women in the show. Very few of the men are subordinate to any of the women, and this is pretty clear to see because of the military setting and its clear delineation of hierarchy. I don't remember the show doing anything specific to highlight this aspect. It could be this is one thing we are meant to take for granted.

One thing we'll never entirely overlook, hopefully, is sexual harassment. The level of it in this show is pretty tame, relatively. Surely there's nothing here that would be considered a firing offense in the real world, but its presence was strange and slightly off-putting. The scenes with the tailor, if you can call him that, followed the usual beats for this kind of thing in anime. It's played for laughs, and he comes across as pretty harmless in the end. This isn't the only place where this kind of thing appears, though. In another instance, it gets called out as sexual harassment on the spot, and it doesn't come across as funny at all. Given the context in which it occurs, it can simply be read as yet another thing making Hisone uncomfortable about her new position as D-pilot, and that's all it seemed for the moment.

However, these kinds of things continue to pile up to where they can't be ignored anymore. In retrospect, I have to respect Mari Okada for weaving this subject in so well. It's a slippery topic and she slips it in right under our noses. For me, the breaking point was when they explicitly stated that the D-pilots aren't allowed to fall in love. I knew this was wrong. This was not a thing that made sense, however justified the person saying it believed himself to be. In retrospect, I can see that this was done just right. If it had come any later, the Shinto elements would have been known and we could have easily written this off. It's normal in mythology for the gods to make unreasonable demands of men. But since these things hadn't been introduced yet, this comes across as a man making unreasonable demands of a woman. It has just enough time to settle in and make us a little uncomfortable.

Thankfully, this is far from my first anime rodeo, and I have a little outside-context knowledge of the topic being addressed here. Otherwise, I'd be unlikely to know the very specific "thing which was taken for granted" that the plot eventually addresses. (I've reached my threshold for how much of the plot I'm willing to directly reveal.) That is, married women don't work, at least not in Japan. I can remember instances in anime where women explained why they were quitting their job simply as, "I'm getting married." Not, "I'm getting married, my fiance already has a high-paying job, and I want to have children," but merely "I'm getting married." It doesn't require explanation, because it's taken for granted that married women don't have careers. They may have part-time jobs or do volunteer work or what have you, but having a career and supporting a family is for the man.

That's what "Hisone and Maso-tan" is about, to me. It's about the plight of the working woman. (I'm a true believer in the "death of the author" approach to literary interpretation, so if it meant something else to you, then that's fine.) It has elements that speak to Japanese culture specifically, but this isn't an anime made entirely for Japan. Continuing a recent trend of such shows, it will also be airing on Netflix.

Taking the theme of defying what was taken for granted into the metafictional realm, much of this show is designed from first principles, disregarding the anime status quo. The first you'll probably notice is the character design. Stock anime character designs simply don't lend themselves well to animation, so this production team abandoned them. What we get is something memorable and unique, and the animation team takes full advantage of the streamlined designs to make them much more expressive in practice. (See also: every Yuasa anime ever.)

This extends to the background art as well. We get something rather unique here, too. It looks something like watercolor. There's been a trend toward very digital, shiny, saturated backgrounds lately, and some of these are even quite good in their own right. This has something hazier, with more of a hand-drawn look. It fits very well with the character art and it just feels very good. To me, background art is a strong contributor to the feel of an anime. Many of my favorites have particularly good art design and it makes them a joy to watch.

Another element that tends to appeal directly on an emotional level is music. This has what's probably the best soundtrack of the season. Again, there's no regard for what's considered typical of anime. There is no J-Pop to be seen here. Even when they have the cast sing in character for the ED, it's an old French song that they sing. I wasn't expecting it to be relevant, but it is a song about taking a holiday in France. There is a moment where something like that comes up in context, so keep your eyes open for it.

All in all, this really seems like it could be an enduring classic. There have been numerous contenders lately. Megalo Box plays it too safe, never escaping its status as a tribute to a classic when it could have been one in its own right. Devilman: Crybaby had production quality issues which this lacks. (Though the dub hasn't been made yet, so that could still become an issue like it was for Devilman.) Koe no Katachi pulled its punches a little, and waters down its message by dragging on too long and including some unnecessary elements. This may fly a little under the radar, but it delivers its strike with laser-guided precision. I need to seriously reconsider my previous stance on Mari Okada if this is what she's really capable of when she takes the gloves off.

P.S.: When I say this anime made me uncomfortable, know that I don't consider that to be a bad thing. In fact, I consider it to be a rare and valuable thing. Youtuber MrBtongue made a video on this you should see if you haven't already. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg_Lp5bO1U8

Pretty Cure is all grown up.

For those of us who have seen a Precure before, that tagline is effectively TL;DR. We know what to expect. But honestly, there are very few of us, for reasons beyond the scope of this document. This is aimed at the rest of humanity ... who, for some reason, haunt underutilized sections of MAL.

Pretty Cure is, for better and for worse, a merchandise-driven show. On the plus side, it has steady returns that aren't based on BD/DVD sales figures. This means that it has a level of polish and craftsmanship that isn't usually seen in ... TV anime. It also means that watching it involves being advertised to, since the show itself is an advertisement of a sort. How noticeable this is varies a lot.

Pretty Cure is also a single long-running series in a way. The seasons ostensibly start from scratch each time, but there are many similarities between, and there are crossover movies that somehow attempt to make them coexist. This entry, in particular, feels a lot like Go! Princess Precure. It's hardly surprising to find, then, that a lot of the people who worked on that also came back for this installment. Some of these are relative newcomers in the anime world.

That's why it's nice to see a veteran in the lineup. Namely, Junichi Satou. It was Ojamajo Doremi, another Toei magical girl show and thus a predecessor of sorts to Precure, that really launched his career. He went on to work on other magical girl shows, besides, so this is both a homecoming and a return to form for him.

To me, the main difference in this season is a tonal one. The first installment of Precure was poorly planned and tried to laugh off all the issues stemming from this. This season is well thought out, in a way I never expected from a Precure show. Plot developments have build up. Things flow naturally from what has come before. There's no excessive rush to build the core cast like there was in GoPri Precure. Characters have definable traits but have room to grow. The villains have a theme, but it's one that you might not expect in a kid's show. A young girl can hardly be expected to know about the corporate world, yet it makes the motivations of our starter villains, at least, comprehensible to those of us in the know.

Yet, none of this has sacrificed what makes Precure appealing to those of us who have watched it in the past. It's still fun. There's a lot of animation. A lot of that is good, and in different ways. Watch Homare ice skate, Hana flail about humorously, and all the Precures do battle. I think it's significant to note that the fight direction is a lot better than I've come to expect from this series. In early series, it seemed like they were trying to avoid things like impact, and clean lines of action, for some reason I never understood. Even in Go! Princess Precure, it seemed like these principles were only observed sometimes. Notably, those were the best episodes. Someone at Toei clearly noticed.

Thus we arrive at the present year. Pretty Cure has experimented in a lot of ways, and continues to do so, but in this season it shows that it hasn't forgotten what it's learned along the way. A big part of growing up is making mistakes and learning from them. That's why I say that Pretty Cure is grown up.

P.S. Due credit to youtuber ThePedanticRomantic, who is my source for some of this information. He really opened my eyes to how special this season is, and why. Watch his video on it! (It's the one with the really hyperbolic-sounding title. You'll know when you see it.)

[Indirectly spoils the ending, and possibly other elements of the show. This is the sort of thing that's hard to avoid in reviews, and which I don't think should necessarily be avoided. Consider yourself forewarned.]

Today, I want to write about love. It's no coincidence that this show is about love and writing, and the love of writing, among other things, because I don't often write in the first place. From time to time, I find that there are some shows which evoke certain feelings, or thoughts, that I have to write about them. This is one of those shows.

There are ... many kinds of love. The advertising for this show, and its OP/ED, focus largely on the romantic kind. It's almost a shame, because the show focuses mostly on the love of hobbies or work. Akira and Masami are the kind of people who have lost sight of their passions for one reason or another. Akira gave up on running due to an injury. Masami gave up on writing because of a lack of success and the hardship it brought on his family.

It's frequently difficult to pursue these passions. It's also not easy giving up on a thing you feel so strongly about, or dealing with the regret of having done so. That said, wouldn't you be happier doing the former, given that it's a thing you enjoy anyway? It's a hard question for a lot of people, and like most real-world problems, there isn't one right answer for everyone. There's a catch to this dilemma, though. A person who doesn't really want to give up and walk away from his dream simply shouldn't. He might still do it, though, for one reason or another. In this case, wouldn't someone who encouraged him to follow his dreams be making his life demonstrably better? In that case, isn't it better to be with that person?

This is the essence of human relationships, in the end. "Romantic love" is something that mostly exists only in fiction, and this show isn't interested in perpetuating the fantasy. However, love itself is real enough, and this show sets out to explore it. In this case, it starts out in what's basically the most straightforward way. Akira is physically attracted to Masami. I consider this much to be clear, though many things in the show are presented nonverbally, and thus up to interpretation. It's less clear how Masami feels about Akira, especially at first. I got a similar impression from him that I got from Kyon. Namely, that he's prone to self-deception. That's why it's so refreshing that Akira is so honest about how she feels about most things. This is why it tears at my heart to see her lie to herself, and to others, about the most important one.

You see, this was a very emotional show for me. I cried at the finale, which is already rare enough, but it was a different kind of cry. These were tears of joy; the joy of experiencing something truly beautiful. I don't consider this to be an accident. Where many shows would generally be content to tell you what their characters are feeling, or use some kind of established visual shorthand, this show tries to make those emotions visually apparent, and to impart certain feelings onto the viewer. Nonverbal communication is inherently risky, and I've always admired shows that rely on it and succeed. This show likes its metaphors, visual and otherwise. I've long known that Wit Studio has some talented animators, and has a passion for making visually beautiful shows. It's wonderful to see them take that energy and talent, and use it for a clear purpose. I'd also like to credit the background artists, because their work is stellar, but I know almost nothing about this element of anime production. It's also no coincidence that the music is very good; I've often considered this to be the most emotional part of the experience of watching anime. Even what I thought might be a flaw, that the music is somewhat repetitive, may in fact be a motif, which again serves a purpose.

I love this show. It really speaks to me. It fits my ideals for what an anime should be, and its theme and some of its trappings appeal to me personally. Its ending exceeded whatever hopes I might have had for it. It's not very interesting to talk about its personal appeal to me, since the reader's life experience and situation will certainly be different than mine, but it's there. That said, I feel confident that this show's more objective merits are strong enough that I could recommend it to anyone. I hope you love it as much as I do, because in the end, we're better off being happy. (Sorry, Chihiro! No poison today.)

Firstly, let me say that this is a series which is not strictly necessary. The original series ended satisfactorily some years ago. This isn't a reboot which is accessible to newcomers, either. It's just a bit of fanservice for fans of the original, basically.

The show acknowledges this pretty squarely. The first episode is enough of an introduction to work as a reminder for returning fans, but probably wouldn't suffice for new viewers. That said, it hits its mark very quickly. If they were looking to hit that nostalgia target, they couldn't have done much better than opening with Kero-chan's ... voice.

Aya Hisakawa as Kerberos is one of my favorite vocal performances in all of anime, and she's on point as ever. Mascot characters have been a sore point for me in a lot of magical girl shows; I dropped the original Precure because of one. Many others are merely tolerable, but Kerberos is actually enjoyable in his own right. The way he speaks is beyond bizarre and incredibly memorable.

The original cast of Cardcaptor Sakura is in attendance and in character. Sakura herself is my favorite magical girl protagonist. These have tended toward being endearingly flawed; Sakura goes in the other direction. Particularly for a middle-school girl, she's a rather well-rounded character. She's responsible, compassionate, fair, and trusting. If anything, her one flaw might be that she's too trusting, but it suits her fairly well in the overall narrative. Her challenges rarely come from antagonism. Instead, her challenges mainly come from encountering the unfamiliar. The unknown is naturally scary, and she encounters it on a regular basis. This is the meat of the series, recapturing various cards.

I wasn't sure what to expect on the production front from Madhouse in the current year, but this is pretty top-notch. It might be the best-looking TV anime on right now, and the OP/ED are both fantastic. One could be forgiven for confusing the ED for an OP, because it's much more visually interesting and energetic than these tend to be. Unsurprisingly given recent trends, some CG is incorporated into the show, and there seems to be some digital after-effects. Perspective, or depth-of-field, shots are almost common enough to not be worth mentioning anymore.

One was used in an insert song sequence, for example. I never knew I was a sucker for this kind of thing until Girls' Last Tour last season. Insert songs are kind of nice on their own, but it's better when they're attached to an otherwise memorable scene. As with everything else, execution and context still matter. The soundtrack is nice in its own right and its usage fits the show. I already mentioned one notable vocal performance, but the rest are quite good too, even that of the newcomer, Akiho.

All in all, though I don't think this series was necessary, I'm quite glad it was made regardless. It feels nostalgic, and I think the feeling is well-earned. For my part, I only finished the original series last year sometime, so it hasn't really had the time to get that hazy sort of nostalgia. I don't think I could recommend it to people who haven't seen (or read) the original series, but that just means this is a great time to get out there and experience a classic. If you watch a lot of anime, and if you're on this site you probably do, you should watch this one too.

Sakura Quest is a show which lacks for nothing but marketability. Thankfully, this doesn't actually affect viewer experience. It only serves to get things noticed in a crowded market. One may ask, "How does an anime outside the usual, marketable trends get made in the first place?" That has everything to do with the production team behind it, you see.

Progressive Animation Works (hereafter P.A. Works) has a very indicative name. It's clear from the name alone that the intent of the studio was to push the medium forward. One can see several of the latest trends in anime production ... by viewing P.A. Works shows alone, though some studios are comparable in these areas. They've had at least modest success with other anime-original projects, such as Shirobako. This has seemingly emboldened them enough to take on themes which are rarely seen in anime due to demographics issues.

Sakura Quest is a story of change. It's told through familiar methods, even if the content is unfamiliar. Most of the roadmarks of the Hero's Journey are present here. It's not a bad thing to base your story on familiar building blocks. There certainly are realist works of fiction that abandon this framework, but it's a hard thing to do. For every "Madame Bovary" there are perhaps a million amateur works that fail completely on a basic level. Sakura Quest probably could not afford to have an alienating form in addition to its unfamiliar content.

As someone who grew up in a rural setting, the idea of a "ghost town" is familiar to me. They generally result from a macroeconomic change. In my home state, many were created by the coming of railroads, which put the steamboat industry out of business. It's not unusual to see abandoned gas stations in the U.S. due to the building of new roads, such as the interstate highways. Whenever a market changes significantly, there are always people and businesses left behind. In this case, there's an entire community left behind by the times.

Manoyama may be a fictional place, but its situation is one that many rural places in Japan today face. The pressures of low birthrates and continuing urbanization have led to a depopulation of rural areas. It's just this realistic setup that encourages them to embark on a very animesque solution. That is, to hire a cute girl from out of town to become a representative of the town itself and encourage tourism.

Enter our protagonist. Much like the town itself, Yoshino Koharu has been left behind by a difficult job market and a young person's lack of particular skills. Despite an initial and very understandable reluctance to take on such a strange and open-ended job, Yoshino soon takes to it like a fish to water with her can-do attitude and sheer pluck. There are many challenges on the way, and like any real-world problem there's probably no "right" solution. The first of these challenges is to get some people on her side, because she certainly isn't going to solve this problem on her own.

One would be tempted to think that the local chairman of tourism, Kadota, would be the first person in her corner, but he's more of an impediment for most of the series. Despite his age, he has a lot of growing up to do and he's living in the past to a large extent. The one good thing that can be said about him is that he's willing to change things, even if he has no idea what. The rest of the town isn't so friendly to the idea. Unsurprisingly, the people most open to change turn out to be other young people.

Because this is an anime, these other young people are cute girls in familiar archetypes. The main difference here is that these young girls are actually adults in situations not unlike Yoshino's. Sanae moved to the country hoping that country life would sound more appealing on her blog. She's the girl in glasses. Maki moved back home, unsure what to do with herself after a failed attempt at an acting career. She's the cool beauty. Shiori is the homemaker who isn't already married for some inexplicable reason. Ririko is a recent high school graduate who's living at home due to her social awkwardness. She's the kuudere. None of these girls join Yoshino without going through a character arc of their own, though.

These aren't the only characters in Sakura Quest, and I think this is one of the better parts of the show. The supporting cast is actually very large, and it creates an increased sense of community and verisimilitude. Even many of these get story arcs of their own, which fit with the overall theme of change. These also often showcase some aspect of the community and make it come alive.

This world-building is actually rather important to Sakura Quest, since it's more of a story of an entire community than a single person. Assisting in this area is the artwork, which is very clean and attractive, even when it's depicting a permanently shuttered storefront. It's easier to get emotionally invested in a beautiful place full of attractive people. There's plenty of expressive character animation too, to help the viewer get attached to the characters. It's all strung together by competent direction. There's a lot of perspective shots, and viewing angle changes as necessary to create a sense of space.

The careful construction of P.A. Works extends even to the sound. The music is excellent and fitting, and the OP/ED sequences are among the best this year has to offer. The voice acting is on-point. They even managed to find a fluent English speaker to play the recurring foreign character, Sandal, and Spanish speakers for one particular episode. All of these things combine to make a show that's easy and enjoyable to watch.

Everyone who watches anime should watch Sakura Quest. Much like the town of Manoyama, it has a lot of charm and personality of its own. It's probably too much to ask for the core anime demographic of young, urban people, especially teenage boys, to relate to its themes, but the viewing experience is good enough even if it's exploring areas totally unfamiliar to the viewer. The worst thing I could say about Sakura Quest is that it might not be quite as good as some other things I've seen, but that's nitpicking at best. In my experience, if I have to resort to this kind of argument to criticize a show, it's definitely one of the better ones.

This show is hard to talk about, because it's a sad story. It's the story of how a promising show can be undermined by an unnecessary adherence to convention. Oh, you thought I was talking about the plot of the show itself?

Allow me to put this into perspective. The Japanese light novel has a fair bit of history now, but allow me to be glib and say that they're a modern sort of pulp fiction. Pulp fiction was a type of media engineered for popular entertainment. It was printed in periodicals on cheap paper (the pulp in pulp fiction). ... If you were to simplify all fiction into either, "genre fiction," or "serious literature," pulp fiction was all the way on the genre end of the scale. The medium gave rise to some storytelling trends of its own, such as the two-fisted tale. Much of the same can be said about the modern Japanese light novel.

This show wears its light novel trappings on its sleeve. This is apparent from the title alone. It's entirely too long to remember, much less recite, inviting people to invent some marketing-friendly fan nickname. It's set in another world. There is exactly one guy in the main cast. There are some vaguely-defined superpowers involved. The main girl has long hair, at least past the mid-point of the back. There are probably many more examples I could have listed here.

Very little of this is obvious from the start of the show. The first episode was so enjoyable and well-crafted that I paid these sorts of things no mind. In retrospect, there were a few fears which had gathered, though I hadn't put words to them yet. A good show draws you into its world, and lacks annoying distractions. You aren't likely to think about this sort of thing during a good show. However, the rest of the show wasn't up to the standard that first episode had set. By the end of the fourth episode, I had put words to the fears, and found justification for them.

The first concerns the plot. This is one thing which isn't necessarily light-novel-ish, and seems to be more like one of Key/Visual Arts' so-called "utsuge," or "crying games." I disliked these sorts of stories for being emotionally manipulative. They would unabashedly use cheap tricks to get you to feel sad. Thus, the fear, "Will they have these girls dying off one by one for cheap tears?" Now, a little tragedy isn't a bad thing. However, the end of episode four was troubling. Right after stirring the depths of main guy's trauma, main girl did a stupid anime rom-com thing and broke the tension. Thus, at this point, I don't trust this show to handle tragedy appropriately.

That isn't even the only problem I have with the plot. Main guy's backstory is presented a bit out of order such that it induces a bit of a plot hole. It made it clear that he was there to see the destruction of the surface world, yet also that this occurred about 200 years ago, long enough that his native language has become a dead language. How this is possible wasn't made clear until later. Even though we can accept the explanation via willing suspension of disbelief, since it's arguably necessary for the story to exist, there remains the question of why it was presented in this haphazard way.

The setting has a bit of a similar issue, though it's more of a mixed bag. The airborne cities are beautiful, and I'm happy to set aside questions of how such things exist to admire them. The fact that they're filled with the so-called, "featured," humans with animal traits, or maybe sentient human-like animals, is also interesting. This actually creates a bit of a problem, since the story only deals with these things superficially. I want to see more of the world outside the orphanage-prison, but the plot isn't really interested in these things. The plot really only cares about the fairy-girls. The "featured" seem to only exist to isolate them, and to not-so-subtly encourage the viewer to empathize with them. You see, this is a harem show.

In fact, it's a themed harem. The theme? Lolis. Yes, inner cynic, the orphanage-prison really is a lolicon paradise. It was a totally gratuitous fanservice shot, of one of the younger girls, that verified this for me. The presentation is a bit misleading in this (Black Bullet was a lot more transparent). It's even possible this wasn't the author's intent, but it's what we got anyway. Main girl is supposedly 15, which should be outside the lolicon range, but she's drawn like the object of a hebephile's wet dream anyway. In some other show, I might have written this off as her being the flat one, but it's hard to interpret her any other way in this context. There is a full-grown woman around, but she's treated like a joke by the narrative and as a nuisance by the main guy. It's normal for a harem show to feature a character, the "harem nanny," whose purpose is to manage the harem; this is literally her job. She is a walking TV tropes entry.

Several of the other characters are easily dismissed in this way. Nephren is the nigh-emotionless girl. Ithea is the gadfly. Chtholly, a.k.a. main girl, is the tsundere. Up until the end of episode four, I had a better opinion of her. After that, it's clear that being a tsundere is her defining character trait. It would be easy to declare main guy, a.k.a. Willem, to be the typical slightly moody light novel protagonist. For once, this seems to be a bit unfair. His broodiness stems from understandable guilt and unresolved grief, and he doesn't seem to project the typical too-cool-to-care nonsense that generally goes with the archetype. Whether he's as overpowered as the typical escapist protagonist remains to be seen, but the fact that he's been defeated at least once, and even shown as mostly helpless in the scope of the narrative, makes it hard to compare him to the likes of Tatsuya Shiba.

All in all, this show could have been something good. This isn't mere speculation, as the first episode stands as testament to this potential. It has aspects I like without reservation, such as the scenery porn and the soundtrack. However, the medium of the source material, and the expectations associated with it, soiled it a bit. There were too many annoying distractions to allow me to enjoy the good things.

In these times of hyperbolic, sensationalist media, the word "mediocre" has taken on such a negative connotation that it's become hard to use outside of insults. This site's rating system seems to suggest "mediocre" is actually awful, since only truly awful shows have an average rating around 5. If you're confused as to what the word, "mediocre," actually means, I invite you to watch this show. You will come to understand.

The mediocrity starts with the characters. If you've watched a show of the "cute girls doing cute things" or "moeblob slice of life" genre before, you'll know these are exactly the ... sort of characters these shows are expected to have. There's a painfully shy one, a younger-looking girl in a maid uniform who's actually their senior, a pastiche of every tsundere ever, a big eater who makes catlike expressions, and on and on. Some of them seem to be direct knockoffs of characters in other shows. Despite the derivative nature, their designs are appealing. The characters themselves are endearing in their own way. Unfortunately, some of them stretch suspension of disbelief needlessly. Let's put aside the question of the club advisor for now, as I'm assuming her age is a lie until proven otherwise, but why is the landlady a first-year high school girl? Well, obviously, it's so they can all go to high school together.

The setting is probably the worst thing about this show. We don't see enough of the school for it to feel like a real place. It feels tacked on and unnecessary. GochiUsa just had the characters living and/or working together, and that was enough. We have that same setup here, with the main characters living together in a used bookstore which is also a dormitory which is also a coffee shop. Why a coffee shop? Because GochiUsa did it, and because it creates an excuse for a maid-like outfit. The home/work setting feels like an actual place, but it still feels a bit artificial. Where's the kitchen? There are rarely any customers. When there are scenes on the nearby streets, there are never any cars and barely any pedestrians. It's sort of odd, because the background work is pretty decent.

The show's artwork and animation is acceptable at the least. We don't have obvious mistakes like inconsistent border thicknesses, unerased lines, or jarring CGI, just to name a few I've seen in the last couple of seasons. Actually, for the genre, this seems to have above average production values. The OP/ED are fully animated, and even include a dance which presumably took a significant amount of animator effort. There's a fair amount of superdeformed art, but it seems like a deliberate decision because they thought it would be cuter, or more expressive, rather than a cost-cutting measure. There is one weird inconsistency, though. Since Hinako seems to be the primary fanservice vehicle, she has a wide variance in bust size in particular. This can happen mid-scene, and it's oddly jarring when it does.

The sound is the thing I'm least qualified to comment on. The music didn't make a big impression on me. I don't particularly like the opening theme, since there's too much spoken-word dialogue. It's especially annoying because it wasn't translated on the site where I watched it. I thought the voice actors were trying too hard for that high-pitched cutesy sound, but it does match the diabetes-inducing nature of the show, so it isn't really out of place.

All in all, this show is nothing special. It's highly derivative and unoriginal. However, it's still fairly well-executed, and that's what matters in the end. In particular, I recommend it to people who are already interested in the "cute girls slice-of-life" genre. It may be more of the same, but it's pleasant enough watching all the same. I've watched better shows of this genre, but I've definitely watched worse.