I was pleasantly surprised.
The plot of Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru is fairly straightforward. Enter Hotori, a quirky high school student whose dreams is to become a teenage Sherlock Holmes. After school she works in Seaside, the maid cafe owned by her grandmother, together with her classmate Tatsuno. Throw in a large cast of interesting characters, a bunch of puns, some lateral thinking puzzles, a couple of love triangles/squares and you've got yourself a winner. The story is slice-of-life style, with two chapters from the manga adapted into each episode, keeping things fairly fast-paced and never boring in any sense of the word. It's all very simple, but due to Shaft's style of blowing simple things up to bizarre proportions, it works.
One thing that was unexpected was the quality of the animation. It was very fluid and quite detailed, and not only during the first episode, it kept the quality level relatively uniform during the whole series. This is REALLY uncommon for this studio's shows, usually featuring big dips in animation quality throughout. I guess their budget might be bigger this time due to Bakemonogatari's success, but I digress. The typical eye close-ups and large amounts of on-screen text which the studio is rather infamous for were also mostly absent. I'm not complaining. The black and white "I'm in despair!"-animation from the Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei-series is still there though, if anybody is wondering. Both wide-angle and extreme frog-perspective shots see frequent use (or abuse, depending on your opinion), which brings a nice sense of Shaft-flair to the scenes.
When you think Shaft, you think great OP animations (well, at least I do). Soremachi is no exception, I don't think I'm going too far by saying it's the best OP of 2010. But to be fair, when combining the sweet sounds of ROUND TABLE with the OP animation of Shaft, you wouldn't expect anything less. Which brings me to the soundtrack of the series. I wouldn't call it amazing or anything, but it's pretty good and it serves it purpose well. The ED is also great by the way, maid rock! Oh, and while we're in the sound section of the review... The voice-acting cast is fairly strong. You have both established voice-actors like Sugita Tomokazu and more unknown ones like the voice of the main character, Omigawa Chiaki. I gotta hand it to Omigawa though, she really brings out the essence of Hotori in her voice.
Anyways, the thing that I really liked with the show wasn't animation or OP or anything like that. It was atmosphere. When it comes to the general mood of Soremachi, it feels like a more energetic, more silly version of such classics as Aria or Kamichu. This is just one of those nice relaxing series you can wind down to. If you enjoy shows like that, you're in for a real treat; if not, well just try watching it anyway. This is not the best thing to come out this year, but that doesn't mean it's not a worthwhile watch.
