Urahara

I wanted a simple, colorful anime to mindlessly watch during quarantine. And while this anime gave me that, it had more story to it than what I expected. The pacing can be a bit wonky at bits but things add up to create a nice story, even though at first it seemed like it would be a "one new enemy per episode" type of anime. It lost me at some parts but I enjoyed watching it overall.

Story: 6.
Some aliens come to the Earth in order to steal culture, and three friends try to stop them with the help of a mysterious girl. It manages to ... keep a certain structure to the episode (new enemy appears, girls defeat it, they eat something together) while advancing the plot at the same time, even though by the end of the series they stop using that structure.

It had a few plot twist and, while they didn't had a lot of foreshadowing, I didn't feel like they came out of nowhere either. Sometimes I caught myself thinking that I would've handled certain things differently, but I'm not the target audience for this and the series it's actually enjoyable.

Some scenes were longer than they needed to be, with the characters repeating what they wanted or felt multiple times during them when it wasn't really necessary. Like have a little bit more faith in your audience. But they weren't unwatchable either.

Art: 8.
The main reason why I watched the series in the first time. I loved the colorful aesthetic that the trailer and the cover had, and I wasn't disappointed. The animation was a bit wonky at times but I enjoyed this regardless.

Sound: 7.
The background music was okay, I guess. I enjoyed both the opening and the ending.

Characters: 7.
They weren't the most deep characters ever, but I enjoyed them regardless. They had defined personalities and struggles that I could relate to, so they contributed to my enjoyment of the series.

Enjoyment: 8.
As I said, I enjoyed this anime quite a lot. The aesthetic was super nice to my eyes and I feel the story was well rounded even though it wasn't perfect. It didn't had me on the edge of my seat waiting for the next episode but it managed to keep me guessing at times. It isn't a groundbreaking anime but it doesn't need to, and I would love to watch something similar someday.

Overall I gave it a 7. I wont tell you to go watch this anime immediately, but if you have some time to kill it will serve.

The art is beautiful and the story concept is intriguing but the execution/writing/voice acting is lackluster and boring. If I could describe this anime in one word it would be: Loud. There is everything and nothing going on in this anime- too slow and too fast at times, horrible pacing issues. I wonder if a better format would be 5-10min episodes or perhaps a 3 episode ova because this anime is way too long for its own good. If you want to zone out or have some nonsensical brain/background noise (which sometimes I do and can apricate). Art is unique but everything else is cliche ... as it can be.



Goodness how long does this review need to be I have no idea the word count

Urahara is dreadful.

It tries to trick you into liking it by having a unique style and plot twists but don't be fooled, Urahara has very little to it in the end.

Story: 3
The story in this show is nothing. Aliens called Scoopers come to earth and steal culture, because that's what they do, they have no culture so they steal it. It's worth noting that, in episode 1 the humans decide to call them Scoopers because of how they "scoop" up culture and that turns out to just be the actual name of the species. Anyway it takes place in Harajuku where three girls ... with a barebones ability to simulate human emotion are running a store called "Park." A little girl and sentient fried shrimp show up and give them these little things that look like truffles and they get magical girl transformation sequences and go to fight the Scoopers. It could definitely be more generic but it's certainly not creative, despite its overuse of the word.

Art: 6
Art is the only thing I give a decent score because the backgrounds at least are unique. It has a distinctive art style that does not at all translate into animation. The animation in this show is terrible, I've seen One Piece episodes that were animated better. The character designs are interesting but none of it means anything. Kotoko has cat ears and a tail and Rito has devil horns but they're just like... a fashion thing. Kotoko doesn't act particularly like a cat, Rito doesn't act particularly like a demon, it's just a shorthand to make the characters look different. Also, after a few episodes the pastels start to hurt your eyes, so the art style doesn't actually work that well.

Sound: 3
I don't remember any of the tracks from this show outside of the opening, which changes tempo seemingly at random. I eventually started skipping it. The voice acting is pretty bad, though it does improve a little by the end of the series. Misa's verbal tick becomes flat out grating once she becomes a more important character though.

Characters: 1
The characters in this show suck. They are basic character traits extrapolated into people.

Kotoko is the biggest offender. She's the smart character, and as such, they'll just have her say smart sounding things. One of the most obvious examples is when a character mentions DNA and she interjects to explain that DNA stands for Deoxyribonucleic Acid.
Mari's personality is all over the place. In one episode she'll be a diva, obsessed with her followers, and in another she's always just been a clothing designer who really wants to own a store.
Rito's personality is that she is the quiet one. She has at least some development in terms of accepting that her art's quality isn't defined by how many people see it.
All three of them are terrible at expressing emotion, their eyes basically always look the same, which is weird in such a stylized show where they should really be going off-model more often. Instead they have a standard model and a chibi model.

Enjoyment: 1
This is not a fun show to watch. It's tedious, some episodes have just actual filler. Episode 9 has 10 actual minutes of people begging with each other and getting nowhere. The end of the series in particular is really bad with its time wasting, and I get the feeling this was supposed to be a 10 episode series that got stretched on to 12. Seriously episode 11 has an almost Scooby Doo-esque chase scene that is just there to waste time. It's not even well animated. On top of that, some of the scenes in episode 9 are legitimately vomit inducing.

Overall: 2
I can't in good faith give Urahara a 1. It has inventive character and background art and I think someone there was trying, but there is just no appeal here. Do not watch Urahara.