Yuzuki-san Chi no Yonkyoudai.

Yuzuki-san Chi no Yonkyoudai felt like a bandage for my soul wounds. It was like a warm tea in a cold and rainy evening. And I loved this show with my whole existence.

Starting off from characters: yes, they all feel kind of flat and don't break the traits they were given from the very beginning. But they don't need to. These brothers and their ginger friends don't have to feel like humans, or to be extraordinary to love them. They surely are too kind and understanding to be real. Yet at the same time they show jealousy, envy, fear, trauma, sadness, fomo, and other rather ... humane feelings.

Plot is pretty simple. We hear different day-to-day stories of brothers about growing up, caring for other people, spreading the wings, troubles with becoming an adult and of course dealing with death. I am afraid of death and I kind of feel it crawling down my spine. Therefore, you can understand the anxiety I live in for a long time. Even so I enjoyed this anime. I, maybe, felt understood and hugged.

Animation is beautiful. Truly beautiful. Not only in colours and gorgeous characters art, but also in different forms the studio used to deliver complexity of different emotions.

Summing up, I do I DO recommend this show to everyone who seeks an enjoyable, kind and warm-hearted watch. Hug your inner child!

The Yuzuki Family's Four Sons proved to be a surprisingly engaging watch.

The first episode is kind of deceiving as it follows a somewhat cliché 'feel-good slice of life' formula, but the later episodes get very creative and downright experimental at times (i.e. episode 2 and episode 6).
The main characters work really well with the rest of the ensemble. The show takes a lot of popular tropes synonymous with the genre and spins them in a way that is original.
One thing that stood out to me was the friendship between Minato, the second youngest brother, and his best friend Uta. It's so rare to see a ... male-female friendship in anime that's just, well, a friendship. No romantic tension! their genuine, platonic bond and character growth was a breath of fresh air.

However, the show does have its flaws. The limited animation budget is evident, resulting in frequent use of still shots, it feels more like a slideshow at times. Additionally, some people might find the exposition dumps and monologues unengaging, although personally, it didn't affect my enjoyment of the show.

Overall, The Yuzuki Family's Four Sons skillfully utilizes the conventions of its genre to deliver an entertaining and refreshing watch.

When I think of a slice of life centering around a family whose parents are gone or presumably dead, I think of the Minami Family in Minami-Ke. It's a fun show where the majority of the show is dedicated to a comedic slice of life. Of course, the cute interactions are, for the most part, embellished while Yuzuki-san Chi no Yonkyoudai is much more...serious at some points while sometimes also maintaining that same embellished comedic interactions. This is good and bad for this show.

While Minami-ke is entirely slice-of-life comedy, Yuzuki-san Chi no Yonkyoudai deals with more serious motifs. For example, even the concept of orphaned ... children is handled much more differently. In Yuzuki-san Chi no Yonkyoudai, the death of the parents is evident, apparent, and well addressed, and there are even many monologues and dialogue between characters regarding this topic. Going back to Minami-ke, you have basically zero mention of their parents at all.

Yuzuki-san Chi no Yonkyoudai shows the love of a family through the lens of realistic scenes, loving and also sad ones in the mix. It's not a melodrama, but one that actually takes a closer look at the troubles that a family of four boys would have in a household with no parents.

Of course, these serious scenes have varying levels of success. If episode 1 is a paltry opener that barely adequately introduces the family in the pilot episode, episode 2 truly tells a touching story.

And If I'm being honest, the main reason for this is because Minato is the main character propping this series up. You have Hayato, the oldest, Mikoto the second, Minato the third, and finally, you have Gakuto, the youngest. Every character has a host of problems, Minato included, but Minato ends up being a very strong character. Every episode that isn't centered around Minato falls pretty flat and boring, while the ones that exclusively focus on him truly shine.

Episodes 2,5,6, and 7 are the episodes centered around Minato and a bit of Mikoto, and they're by far the best quality. If these episodes were condensed into a one-hour movie, I'd give it a very high score. It deals with Minato's shaky past with Minato and his adolescence with his best friend. Overall, if this entire show was just a slice-of-life show centered around Minato being the premiere main character and his friends at school, this series would have been better.

The problem with the other characters is self-evident. Mikoto's a bit too much of a bro-con and it certainly damages the realistic character setting that this show is supposed to have. Subsequently, Hayato is just a plain boring character. While possessing very realistic attributes and traits, I find no joy in watching him at all. He suffers the same problem as Haruka in Minami-ke, which is that their sole role is to make food and act as a pseudo-caretaker. Even Haruka is a bit more fun, as she at least possesses lazy traits, while Hayato is just a frustratingly boring strait-laced caretaker figure.

I would say that Gakuto is the one that truly breaks character, however. While Mikoto and Hayato have some flaws, Gakuto just breaks any immersion whatsoever by having a six-year-old have the mental acumen of an adult. This is beyond acting "mature for your age," and breaching "unprecedented genius" territory. Again, I'm comparing to Chiaki from Minami-ke, who is much more of a realistic elementary school kid who's pretty smart. She still possesses some childishness despite her normal maturity that goes beyond her years. Gakuto basically has zero childishness. He may be unable to read emotions at times, but honestly, that's about it. Minato being obsessed with him doesn't help either, destroying the solid character that Minato had in the first place.

Overall, despite there definitely being some solid melancholic scenes in a household that is healing from the death of their parents, there still remain the flippant personalities from an over-the-top comedic slice-of-life show, which kind of ruins both aspects: the serious, dramatic scenes, and the lighthearted comedic ones as well.