Sakura-sou no Pet na Kanojo

i don't like reading novel like reviews so i'll keep this one short, i'm not going to deal with the background of this anime but rather straight to my opinion about it.
One word to describe Sakurasou is DISAPPOINTING, I remember getting exited while watching the first part of this anime but after sometime, Shiina Mashiro's cuteness just wear out, there is nothing else about to watch in this series besides her which made it more disappointing because her character didn't get any real development in the end.
Another disappointing character is the male lead Sorata. It may be my personal preference but ... i like watching male leads I can admire, sadly, after bearing to watch all his failures throughout the anime, there is nothing to admire about him. as the series come in to a conclusion, nothing changed about him and he did not achieve anything. One may ask, what is the point of watching an anime about him?
While the two leads are failures, the story didn't get the series any redeeming factor. The conflict just came out of nowhere and really is not the original focus of the anime. after being magically resolved, the anime just ended, that's it.

I don't need to discuss every flaw in this anime both minor and major to get my message across; I regret watching this anime. It has a few laughs, good fan service every now and then but the story did not actually get anywhere

Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo is based off of a light novel and manga by Kamoshida Hajime. In late 2012, early 2013, JC Staff put out an anime based off of it. It's tough to judge anything in advance based off of that since JC Staff has worked on great anime like Flying Witch & Yami No Matsuei as well as mediocre anime like Toradora and rubbish anime like Puni Puni Poemii & Voogie's Angel. Only the future will tell where this one falls. 

Story:

Sorata is a student who's found himself banished to Sakurasou, the dorm where they put all the problem students. He's there on account ... of being a crazy cat boy with a living space full of fur & the scent of a half dozen litter boxes. The teacher who runs the dorm, Chihiro, sends him to fetch her cousin, knowing he won't try anything due to lack of balls. From there, shenanigans ensue. 

Let's start by talking about one of the many major problems that plagues this series. To be specific, the comedy is really ceaselessly obnoxious. A lot of it is based on the characters being loud, over-reactionary and annoying. Some comedies work by giving you a cast that's enjoyable or with strong comedic quirks that play off of each other well. This one just wants you to suffer for your insolence in assuming that comedies should be funny. 

Then we have the romance. Which is horrible. I haven't seen characters tossed together romantically with this little chemistry since Sword Art Online. The main romance is based around her being completely inept at taking care of herself and him being bland. Then we have the secondary romance based around them being childhood friends. They have less of a chemical reaction than neon with krypton but they're childhood friends and, therefore, natural romantic interests. Then there are the characters who barely interact before she takes an interest in him for no discernible reason. And he seems outright opposed to it for most of the series, so you know that'll be healthy and totally work in the long term. 

Another big issue I have with the narrative is that the series tries to balance more light-hearted comedy with somewhat more serious romantic drama. I've already talked in broad strokes about how both those aspects genuinely fail, but a side issue has to do with consequence. Basically, if you're going to have some more serious elements you need the characters to have some consequences for their actions. Which never happens in this series. These characters pull some shit that they should not be getting by with in any series that ever tries to be serious. They sneak into the pool, lock their teachers on a roof and disrupt graduation all with everything working out great for them. Not even comedic comeuppance because that might actually be funny and this series is anti-comedy. 

Characters:

I've gone on record multiple times as saying that comedic characters don't necessarily have to have depth, so long as they're funny. In this, the characters have all the shallowness of shitty harem characters and there's nothing funny about them. If anything, they may be even more annoying to watch than the cast of Grand Blue. 

Probably the worst aspect is that informed characteristics are a big part of this series. We're told that Sakurasou's residents are talented but we never see evidence to support that. The greeting animation we see from Misaki is pretty shit. The "genius" Mashiro's manga is basically this anime. Which, first off, is just self-aggrandising and, secondly, this series is shit. So, if this is the best she can do she's trash. There's also the "genius" label for her. She's supposed to be a genius, but she can't do basic shit like dress herself. 

This culminates with the entire house working together on an animation for the school. And the animation isn't just badly done, but it has a narrative that would never work for High Schoolers. Basically, it does the small children's media thing of asking the audience to do things in order to participate. You know, like the Care Bears asking them to say they care. And we, as the audience, are supposed to believe this entire High school is so full of idiocy that the student body would be super into this shit designed for an audience ten to eight years younger than them. 

Speaking of the "lack of consequences" Playboy sleeps around, has every VD in existence, but the girl he actually likes is never once turned off by it. For that matter, we never see his health suffer from having every Venereal disease. 

Art:

The artwork isn't bad, except when we see wild girl's garbage animations. It's just very generic. Complete with bog-standard designs and some failed attempts at visual gags. 

Sound:

The performances aren't all that bad. They gravitate towards over-exaggeration and can be annoying at times, but they're one of the lesser evils in the series. The music is mostly pretty bland. If you watch slice of life works, I guarantee you've heard much better compositions. 

Ho-yay:

There's barely any to be seen. The series goes to great trouble to give all the characters het love interests. Even if the romance is rubbish. Wild girl does grope the others once or twice. That's pretty much the extent of it. 

Areas of Improvement:

Give the characters strong comedic quirks. Them being obnoxious does not make for a strong comedy. Them being funny would. 
Skip the romance. Clearly, Kamoshida sucks at writing romance. So, just make it a straight up comedy without the horribly written romantic drama. 
Don't tell us how brilliant the characters are if you can't back it up. This is a pet peeve of mine in general, media that likes to have certain characters tell you how brilliant another is but that never has them do anything to prove it. I can tell you, emotionally stilted girl does not come across as a genius in any capacity. Neither does Wild girl since the animations we see her do are terrible. Nor does the shut in. But we get to listen to the other characters talk about how superlicious talented they all are. So much so that it becomes an annoying element before the series is a third over. 

Final Thoughts:

I hated this anime. I hated every mind-numbingly stupid, obnoxious moment of it. I've watched some pretty awful comedies lately, but this is the worst of them. I honestly had trouble getting through it due to how unpleasant it was to watch. And that's why my rating is going to be a 1/10. It's fucking horrible. 

I really wanted to like this show. The main characters are fleshed-out and likable and the show doesn't fall into the harem trap where all the girls end up having a thing for the main character. The "main girl" (of sorts) is a cute denpa-character that offers a few laughs and several very cute moments.

Despite having everything one would think it takes, this show still just had episode on episode where I found myself checking how much was left. I can't really put my finger on it, but even as a person that can easily breeze through a mediocre harem I found this show lacking ... in ability to engage me in any way (and it tries, perhaps too hard at times).

I'd personally give this one a miss. There are plenty of other good shows in this genre around.

Massively overrated.

Essentially, a young man has to take care of a woman who is developmentally disabled. However, she's cute so people think it's adorable that she can't do the simplest of things such as dressing herself or bathing herself.

The "comedy" comes from the young man just yelling whenever something sexual is brought up by another character or when someone else is being stupidly eccentric.

The art is good.

The characters are lacking in substance and the writing is not that great. The writing mostly relies on predictable situations that the main character thinks are embarrassing and thus cause him to yell.

This review like series of paragraphs does contain minor spoilers as to certain couples and implies the endings of certain archs so gonna point that out now


So Sakuraso was an anime that i at first at least had very high hopes for. This anime took a very good topic which i found to be not explored nearly enough and decided to make an anime about it. This topic was one very close to me in my personal life and it was that of inferiority complex. I find this to be a brilliant topic that needs exploration. Then in the first 4 episodes it does ... just that, it has the main character accept the fact that he wanted her to fail but then realize that in the end it was her hard work that allowed her to prevail and in reality he just has to keep working harder. Now that's fantastic i love that and then you realize, wait this anime has like 20 more episodes to go. And so we continue the story of how every character INCLUDING the main character keep on suffering this inferiority complex. Well not EVERY chacacters problem is inferiority complex but most of them are and really it just confuses me, why have the same thing over and over again like after he deals with it once why does the same thing keep happening it baffles me. Hell this even happens to Jin and Jin was the one who mentored him through it. Now the second kind of topic of this anime is overcoming defeat. This is handled even worse than before because it is the same cycle over and over and over and over IT NEVER ENDS they just keep on failing and i keep on asking myself will it ever be over but no in the end it just keeps going.
I guess i should talk about the characters. Well not much to say here Mashiro is kinda a very boring character if i can even call her a character... shes like a dog without her own kind of story she is just there for everyone elses story and for all of them to feel inferior same with misaki she just server the purpose of having Jin feel inferior to her. There is a romancish plot with them which is kind of boring but it does give Misaki some character so i guess thats fine. Some other characters like Rita exist although she is just there to also feel inferior because we simply didnt have enough of that. Ryūnosuke is there i guesssss as a tsundere. Really i have no idea what his place is in the story and i find him to be very unnecassary and just there as a guy for a shoe horned in romance plot between him a Rita and also as a character to move the plot along since he gives Sorata the incentive to start his video game making project. Lastly we have Nanami who is there for the aforementioned topic of overcoming failure and really she just fails so much and she just keeps failing i mean my good lord Nanami and Sorata just fail so much in this anime and they just repeat the process of overcoming it over and over, i find it terribly boring and also at some point i felt like they could give these characters a break. I mean sure it is realistic that someone could fail that much but this is an anime after all and it's less that i feel bad and more that i feel that there is very little progression going on with that whole plot of them failing since there is never any success and so it ends up being repetitive and unnecessary.
Now that we have the characters rounded up i can talk about the romance plots because i feel these deserve a special looking at as being separate from the main plots since they do not fit in with any main theme of the anime. Therefor i want to assess them independently. These are very lame to watch starting of with the one between the two main characters. This just feels boring considering how boring of a character Mashiro is. Like i said before she doesn't really have any problems that needs resolution so she ends up being very static and so her romance ends up being as standard and boring as any other where you have her slowly realizing her feeling until the long a-waited for payoff offffffffffff... a kiss on the cheek ... a manga about crossdresser's had the main couple have sex like 40 chapters in im sorry a kiss on the cheek aint gonna cut it honey. But in all seriousness this would have been fine had the anime been simply a cutesy romance but in the end the anime does try to bring in bigger more important themes and therefor there is no time for the romance to actually develop between the two and so it just ends up being very boring to watch. Then we have Jin and Misaki. Similar problem but in this case Misaki at least has the problem of that she is already in love with Jin and can't see why he wont date her which gives her a problem to deal with, or so you would think but once again this problem does not rely on Misaki taking action but rather Jin coming to terms with his feeling of being too inferior to her which he already told everyone how to overcome in the 4rth episode... i guess he forgot. But i will say it is a tad better than the romance between the leads because it does give Misaki more of a character since she clearly has problems she to cannot deal with. As well, on a side notel it seems very stupid that he would reject her for him not being good enough i dont know may be just me but if you love a girl and they love you back like what does not being a good writer have anything to do with anything ugh well whatever next we have Ryūnosuke and Rita. Next we have Nanami who is the other love intrest to Sorata. This goes nowhere

As well i don't really feel the need but i guess i should talk about the music and art. THe tracks are mostly fine with the opening being pretty stupidly catchy i didnt find any problems its your standard fair but i also didn't find anthing amazing. I dont find a need to comment on the art of an anime like this since it's art just has to present cutesy characters and cutesy scenes and it does that although it does get nice when they get to the serious scenes the art did actually surprise as to how good it was but other than that not much to say.

In the end i enjoyed the first 4 episodes and then got bored watching the same thing over and over. Also there that whole thing about the building being torn down that had nothing to do with the main themes of the anime and I guess it was to show that umm errr their bonds are so fragile that by not living together they would stop being friends... i don't know it was just kinda put in there so that the anime could end. I guess someone finally told them they should end soon rather than just write the same plot in different scenario's over and over.
Ya i gave this anime a 4 equal to the amount of episodes i enjoyed.

it was propably ill fated from the beginning. tackle topics like individualistic aproach to life, art and genius seriously with a twinkle and finally expect a broad acceptance of the anime consumer - that is not realistic. and so here happened what happens as soon the producers with their red marked statistics take comand and try to turn it around. disaster.

in this case the inconsistency is quite remarkable. from a show intelligently grouping highly individual characters, to create entertaining misunderstandings not clumsely avoiding sex, we finally arrive at a very very mainstream, "ganbare, ganbare" crying, moralistic, crybaby slushy but puritanicly love denying cherry blossom convulsion. ... ouch.
you possibly got the point that the anamista is not amused about the development. in fact a properly unexplained but useful gas explosion of sakurasou as soon the ratings dropped would have been a far better solution than killing so thoroughly any individuality in the characters.
but to reach such a surprisingly high level of conformity from our promising starting point is an achievement in its own. the episode 23 is a model study of the worst taste. Hopefully the methods used never reach the understanding of ambitious formerly democratic forces on the verge to create a properly uniform world in a cherry blossom color.

so i restart the unabridged recording of the confederacy of dunces to clean somehow away the ugly aftertastes ...

After reading what a friend of mine thought about this anime, I decided to put a review here in MAL.

Compared to writing lengthy reviews on deserving anime [whether anime-fans find it helpful or not, well, criticizing anime-fans isn't helpful alright XD], I'll keep this review for this anime short.

Watching 14/24 eps, I want to say I want to take back the time I lost in watching those 14 eps. Ep.4 and it was already dreadful as going to hell's bowels, and I still strived for the other 10 episodes to finally call it quits.


STORY = 4
There are numerous and more decent anime than this, like ... Kaichou wa Maid-sama for example [and the tsunderes which Rie Kugimiya has dubbed, you know their title and that's it].

ART = 9
Yes, I strongly agree it's the art itself that made Sakura Pet established a MAL rating of 8+. Other than that, it's all hapless.

CHARACTER = 3
A whiny guy who just can't man-up, and a girl good enough for hentai. Hell, even collaboration-works' hentai-girls have more characterization than Mashiro here. There are ways and creativity to going "weird", like Rikka from Chuunibyou, and Fino from Yuushibu; as well as the wacky shoujos from D-Frag~~Shiina Mashiro is just weird enough and good-looking for fap material. Nothing more.
As for the guy, Kanda, there are better sissy guys than him. Watching Kanda makes Shiro Emiya from Fate/Stay Night a true magnificent hero on the whiny-shounen category.
Also, there's nothing deep or intriguing on the other characters (Misaki, Jin, etc); smut stories or those silly novels written in Wattpad have the same "depth" of characterization they have.

ENJOYMENT = 1
I literally find looking at the minute-hand and second-hand of the clock more enjoyable than this.
You know, I kept looking at the clock, wanting to see when will this certain episode end, what time can I get to the next episode just to get over with this, and after finishing ep.14 I was like~~okay, switch to the next anime on the list.



OVERALL = 4
I'll quote what my friend said, she's the one WHO FINISHED watching Sakura Pet after all:

"It's really dragging, the plot i mean
the protagonist? what's his name? Kanda? well, he's shit. for I all I know, it goes around and around about his testosterone pride on how he couldn't be successful on anything no matter how he worked hard, unlike the people who surrounded him. He whines a lot, like grow some balls dude. what the actual f*ck. and then he goes around people by taking his frustration out on them? Deal with it. Don't look for f*cking excuses for you to put your blame on them. You can take your sorry of an excuse and leave, or you can swallow your pride and learn how to face reality head on.
-end of rant-"

Yep, that's juz how she worded it so I need not edit the things she said: she's a girl, she finished Sakura Pet, she loves shoujo romcoms like Maid-sama, School Rumble, KyoAni anime, loves AnoHana---and yes, she blurted those words out after finishing Sakurasou no Pet.

And why did I even watch this even if I don't like Sakura Pet? It's mainly because of the "challenge". Challenge myself to watch this, try to see and keep an OPEN MIND of watching this---just to prove to anime fans or SakuraPet-lovers who MIGHT say "why don't you watch it?!" or "why hate it if you haven't watched it?!". These kind of statements happen. Well I did watch it. Sadly this anime just didn't work out.

BUT I know a lot of anime-fans out there will watch this for the art and the sexual-innuendo, I can assure that much [and the rape-able main heroine, too].

**This review only covers the characters and story, and is spoiler free minus some thematic elements**

Sakurasou might have actually been good if the light novel tropes were gone and it was a romance drama more than just a drama. Most of the characters hangups make for a good setup but for one, there is a conceptual flaw in the drama; and two, the main character is badly written.

The conceptual flaw is that the story strongly pushes the idea that is Sorata's indecisiveness is the main cause of conflict, when in reality it is his pride and feelings toward Mashiro. The author obviously wanted self-agency ... to be one of the main themes of the show, but that aspect is the least interesting part of the entire situation. If it instead focused on the quandary of being in love of a severely autistic person, or the REAL issue at hand, Sorata's pride, the show could have been a great drama. You might be thinking, "What if they address these issues later on in the story?" If this was my first time watching it I would probably give it the benefit of the doubt as well, but they never dip into that territory. Instead, the show seemingly insists that the only way you can be in a relationship with someone is if you are just as talented as they are, which is a totally selfish and narcissistic way of looking at things. And all that shit about struggles of being in love with a mentally ill person? Completely swept under the rug. In fact, the show fetishizes it, the very title likening it to having a girl as a pet.

The other problem with the show is that Sorata is not treated as a character, but as a light novel protagonist. This means he has to always be a retarded beta-male cuck who is the straight man to everyone's 'kooky hijinks'. He is nearly incapable of normal conversations, instead switching from unfunny straightman, to Gary Stu, or angsty teen, whichever the plot needs at the moment. While he does manage to read in between the lines occasionally, it is only when its convenient to the plot and otherwise he is as dumb as a brick.

The fact that this show even has a straight man is another one of its biggest flaws. The show is always trying to make jokes based around the odd behavior of the eccentric cast, but the problem is: it's not funny, and it has never been funny. It usually goes: Mashiro repeats herself or says something misleading, and Sorata, at the top of his lungs, scolds her. The jokes are so formulaic and on-the-nose that I find myself sighing more than laughing. What's more, scenes like these also negatively impact the sense of romantic chemistry between the two. I understand the idea of using comedy to keep the tone from getting too heavy, but when there's writing of this level, humor is best left on the cutting room floor.

I could go into more depth about it's use of tired light novel tropes, but if you recognize that phrase you probably already know what I'm talking about. Overall the scenario has promise, but the show fails to be anything more than angsty self-insert light novel trash.

*SPOILER WARNING*
I wanna start this review off with saying that this anime genuienly made me sad. I didn’t expect it to be the best thing I’ll ever see but still this was just honestly sad in the worst way. I had a brake from it after literally jus the first ep cuz I hada really uncomfortable feeling about it and yea my gut feeling was right.

But first I’ll start off with thins I liked about it. The animation and art were nice not the best, but nice too watch. (But for an anime about artists and such I expected atleast a bit more)
Sound ... in general was good. Although the sound track wasn’t nearly as “ear-catching” as some other animes, and I think that could’ve gotten a bit more attention. Because I think if I hear a random song from an anime I could probably name it from the shows I have watched, but from this anime I could probably only name the op and the ed.
On to the last thing I liked about the anime. I enjoyed the humor of it. Even if for me it was sometimes a bit too much.

On to the massive problems of the anime, the characters feel more a like they are just filler to a forced story arc, only fitted in with what they “need to be” and nothing more. With one senatnce I could explain: The personalities in the show have no personality and they are just there to be there. The relations between characters isn’t explored either.

Characters you expect to interact with eachother a lot or even just a tiny bit never do, which is dramatically just plain bad and lazy. just some examples: Aoyama and Misaki never interact other then them being like: “oh yea love important” and similar. And for Jin being a main character all he interacts with the other members of Sakura-sou is just leaving a few snarky remarks and not much more. (except for Jin and Misaki ofc) It really seems to me like way too much was cut from the original story or the original story wasn’t a story just a forced “one-way road” to a forced conclusion. Also Akasaka going from the smart hacker in the background to “just another” feels just like, “uh f#ck we need to fill the story with something here have another active main character”

Now on to the hot mess the story is. It’s basically a really uninspired “the most fan-serviced girl takes it all without the tiniest effort”. The ending was just awful as I’ve read it released before the light novel even ended so it was just a hot-bodged mess, which really shows in the last 2-3 ep’s. Everything going from an acceptable tempo to someone being late from their bus.

On to the main thing I hated the most. For how much the anime tried to force it to happen. Sorata and Shinna don’t fit together at all. They have 0 connection nor tie to eachother by the end of the anime other then them having a few experiences together. Shinna is a self-absorbed artist, who the story forces into being a generic romantic interest girl. Sorata is nothing alike in anways, he just a normal guy, not much to do with art, not self-absorbed, extroverted etc. now you could say “opposites attract” but there are not strict opposites just them having nothing to do with eachother.

Now contrast that with Aoyama same struggles as Sorata, same mindset and values, both of them are shown to like eachother numerous times. Aoyama makes a conscious effort to be always better and to appeal to Sorata, but no Shiina because *I literally can’t find a reason*. A relationship between Sorata and Shiina to me would seem like the usual “I just want a relationship” kinda relationship, with nothing in it for either of the parties. I think a lot better story would’ve been that Aoyama and Sorata get together, and Shiina meets and artist guy who’s just as self-absorbed and with the help of Sorata they 2 find eachother thru art. Would’ve been better in every way in my opinion.

As closing notes I just wanna say that I used to really dislike Toradora for the plot there. Although I still don’t like it. Atleast the relationships and characters made sense. In this anime I can’t say so. Also I’m really starting to get tired of romantic animes where I can just see the ending from the first ep or even the first ep’s OP.

The only reason I’m not giving this anime a worse rating is because the last time I gave an anime a “bad” rating was when I gave toradora a 6 and wrote a nice review only to get my profile spammed with less then nice comments. Even though I’m interested in what people think about what I wrote here and open for a discussion on it.

*Warning, may contain spoilers*

"why are you still standing there" - Kanda Sorata, after his proposal gets rejected.

This anime was advertised as a rom-com, but what I got was a fantastic parody of everything wrong with Anime today. From a whiny protagonist to a kuudere that starts to fall in love with the protagonist after learning what love is in a matter of months to a unnecessarily contrived idiot plot where everyone is scared of changing the status quo, this show's got it all.

Story (4/10)
The story is one of the most boring and contrived garbage I have ever watched, this is a great example ... of an idiots plot, if the characters are not idiots, then this would be a 6 episode series instead of the 24 episodes that drag on for forever. There was no overall message that the show was trying to communicate, at first I thought that the message was "hard work could achieve anything", then it was "love is a beautiful thing", and then towards the end, the story basically said, "screw it, we are doing it live" and rips every one of its moral messages to shreds and replaces it with some crying and crap about friendship and how hard work is useless.

Art(9/10)
The art is pretty much the only good thing about this show, JC staff is great as always in making their characters attractive (even though they could not be written any worse).

Sound(5/10)
Sound was honestly pretty forgettable, both the OP and ED were boring and not particularly memorable, the sound tracks... (what sound tracks?) Gets the job done, but that is to be expected of all Anime these days.

Characters (2/10)
Oh boy, here comes the funnest part of all. I will give each of the main characters a score of 1 to 10 with 1 being the worst.

Kanda Sorata(1/10), a whiny little prick who often gets emotional and grabs people by the collar whenever he gets mad, take some anger management classes, please. This guy also thinks his stupid game idea should win a competition since he put so much time into it and hates on Shiina because she's not a talentless hack like him who literally just started wanting to make games 3 months ago. A generic clueless harem protagonist will be 2x better than him.

Mashiro Shiina (3/10) I usually like kuudere characters but this one was all "kuu-" and no dere. So generic I could probably find like ten more examples like her off the top of my head.

Aoyama Nanami (9/10) great girl, wonder why she fell in love with the aforementioned trash, it seems pretty stupid that you can fall in love with someone just because he picked up some stray cats though. Hard working and considerate, great character overall.

Mitaka Jin (2/10) Scared playboy who shows his love for Misaki by... dating older women? Too scared to take action, perfect human being, blah blah blah, really bland character overall.

Akasaka Ryunnosuke (8/10) The only character who's not afraid to speak the truth on the show, that scene with Rita especially is one of the best confrontations in any anime ever. Overall good character, the rational voice of Sakurasou.

Kamiigusa Misaki (3/10) basically can be described by three words "hyperactive", "anime", and "Jin", basic childhood friend character.

Enjoyment (3/10)
I actually enjoyed the first 6 episodes of this, since the slice of life stuff is pretty good, then the MC starts to show his whiny and abusive side soon after and I started to hate most of the characters around episode 14 or so. The story dragged on without many memorable moments, but I wanted to see if it got better or not so I kept watching, then I finally dropped it on episode 21 because I couldn't get through the cringe anymore.

Overall (3/10) honestly, this was no doubt the worst way that I have spent 6 hours on, just don't watch this unless you want to cringe yourself to sleep.

when it comes to slice of life anime you have to consider 3 things :
1- how good the characters are.
2- how real is their interactions.
3- how entertaining the show is despite the first 2 things.

now this show was bad in all 3, first the characters were horrible. out of all the cast there were only 3 good characters: the guy with the computer (he was ok I guess), the teacher/dorm master and the mc's female friend.

Other than those 3 the rest were very bad, for example:
Misaki, if I had to state 1 reason out of the many many reasons this girl is in ... my top 5 most hated characters other than her having absolutely no pride is the fact that she was this, she found out the boy that she likes only used her sister as a way to release his sexual desire just to keep his relationship clean with misaki and also refused to go back to the sister when she asked him later, so when misaki heard all that she was happy because that means she had a chance. That has to be one of the worst things I have ever seen in an anime and people defend this saying "Yes, he changed for her", smh.

Moving on to the mc who was pretty much a very annoying and selfish person, he didn't want happiness for anyone if he doesn't get it himself.

His friend the guy that misaki likes also has some stupid logic that he uses just to keep going out with girls other than misaki to keep everything "clean".

The rest were badly written but not as bad as those stated above like the foreigner girl that was in bed with all the characters for some unknown reason and kept annoying one of the few good characters in the anime till magic happened and now they love each other, she was badly written and all but not like the other 3 above.

The 2nd part is the interactions: were they good, did they feel real or anything like that?
Nope, it looked like the author was trying to create a "deep" plot but it really never reached that point , it felt fake like he was trying to push anything into the story to reach the end which a lot of people fell for and now it is one of the most popular in the series but to be honest the only thing that I felt was pretty normal and actually thought about before writing was the job interview part because it was very nice to watch and was actually reasonable.

The last part i want to talk about is the entertainment, now did i enjoy this anime?
The answer is yes but only the first 4-5 episodes, the anime was being introduced and i wasn't used to the characters and how good they actually were but after that, No i didn't enjoy it at all.

To conclude: the anime was horrendous and i don't recommend it to anyone .

Sakura Hall is a pretty average show that is packaged as a Toradora spiritual successor with a warm color palette. In some ways, the series almost makes true on these claims: the characters are have pretty moving roles in the show and the stylistic choices do pay off in the long run. But it misses the mark on the fundamentals of film-making and can lead the audience to be completely uninvested in what the show trying to convey.

Namely, the show is about few things. Chasing genius, messy relationships, and a feeling of community. I think that Sakura Hall fails to deliver on any of these ... in a meaningful, consistent way. Sure, the show has some decent moments that leave the audience feeling fuzzy, but these really don't come all too often, and are in fact overshadowed by the scenes that are trying to deliver the feels that just... don't. Just to make a point, the most memorable scene in the show to me is when we first meet Akasaka -- and I only like it because it's hilarious! The series just can't deliver on the themes in needs to. It is not exactly the fault of the plot, but more of how the plot gets put into action. Which means it ends up being both a writing and character issue. And even if those were cleared up, we shouldn't pretend Sakura Hall is an aesthetic marvel. The art is mostly average and the sound is good at best.

I might be a little biased. This series took me a while to slug through, because it just wasn't holding my interest. However, it is a series that should, in theory, be very dear to my heart. I've done the whole "I wanna make a video game" thing. In college, the people in my dorm were very dear to me and being separated from them took a big toll on me. I have trouble chasing genius every day. But maybe my familiarity with this subject is the reason that I am not too fond of it. And remember, it isn't even that I hate the show, just that it is kind of boring and doesn't do a whole lot for me.


[Pros and Cons]
[+] Inspired color palette.
[+] Sound design.
[=] Voice acting.
[-] Character design, poor keyframes, often choppy animation.
[-] Fails to sell me on its points of interest.
[-] Characters do not play well together.


[Pretty Colors Does Not Mean Good Art]

One of Sakura Hall's defining visual features is the warm, soothing color palette. It works as a boon for the series, that's for sure. But art has to do more than that to be good. Sakura Hall also has several consistent, visual flaws. The character design is pretty bland. This is not really something to argue about. Misaki and Soraka are so remarkably unremarkable in their design that it's laughable. The other characters don't do a whole lot better. Characters also just often look weird. Keyframes struggle to be consistent. And, of course, the animation is just choppy and not very enticing.



[Convince Me]

None of the themes in this show seem to carry much weight to me.

For instance, one of the themes is chasing genius and working hard to achieve something great. The show doesn't actually do anything to show this process. Sure, we see Sorata make board presenting and maybe think about his game pitch, but I've never really felt the specifics of how he is improving himself or his product. Compare this to something like Haikyuu, where development is slow, intimate, and extremely impactful for the viewer.

The couples are lame. I never found myself rooting for any of the characters to be together at any point. This is a byproduct of the characters being not too good. But seriously, what are these couples?

The characters. These characters barely seem like friends at all! They just are not fun. Compare to Toradora's characters, which have their share of complicated relationships, but are at least exciting and you can see why they get along with eachother. You have Kushieda and Kitamaru who are just fun to be around all the time and have connections with the rest of the group. Sakura Hall has... Misaki? She is pretty fun. But Sorata, Nanami, Jin, and Akasaka just usually aren't too likable, just boring. For instance, I couldn't tell you the first thing about Jin and Akasaka's relationship, even though a prevailing theme in the series is a feeling of community. I actually think Mashiro has some funny moments, but these moments are often at odds with the rest of her character since she is often painted as the socially inept genius. The characters are at least distinct and have roles, but they pretty much never sell me as being romatically or even platonically compatible with each other, which is a huge issue for this type of story.

These issues are prevalent everywhere, but it could just be a 'me' thing.



[Rating]
Story: 3
Art: 6
Sound: 7
Character: 4
Enjoyment: 3
Overall: 4

Came into this anime with high expectations but ended up very very disappointed. I feel like either the other reviewers who enjoyed and rated it well watched something else or i must be completely missing something all together. Here are my detailed thoughts:

Artwork is good, probably the only good aspect of the show. Character models and backgrounds are well drawn. Colors are also vibrant and pop as well, no complaints here.

Story and Characters is where i feel this show really falls short. I honestly feel 24 episodes could have shorted into 13. So many pointless little subplots that just feel uninteresting and drag-on. Even the ... first couple of episodes had pointless parts that made it a stuggle to watch at times. Also alot of the plot is plain outrageous and completely over the top and moronic. The situations and solutions the characters go through and fix and downright
unbelievable and idiotic. Example: the teacher/caretaker living in the dorm goes on vacation over new years and everyone has to vacate the dorm so 3 girls roommates end up having to stay mc's house.....wtf.really, please be more creative, way to many random situations like this..

Now off to the characters, the relationship/development of shiina, mc and anoyama are fun to watch at first but quickly become repetitive as the use the same jokes and similar sitaution over and over. I didn't care for the rest of the cast. Jin one dimensional and boring, misaki (personally the worst for me) your typical clitche female.... large breasted, loud, super childish and just plain fking annoying, and mc's sister who almost equally annoying literally one dimensional has overprotective brother complex. Even alot of the jokes/humor fell flat.

Overall i enjoy very few parts and think as a whole the show was mediocre and times horrrible . I even ended up skipping/scimming through some of the later episodes, things got so repetitive and redundant. Just nothing special that stood out. I would recommend skipping this one.

Please; don't watch it ...
With this word, I express my humble opinion, this anime is incredibly boring, the same story is repeated in every anime, which is that the hero has a bilateral love relationship and the problems start and of course you know what will happen next ....
In short, if your time matters to you and you do not want to waste it in trifles, I will advise you: Do not watch this anime ..
Quite frankly, I did not see it in full, but what I saw (7 episodes) was enough to have a picture that shows me where things are going, there is ... absolutely no creativity in anime that does not deserve 8/10, 4 or 3 many on it

So first of all, I watch all episodes so I know what Im saying. And I watch 100 of other show whit genre romance, school.

This Anime is good but not the best out there. Because I was a lidle borred while watching it to the end. The beginning was good, but the midle until the end was bored, I often whant to skipp parts but I dont. I think this Anime has lod more potensial fore the sekond Season because it has a clear ending. It emotional yes, but I didnt cried. But it make me fell depressions lol. So be warned if you ... are a lonely like me. This wil make a lidle depression.

In today's day and age, where there are more shows than ever being created, produced and released, I don't understand how this one, a categorically terrible anime, is beloved by many.

I would like to point out, I understand the themes of the narrative and how failure, hardwork and perseverance aren't enough to get you through life and get you what you want and that's a fine idea. But this show does nothing to counteract the constant failures and disappointments with anything satisfying, rewarding, entertaining or enjoyable. A majority of the characters are unlikeable. The extreme melodramatic nature of every single action, reaction, situation and relationship ... is unbearable and trite.

The worst offense this show commits is labeling itself as romantic comedy as the romance is bleak and the comedy is absent.

What's crazier still is that this show is from the same creator as Rascal Does Not Dream Of Bunny Girl Senpai which is markedly better in every single facet possible. I'm not saying that show is outstanding, but it is of good quality overall and you would be much better spending your time with that than this lackluster, painfully morose and farcical show.