Kodomo no Jikan (TV)

Damnnnn... this anime is stressing me out! It feels like an emotional roller coaster in some ways. The character design is decent, not bad. The ending music is catchy I love it. Voice acting is good as well especially Mimi's voice actress. However, if you live in western side of the world I couldn't recommend this anime to you. It tries to portray a situation where grown-ups don't understand kids, using Aoki's mistake as an example. That being said, I actually learned something from this show. Despite the stress, I really enjoyed the show. While a third season seems unlikely.

Character Design: 6/10
Voice Acting: 7.5/10
Music: 9/10
Story: ... 7/10

(OPTIONAL INTRO)
(So, to be honest, I had a really hard time judging and scoring this show. I can tell you right off the bat that it can be well-deserving of a 1/10, but I wouldn't bat an eye at someone giving it a really good score, like a 7 or an 8/10. This just goes to show how controversial this can become. So I'm about to explain why I scored this a 6: something that was thoroughly enjoyable / easy to watch, despite being so for a myriad of reasons.

I MYSELF go "WTF is this guy thinking, writing a reiview this big?! No one ... gives a shit", but I now understand what's the feeling of having such urge to say so much about something - even if it's about this dumb lil' show)

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START OF THE REVIEW

The main problem presented here is: this anime lacks identity. The first half is entirely what you probably signed up for when you saw the tags "ecchi, comedy, school", read the description and saw three very young little girls on the cover - like the good MAL user you are - and so, that's what you get: a third grader hitting up on a new, 23 year old teacher - Aoki sensei - who has that clueless, dumb and generic look of a typical 2000s school anime character.

The important thing to note here is the attitude of the main girl (Rin) right in the first couple of episodes: she shows her panties to the dude, asks him for kisses, to hold her tightly, etc., and, with that smug face of hers adds a "what if I screamed right now?" to the mix. She's one cunning little bastard, I tell ya. Of course, the dumb man just does not know how to react to this, because he most likely just came out of college without friends, bullied and not knowing what's it like having a girl on his lap - just kidding, there actually is some sort of reasoning behind this, but more on that later.

THIS is where the "fun" really kicks in: episode 6. One could watch this episode by itself, and I can tell you it'd still be a pretty damn good episode. When did this turn into a full-on drama?? The pure shock made me stay glued to the screen...

[Not that I think it matters but SPOILERS AHEAD]

...Rin's cousin, Reiji, lost his parents young, and went to live with his own cousin Aki, Rin's mother. He eventually developed feelings for Aki and they were working very well as a family of 3, but then Aki got cancer, and died - hey, that was pretty sad - right after Reiji settled as an adult capable of sustaining his own family. The words he remembers the most from Aki: "protect Rin for me".

Alright, so, after an entire episode of drama, I had to know where this was going, and the short answer is - it went down a mostly dramatic route. These are the ideas presented here, and the core of the series:

>Rin and her cousin Reiji have a dark past, and to sustain her, he has to work, leaving her alone at home a lot;
>This leads to Rin being in need of affection*;
>Reiji treats her in a quite mature way for her age (this isn't very fleshed out);
>This supposedly leads Rin to have such attitudes with Aoki-sensei;
>Because Aoki-sensei is a sad lil' pussy (who gets called "virgin" by his own 8 years old students) he can't react accordingly, as an adult, around Rin because she acts in a mature way;
>This means he doesn't stop Rin from being on top of him, or from showing him her panties constantly, from kissing him, etc.
>Reiji, due to his obsession with protecting Rin, snaps when he sees she is so affectionate with Aoki-sensei;
>After some conflict, Aoki-sensei learns to act in a more mature way around his students (ambiguous), Rin is not that horny anymore, and Reiji snaps out of his yandere mode.

This is the core "message" of the anime, and I'm gonna tell you: it's not THAT bad. The teacher is a loser, and that's made VERY clear throughout the series: he has a cute as hell, busty teacher always clinging up to him and he doesn't make a single move, cringey as fuck; he is completely dominated by 8 years old girls, letting them mock him and control his actions, you get the picture, so, when it's also made VERY clear that Rin isn't just another lil' kiddo that just wants a smooch from a grown-up to see what it feels like, it's understandable how flustered he gets around her actions.

*This is important, and it's a flaw the anime has, as well as the lack of identity I mentioned earlier: Rin acts as an adult - she goes out shopping with her friends, knows very well what sex is and teases an adult by using transparent nightwear - so, sure, it kinda justifies her teacher's attitude towards her (kinda), but that doesn't mean she'd logically try to kiss him, get so intimate with him, flash her panties and act all girlfriend-ish around him in such extreme ways(the ecchi). For this to be acceptable even for comedic purposes, she'd need to have an even darker past, where she'd be teased by her dad to do lewd things for her as he explored her innocence in a very creepy way, or something like that. Without such criteria, the ecchi/comedy parts of the show turn out to be shallow and lack real purpose other than appealing to lolicons or enjoying it for pure shock value - one could literally skip the first half of the series and come out with a more positive impression of the plot of the series, I'd say.

Kodomo no Jikan goes from a dumb pedo ecchi comedy to a full-on character drama with snippets of - actually kind of appealing - psychological tension, always with a generous dose of cringe to the mix, and that makes for a very weird, "hard to judge how I feel" experience.

Now that the main things have been said, I'll make it very clear - I had a fun time watching this:
The comedy made me go "WTF, NO WAY! THAT DIDN'T JUST HAPPEN!" mixed with uncontrollable laughter EVERY single episode (except for episode 6); its midway point made me actually care a respectable bit for the characters (Rin and Reiji) and it actually had a decent sort of psychological approach that I enjoyed, especially for the fact of not seeing it coming.

Do I recommend this? Yeah. Totally. The amount of reactions this show can pull out from any person is insane - be it despising it with all your heart, making you laugh a whole ton, or getting sexually confused (xD) - and that by itself makes it worth the shot.

I wish I could say I never watched this. There were moments I awkwardly chuckled when the show was almost funny or so painfully depraved that I had to laugh.

A person I was interested in wanted to share their favorite anime with me and I wish I just said no to this one. What an uncomfortable experience. I can't think of who the target audience for this would be other than people who like shock factor content or are into underage anime characters.

If you're into shock humor or hypersexualized underage characters I think you could find this anime enjoyable. Y'all are suspicious but you do ... you I guess.