Shin Atashin'chi

Slice of life. The music is cute. The art is deliberately minimalistic (in fact, quite odd). Shin (New) Atashinchi brilliantly brings out the complexity in the most simple of situations in the day to day life of a family of four. If you ask me, the main protagonist is the mum, Tachibana-san. Several episodes discuss her sixth senses, innovative deductions, cute, clumsy mistakes and her oneness with household chores. Not to mention her outings with her friends. One episode which discusses her ongoing depression especially strikes me. However, Mikan, her brother Yuzu and her father's lives are almost equally discussed, whose middle-school life, high-school life ... and office life provide a refreshing change to the narrative, (Yes, one 23 minute epsiode is divided into 3 everyday short stories)

This show is genius! It's a combination of the rude cartoon Shinchan, and the family movie "My Neighbors the Yamadas." I was looking for something different from the ordinary anime styles that seem to be getting repetative right now, and found Shin Atashinchi, a portrait of a Japanese family. If you're trying to learn Japanese, there's a whole episode dedicated to clever Japanese wordplay. This show is so real, I can guarantee that there will be hilarious bits on various things that happen to you all the time, but for some reason no one else ever talks about them. It ... doesn't matter if you're male or female, young or old, this anime has strikingly relevant comedy situations for everyone. The art is kept minimalist for good reason, and very much lends itself to the average person much better because of it. Without too much detail, you can visualize yourself as the characters much more easily. It took me a few episodes to really get into it, nearing episode 20, I couldn't help but loudly cry out "This show is [*******] genius!"