One Room

I say that this Anime is a mixed bag of feelings.
Not the most innovative or the best but it does what it seeks out. Comes in a POV format that took getting used to. Basically 3 comfort stories mixed into one series, all about love. The anime speed runs 3 relationships 4 epidsodes each running at 4 minutes so a total of 16 minutes per story so it isn't the most fully fleshed out of all with developments that feel rushed and skipping through many points that often make romance work in anime.

However do understand that it is an experimental medium so it could use ... more polish.
Recommend to view once, is an experience to say the least. What is gathered from it just depends, worst case you lost 48 minutes of your life.

One Room becomes very funny if it follows just watching, 'Welcome to the N.H.K'.

There is one scene where Tatsuhiro Satou and Kaoru Yamazaki converse about what galge games are really about and the different relationships that exist in such games such as the-girl-next-door type, the childhood-friend type, the little-sister type, etc... and how its design appeals to a fantasy of the audience, gaining intimacy that is often lost on the typical NEET or hikikomori. One Room is very relevant to that world.

I believe for those genuinely craving female interaction without fuss, depth, human complexity; when one does not think too highly of the ... self- having sweet-intending, unintimidating and somewhat ditzy girls in your proximity (that remove the social concept of 'the male does the chasing' especially if one is of low confidence) can be a short series of great comfort to such men. (Or women if there are any out there into this kind of thing.)

Personally, as a girl who wishes for a story to sway every fibre of her being in emotion and thought, this anime is certainly not for me. However, as a practice to Japanese dialogue learning, the simplicity for the language is easy to follow and even if the story causes discomfort or distaste to the viewer, it helps to practice following along to the language.

The basic premise seems decent, supposedly being a "first-person" anime where characters talk to you about their day. The series however, fails at its most basic conceit before even getting to its other issues. First and foremost, the camera changes angles frequently, sometimes jumping behind the character and back to their front within seconds. Other times there are conventional establishing shots, shots where the viewer is clearly higher than they should be (one even being high up outside a window before teleporting back into the room). Not only does the show frequently violate the 180 degree rule, but half the time the camera appears to ... be handheld like some kind of Dogme film, which is funny since Dogme clearly forbids temporal and geographical alienation.

The show's inconsistent visual language may have been forgivable if the other aspects were decent, but alas, the writing is dreck and the art never rises above anything standard. This could have been a cute, wholesome slice-of-life short series with a unique twist, but it's weirdly leering in ways that feel much worse than the usual anime fanservice. I don't mind fanservice or raunch, but the second arc is about your little sister coming over and the protagonist (who again, is supposed to be *you*) seems to perv on her the same way he does the other characters which just feels wrong.

There was however, one husk of value that I was able to extract form the show, and that was halfway decent listening practice if you're studying Japanese. Since the dialogue is at least somewhat slow and being spoken directly to "you" I was able to mostly follow the episodes. What's the opposite of collateral damage? Serendipity? Who knows, but there was at least something worthwhile even if the show wasn't very good. The concept deserves to be re-tried with a more capable writing team and more consistent direction.