Room Mate

Roommate was one of those guilty pleasure shows for me. Well okay, I don’t exactly like it but I don’t exactly hate it either!
First we start with the story, “you” are going to be living with 3 boys as the manager of the place they live. The story is all about how these characters interact with you and soon fall in love with you. With this anime being geared to a female audience that sounds about right. I see nothing wrong with the story and for 4 minutes per episode you really can’t expect anything more.
Now let's talk about characters, each character has their own personality and hobbies. In character design and personality the characters follow the normal character tropes but they also added in character specific hobbies. Acting, climbing and gaming. These hobbies seemed out of nowhere because they couldn’t develop why the characters are so passionate about what they do. When they tried to explain Takumi’s climbing hobby, he just says it’s relaxing so it doesn’t really make sense as so why climbing (probably just used it as an excuse to show Takumi shirtless and sweating meh)
Character design: you would think that these boys would be more attractive?? If I want an anime to put me in the shoes of a main character I want the guys that fall in love with me to be a super attractive bishi. Of course it’s the inside that matters but it’s an anime trying to fulfill girl’s dreams of hot guys falling for them in a super romantic way! Takumi especially because he looks really good on the anime cover but terrible in the show.
There is nudity in every ED of the show (with a really catchy song), which includes erasing clothes and all that stuff but it’s always above waist. I don’t speak from research or anything but I am am a girl and at least for me I don’t think girls get as excited about nudity than males when seeing butts and boobs. That’s just me but that’s what I expect most of the female population to feel because I don’t want to generalize. I don’t mind the nudity but I can go without it.
Other stuff: I don’t know much about voice acting so I don’t really want to comment on that but It sounded pretty fine to me. Also, The show has a cute logo and title screen, I just really wanted to say that xD

Overall: 5/10
I pointed out so many flaws with this show which kinda confuses me on why I don’t absolutely hate it. Despite all of it’s flaws It is actually to some extent enjoyable and because of that I don’t see the flaws as something that I need to give a lower score for, but rather the anime could have really improved if they did these things. I wouldn’t go to the extent of calling it a bad show which is why I give it a 5 out of 10 (average)

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there is something horribly wrong with this story line.
I mean it's funny that you can talk back but I don't know what they are going to say so I don't know
what I can say to them. I say something and get a whole diffrent respons.
I like the idea of 3 handsome man fighting over me but I thought
romantic relationships were not allowed.
and why do the guys think I like all of them maybe I already have a boyfriend.
I think it's to bad that there are so low episodes and the episodes are also quite short I maen
4 minutes come on that's way to short I barely get to know them how can I choose one of them if I
barely know them

sorry for my poor english ;)

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 In short : For people wanting to stare at good looking guys exclusively.

I’m a straight woman.

There, now that this is settled, I can delve in this review without people crying at me that I’m voting it down unfairly because I’m a straight man or something.

First of all, I’d like to point out that I do wish for more equality in terms of fanservice, however, it isn’t at whatever the price. And this short Anime is a perfect example of that.


Story :

And actually I shouldn’t have this category to begin with. Because….it actually fails at delivering the most elemental point of a fiction : a story. I know that’ll be confusing for most, since in the vulgar sense of the term, it is, but in the narratological sense there isn’t. Now, I won’t make a narratology course, but let’s just summaries by saying that there’s a need for a beginning, a middle and an end which are all tightly connected to each other. Connected being the key word of my sentence since the events presented in this show are random events following each other.

Despite that overly catastrophic aspect, I can redeem itself on one aspect : there’s a regular complain lately toward otome games that they take too much time to get the juicy stuff started (in short, they are complaining about the presence of development), so if the producers of this short anime were aware of it, they might have answered those wishes. So while it can be praised for that, it won’t change that the result is a storyless anime.

That said, that “praise” itself could be questioned : those complainers clearly have no idea how writing works, is listening to them a good idea ? Sure, there’s a need to listen to your audience, however, it should be avoided to do it at all cost, there’s a need of balance, of making the difference between the pertinent complains and the others. Sadly enough, if they indeed did it with that in mind, they listened to the wrong people.

Though, who knows ? Quality and success are two things, so maybe it did pay off in the end ?


Characters :

If there isn’t an actual story, there are, at least, characters. Well, they are stereotypes and never delve into anything else. I’d even call them a melting pot, or a 3-in-1, even if it isn’t accurate, why ?

Oh I don’t know…  younger, middle , adult  blond, brown, black  cheerfully childishly cute, the main love interest that you know is going to end with the heroine, nice looking guy that actually is sadistic/arrogant  uncommon job, athletic, geek

You got the picture…they try to touch such a large set of tastes to that they become…well, pretty much nothing. Because you can buy all the colours available in a shop, randomly throwing them at the canvas won’t magically turn it into a painting. You need to actually do something out of it.

In its defence though, and this time it isn’t one I shall question : it is a very short show, and even if it had tried to do something decent, it’d have been hard to achieve it. So I can see in a way why coming up with a set of broad tastes was more their focus.


Art :

When it could have been good at the very least on that aspect, because…truth be told, it’s probably the bishies they only cared about in their production, it is inconsistent. When they are close, most of the time, there’s no issue, when they aren’t, the difference in details is striking to the point of looking amateurish at times.

Well, at the very least, the frames are ok, I didn’t notice baffling misses.

Can’t say the same regarding the colouring. More specifically, the rainbow + blur at the edges effect. I suppose its aim is to make it look “prettier”, but it just unnecessarily dirties the image and it isn’t without reminding me of the filter I put on my very first AMVs when I was twelve years old. Needless to say I realized the amateurishness of such a procedure. The image needs to remain clean and without unnecessary adds.

And most importantly of all : this is a xViewer anime. The “camera” is supposed to be “you”. The “camera” in this is the worst a xViewer show can have because...while it sets it as “you” early on, it’ll randomly move, zoom, jump cut, dezoom, float in the middle of thin air, etc. Oh, no, no, it’s not you having superpowers or something, it’s just that the camera switches from “default” to “you” at random. It can even totally forget “you” (what happened in that bathroom ? did “I” faint ? did “I” leave ? finish your event properly, dammit ! D8< ), basically, it fails at sticking at its most basic element as well. Which begs the question : why choosing that approach when you’re failing at sticking to it for four minutes ?


Sound :

The only thing I’d say is that one must be ready of the awkward silences (no sound effect or music) as this is a xViewer anime, so I might encourage you to talk at your computer, even if just for mockery purposes. There’s nothing worth mentioning aside from that.


Overall :

This is anything but a decent show, and I admit that if I hadn’t mocked the stereotypical dialogues I’d probably have dropped it soon as when I watched it normally I got bored after two minutes. (that’s…quite an achievement I think ?)

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I don’t get why this anime has such a low rating. I mean, yes, it isn’t of FMAB quality, but exactly what do you expect from a 4 minute-per-episode anime that’s obviously geared at a female audience? Intense emotional scenes, breathtaking action sequences or perhaps, some fanservice for their eternally parched eyes??

Room Mate is an xViewer anime (my first, I’ll be honest). I didn’t even know such a thing existed – I was only aware of this trend among fanfics and doujinshi. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised when I stumbled across this anime. Within the first 4 minutes, the personality of each male character has been made clear, and if you ask me, that’s a hella difficult job. Sure, they do fit in your typical anime stereotypes (the shota, the tsundere and the loner), but then again – this anime doesn’t have the luxury of delving into deep character developments because of its severe time constraints.

Here, you are the manager of the inn/lodge where these guys stay (they’re roommates, duh) and you get to witness their day to day lives first hand. The ED was generic, but I’ll admit – the animation was far better than I expected. I found the interactions and the camera movements particularly interesting. The most impressive thing, of course, was how much the animators were able to convey so much in every 4 minute episode.

While not definitely a masterpiece, if you’re looking for a breather in between watching an intense anime, or are just in the mood for something different, I’d definitely recommend this sweet and cute anime. After all, what’s 20 minutes of your life, right? Give it a try!

PS. I was gonna give it a 7, but after seeing so many guys (and I do mean, boys) downvoting this series for not pandering to THEIR likes, I upped my vote to 9. It might not help its overall score, but that’s my way of rebelling against these people and their unfair scores.

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