Their simulcast in Japan even has English subs. Don't kid yourself that they couldn't get the rights to simulcast it in a bunch of territories if they wanted to. If CR can do it, a company with plenty of money to throw around and enough connections to have an anime made for them (Perfect Bones) could certainly get Pony Canyon to play ball. The reason would seem to be that Netflix just doesn't wanna. And while it's neat that Netflix gets shows subbed and dubbed in a bunch of languages when they're "Netflix originals," it's still frustrating to artificially be made to wait like this when all other services in this area don't work like that. ("Something something managed disappointment")
***
Minor things:

A. As convenient as it would be, whoever translated this for Netflix, "pantsu" does not just mean "pants." Rather, it refers to underpants, such as the pair held up immediately afterwards. If this sort of basic error is in the subs, how much should I trust the rest of it?

B. That MacBook has the default wallpaper for (Snow?) Leopard. That MacBook has not received security updates from Apple for a while. That MacBook is also rather old if it's running that OS. Please upgrade your OS, UN worker. Surely these technologically advanced aliens are familiar with cyber espionage.

I kind of regret starting this out on my FAL team's bench rather than in the active roster. I underestimated just how thoroughly it would hit so many of the notes necessary to be popular among MAL's userbase. Now I kind of hope I'm actually overestimating its appeal because I'm not sure the series I did start with are all gonna outperform this one. I can swap it in soon if it turns out like that, but man oh man if that's the mistake that's the difference between first place or not. Not that I'd probably get first place either way, though.

You should join FAL some time if you don't already participate. It makes seasons interesting.
***

Hmm. CR had a poll on their page asking me my favorite character in this series. Typically those polls have been things along the lines of "Hey, which of the upcoming season's shows are you most interested in (and are therefore the ones we should prioritize licensing)?" and other questions with that sort of intent. Makes me wonder what they're doing with the info they'll get from this poll. They might just throw it as something in their newsletter, but they've generally used these polls for bigger purposes than that. But I can't imagine what other use they'd have for asking this.

Anyway, I've still only seen six episodes, so maybe I wasn't the best person to ask. Oh well.
***

Hey, only about 2.5 years to make it through eight episodes! Now that's what I call binge watching. On a solid pace to finish this show sometime around 2023.

Anyway, with how much attention Ferris gets from the Internet, you'd think they were a major character in the show. But I've seen ~1/3 of the episodes and no Ferris. Has the Internet obsessed over a minor side character in this show? Would hardly be the first time, I guess.
***

like the end goal of watching anime really shouldn't just be to finish it but rather the journey along the way

(which makes the whole "i can't start this very long anime cause it'll take forever to finish it" line of reasoning kind of silly [13 good episodes of anime are 13 good episodes of anime whether one of them was a series finale or not])

but even still i'd hope to not actually take until 2023 to finish watching this show

then again there are anime i've been meaning to start for like 15 years

help there's more anime than free time to watch it

(i should seriously just finally get around to watching an episode of rahxephon. it'd only take 24 minutes!)

(vague episode 34 spoilers)

So Mahiru's "individually" is robbing others of their own, I see. Ganguro fashion has been the subject of meaningful debate and analysis, but Aikatsu Stars! knows the real concern is that these dang kids look and act differently than the majority. Remember, kids: Don't stand out or be yourself! The demographic that worked on this episode was almost palpable.

Now I enjoy myself some bad puns, and generally favor whatever the localized title is, but "Anne Happy" is pushing being too groanworthy even for me.

"Each episode of the show will have an anime segment as well as a live-action segment. Each anime part of the episode will be five minutes long, and each live-action segment will be 16 minutes long and will feature the cast playing arcade crane games."-ANN

Where're my live-action crane games, Crunchyroll? How am I supposed to get the full experience of this show now?

With the season just about to begin, there's this vague but growing inclination that Funimation is going to wait for their Hero Academia pre-airing stream to announce the rest of their slate for spring. Which is alienating viewers and leading a number of people to believe that this show is the only show they're gonna simulcast. But all of the fanfare around this title and silence about whatever else they might be simulcasting really demonstrates just how much they're putting their eggs in this show's basket. They must expect it to be a pretty big deal. And I'm not familiar enough with this to speculate too much about how it'll perform (which isn't a great position as I'm forming my FAL team for the season!). but let's say it doesn't catch on for whatever reason. If the series is a flop, that leaves Funimation with a high profile failure and a number of other series they barely bothered promoting, perhaps even using them to promote said potential flop instead. Now maybe it's a smash hit but why take this risk? Even if it is a smash hit, wouldn't it be better to also put some effort into letting the other shows have a chance at the same? Yes, these deals can take time to work out and you may not have them finalized until right near the start of the show. But they're saying they already have other shows to announce, so either they're indeed withholding promotion of those titles, or they're lying. Even if this show is the biggest commercial hit in the history of anime this is still a weird marketing decision. Crunchyroll is steadily announcing a slate of titles they'll be simulcasting and customers are increasingly becoming legitimately convinced that Funi doesn't actually have any other shows, which is a perception Funi has pretty much deliberately created. I don't get it, and it seems to be baffling and upsetting a number of their current and potential customers. Such an odd move.
***

I'm opting to watch Funi's marketing Twitch stream thing for this and I've never used Twitch before. Is Twitch chat always so... terrible? Gee whiz.
***

And after four hours of counting down, the Funimation hosts can't even watch the premiere because they didn't successfully get the episode out on time. Sort of a great image of anime simulcasting in general, really.
***

...that's it? Just seems like a competent but typical one of those, really.
***

Their marketing push definitely seem to have brought in new members. Members who really don't seem to understand how their service works or what it offers and seem displeased with it to the point that they don't intend to continue past their free trial. Success? And all the money they've spent on this show has left them with a catalogue of shows for this season that, while you may or may not individually like them, can reasonably be described as "the leftovers." Which is alienating and disappointing current customers, prompting them to not want to continue being paying customers. ...success? And for all this marketing blitz, the show's popularity just seems "okay," which isn't okay when you've staked this much on it.

Obviously I don't have access to the actual hard numbers Funi sees. But at least from the outside, this hasn't seemed like a great marketing moment. It looks like Funi's sacrificed more for this title than they've gained from it and made a poor gamble. This show will probably do okay for them! But they've hurt the image of their simulcasting service and ceded a significant number of shows to Crunchyroll. Being "The Place to Watch My Hero Academia!" doesn't, no matter what you think of this particular show, stack up well against being "The Place to Watch Most of the Other Shows, Including Multiple Popular Ones!" When your service has a cost comparable to CR you want to convince potential customers that it also has a value comparable to CR. And they've neglected their forest to pamper what they think is a very nice tree.

CR is a very, very incompetent service. Funimation does many things better than them. But if they don't have the content, who will care about the service?
***

Oh dear. Now CR's announced they're also simulcasting Haifuri so that's even one less exclusive show Funimation can boast about having to entice people to subscribe. There are six exclusive, non-sequel titles from this season on Funimation. I'm currently watching around twice as many exclusive series on CR from this season as Funi has simulcasts altogether. Even if every single show on Funi was one I wanted to watch, that'd still be at best half of what I've opted to watch on CR. And that's because while "quality over quantity" is an easy line to spout off, quantity actually does matter. Especially when a number of the shows on CR also have the "quality" part.

Funimation is 2/3 the cost CR for an annual subscription, assuming the basic tiers of both. This season it's giving me less than 1/2 the value in terms of anime. But it gets worse. CR includes manga. Funi doesn't. Last season CR let me watch the live-action second season of Wakako-zake. Live action on Funi is far less common. In terms of having stuff, CR has significantly more than Funi does. To say that Funi's simulcasting business isn't having a bad season is to bury your head in the sand. The disparity is obvious and users are making their displeasure clear. Funi's not gonna say that, most likely, because of course they want to constantly project a positive image of their business.

We don't get to know how much Funi spent acquiring this show or how much it would've cost to acquire other shows. Could they have gotten some combination of the seemingly popular shows Joker Game, Twin Star Exorcists, Bungo Stray Dogs and/or Re:Zero? We can only speculate. But if they had the choice between a few popular shows or going for what they hoped to be the most popular show, I can't say the latter was the better move. Because, again, quantity does count for something. And if they couldn't get more than one of those shows had they not gone for MHA, then they're in pretty bad shape. Either they've made a fairly questionable marketing decision and/or they can't adequately compete with CR when it comes to bidding on simulcast licenses. The former is arguably a negative thing for this season. The latter would be a serious problem on a more long term basis.

I'm trusting this isn't going to double down on the bear sex jokes.
***

(spoilers?)
So it didn't double down on that but man did it go down some real awkward and even terrible alleys. Some real casual sexual assault of a 14-year-old, treating her as a dress-up doll for leering older men, pretty much bullying her on a regular basis, an odd idol undercurrent that never really jived with the rest of the narrative, ending on having the main character finally, after constant merry disregard for her strong social anxiety by others, completely collapsing under the weight of said social anxiety and regressing to a more childlike state as those around her refuse to try to help her but rather continue to enjoy the results of what seems like actually a pretty serious problem so that they can just continue to keep Machi as a pet and playing that all off as a cute, happy ending... I mean somewhere in all of this is slice of life/comedy stuff that borders between okay and alright but man oh man does it make some really disagreeable turns.

I... I just wanted a cute anime about a young girl and her bear out in the country trying to get familiar with city life. But it seems this anime and I differ in our opinions on traumatizing and sexually abusing a child as being "cute."
***

no seriously what the heck

The same voice actress that played Sumire in Aikatsu!, playing a character that looks like Sumire, sounds like Sumire and even has some personality overlap with Sumire, and I had no idea until someone else pointed it out. I can recognize Yuasa by seeing a walk cycle but can't recognize a voice actress even when it's been made this easy and obvious. I mean there's a certain nicety to hearing only the character and not such-and-such voice actor, but how am I this hopeless at recognizing voices?

Also you're seeing the staff that also worked on GJ-bu bringing the same expressive character -and particularly cat- animation to this show. It's nice. Helps make the show stand out from the field a little.

I...

Look, this feels like a giant red flag made out of other, smaller red flags. The promotional material kind of pitched it as "Adult takes advantage of little boy's financial dependency on him to turn said little boy into his personal fetish toy" which is not the most appealing thing in that it would be actively awful. And in a season where Super Lovers went all in on that sort of thing, I was on a bit of a high alert going into this show. But... I mean there's some weirdness ("No, no, he's just having him wear that maid outfit because he likes frilly clothes!") but nothing overtly terrible. Well, I mean beyond the certain subtext and minor fanservice involving a minor, but... you know it's kind of an awkward statement about anime that one can be relieved that a show's appeal to pedophiles is "tasteful." But insofar as you can accept that uncomfortably common element of anime, I mean it's not like it's worse than Black Butler, I guess.

If I sound hesitant here, it's because I know anime isn't great at the whole "restraint" thing and could so easily go from straddling along the side of the line to crossing right over it at any given moment. And for a show that's kinda on the lower side of "okay" it's maybe not worth sticking around to see if it does transgress, but I'm gonna stick with this show, I suppose. (Feel the excitement!)

Help.

Real shame about the video quality of these releases, but what can you do? Unless some enterprising individual decides to spend the time taking these subs and timing them to a better video, it's this or nothing. Thanks, Harmony Gold!

I was trying to remember what shows aired on Saturday that I watch, and couldn't recall one of them until it finally hit me and I exclaimed out loud "Oh no, it's Kiznaiver!" I delayed watching the episode that had aired by watching a movie instead (it was better). I watched all the other anime I was planning to watch that day first. When I finally got around to watching it, it felt like I'd watched two or three episodes of anime and yet it was only halfway done. At one point I shouted a derisive statement at my television. When the ED finally hit I let out a pained groan and my face twisted into a grimace.

I should probably stop watching Kiznaiver!

I mean it's not that Funi and CR are somehow "entitled" to be the only anime simulcasters, and competition does/should spur improvement, but as a customer there's a certain level of exhaustion when I'm expected to use/pay for Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, Crunchyroll, Daisuki and Funimation to be able to watch every show in a season. I'm not an Amazon Prime member, and I ain't gonna pay $99 just to check this show out. While the quality of an Amazon anime simulcast remains an unknown, I do know that's way too steep a price to go blind into one show and one service.

But let's say the quality is fine. Maybe even great. And like Hulu and Netflix, Amazon continues to snap up exclusive streaming rights each season. How many different anime simulcasting services will the market really support? Why not YouTube Red or something while we're at it? If you're paying yearly for all the services that you'd currently need to watch all the simulcast anime in a season, that's $415-567, depending on the tiers of service you go with. That's not a modest sum of cash. Now some of those you can pay for smaller quantities of time as you see fit and try to drive the price down, but you can't do that with Amazon Prime. You're either all in or you'll have to find their shows elsewhere.

So what's the legal anime consumer to do? Wait for the shows to end each season, pay for a month at various places and then marathon them all to save cash? That's kinda lousy. The alternatives seem to either be to open up their wallets even more, or piracy. And as the costs go up, the drive to go back to "the old way" increases. This pie is only so big.

Me? I'll be looking for rips/fansubs and throwing them in a Plex library, at least for this show. Who knows what the future will hold, though.
***

A thought: Amazon, Netflix and the companies behind Hulu are all much larger than CR or Funi. If these companies thought it was worthwhile to ramp up their anime simulcasting efforts even further and get truly serious about it, it would be easy for them to outbid CR and Funi and put those two services in a rather bad spot. Getting on the production committee of a show, as both Funi and CR have expressed interest in, would help secure streaming rights, but Netflix is already venturing into that area themselves with Perfect Bones (or at least I think they're on the committee there) and Amazon as well as the companies behind Hulu could probably start striking those sorts of deals if they really wanted to.

Crunchyroll pretty much brought and built the idea of anime simulcasts as a viable business and Funimation arose as one of their more dedicated competitors. And now both of them might have their lunch eaten by larger companies for whom anime simulcasting would only be one part of their overall business. Capitalism, ho!

(Or maybe Amazon just thinks this particular show might take off like Attack on Titan and isn't interested in getting into anime simulcasting in general. But that's not as interesting as speculating about how the sky is falling, now is it?)
***

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2016-03-17/amazon-signs-deal-with-fuji-tv-to-exclusively-stream-noitamina-series/

"Amazon Signs Deal With Fuji TV to Exclusively Stream Noitamina Series"

Welp.

Now maybe you already subscribe to Hulu, Netflix and Prime for the rest of what they offer and any anime they carry is just a neat bonus. If so, congrats, you're not particularly affected. If anything, you're coming out ahead. But for any of us who aren't subscribed to all five of the premium services you now need to pay for to have access to every legal simulcast each season, there's the question of just what we're actually willing to put up with paying for. I've been subscribed to legal anime simulcasting services for about eight months and have seen two new major players enter that sphere during that time while Netflix has gradually increased its commitment to anime as well. It's already too many services and I have no real reason to think this is where it'll stop. And this just doesn't seem truly sustainable.

To be fair, between the services that aren't CR or Funi, you're maybe looking at 5-7 shows per season right now. Not an insignificant chunk, but the bulk of shows are still available via CR or Funi. For now, at least. This is just Amazon's opening foray into anime simulcasting. Maybe they'll decide it ain't worth it and bow out later on. Or maybe they'll double down and start securing more exclusive licenses. Or maybe Netflix will. Or Hulu. Or all three of them. There are players in anime simulcasting with big money who could change the landscape of content availability almost whenever they decide it's worth it.

If anything's certain it's that nothing's certain.
***

" Amazon has more money than God, and the amount they were rumored to be offering for exclusive worldwide streaming rights for a series was by far the highest price I've ever heard of being paid for anime rights -- enough to pay for the entire production and then some." -ANN's Justin Sevakis

Anyone else notice the clouds seem to be getting closer?

(I mean that's great financially for the anime industry and of course they wouldn't turn that down if that's true, but on the American consumer end of things it's a bit complicated.)
***

And now The Anime Network is reminding people they unfortunately still exist by announcing a simulcast of their own. It's unclear if it's an exclusive one, but if it is, that's another $7 a month. Anime piracy remains free and simple while legal simulcasts continue to become more expensive and complicated. This isn't sustainable.
***



Only replace "political cartoon" with "anime."

Now that the actual show itself has aired, goodness gracious that is some lazy tripe. When you realize your protagonist is a shallow, self-congratulatory being that more resembles what would happen if a computer tried to generate a Shonen Jump protagonist than an actual human being, why not make everyone who disagrees with him comically hysterical, reactionary and myopic? It's easier to make him seem relatively smarter and better written than to actually put in some effort, after all. Is the blood and constant yelling supposed to distract us from the fact that the animation is, well, not very impressive? What limited amount of animation there is, at least. And it's not even trying to mask the elements it's wholesale lifting from Attack on Titan. Just maybe it shouldn't have also copied the part about being boring.

And you know what? The show will probably be pretty successful despite this. I doubt I'll ever get why.
***

And that's all I intend to ever write about the content of the show itself, because aside from its popularity inevitability leading to me seeing mentions of it here and there as a consequence of keeping up on anime in general, it's entirely forgettable.

Instead, can we focus on what the simulcast of this show has suggested about the future of Amazon simulcasts going forward? Amazon seems to have figured out something Hulu, Crunchyroll and Funi haven't, because apparently ripping their releases isn't (yet) nearly so easy. But apparently their release was also problematic from a video standpoint, improperly playing at 30 FPS, so would you really want a rip of that? Maybe they'll fix that going forward. Or maybe they won't. The latter is quite probable. They probably won't bother fixing it unless enough people make enough of a stink about it and most people probably won't actually know what the problem is. Oh well. The subs themselves seem more or less fine, though, and even the songs are subbed. It feels kind of odd to be able to point to that latter bit as a novelty, but such is the state of things. I guess you can make things happen when you're a Real Company.

So there's good and bad things. At least currently harder to pirate, flawed video even for legal viewers, but decent subs. If the video issues are fixed, these would probably be fine releases. I sure ain't gonna pay $100 to keep watching a show I thought 24 minutes was too much of, but for future titles they wind up simulcasting, I dunno. Because it's still yet another service to pay for legal anime simulcasts and my feelings on that haven't changed.
***

But so long as we're talking about Amazon Prime specifically:

A. Having to pay for a whole year at a time is unwelcome. Let's say this winds up being the only thing on Prime you want to watch. You can't pay less and only subscribe for three months. You've gotta pay $99 to watch this show. Sure, you're also getting the other perks of Prime, but that's only a positive insofar as you're actually going to take advantage of them. They're not something that increases the value so much as they're a forced part of the bundle, whether you want them or not. If all you want is the 2-day shipping, you're still paying for their streaming service, and vice versa. It's not so bad if you're actually gonna use all of that extensively, but not having any choice means a number of potential customers are basically getting bilked. I recognize that Amazon doesn't want you to pay around $8 any month you want to get a bunch of packages shipped quick and has to try to keep Prime profitable, but you can't even decouple the streaming service and just pay for that. Bleh.

B. How can this thing be so poorly organized? Even just trying to pay for it is a hassle. You can't pay directly for it with Amazon gift credit, but you can buy yourself a gift membership with gift credit. If it's ultimately possible, why make users jump through hoops to do it? You can't even use a debit card directly. And the oddly inconvenient situation with payment methods just gives you a taste of what a hassle it is to even browse their selection. Even just seeing what their handful of original series were was more difficult and painful than it needed to be. Why are individual seasons listed as separate entries? Why is the genre sorting so poor (sorting by "anime" included a number of children's cartoons, for example)? Why are things so poorly labeled (anime that fails to let you know it's dub only, for example)? And when you load up, say, the Amazon video app on a Roku, it's not immediately clear what content is free with Prime and what's pay content because the two aren't neatly separated. (The app's UI is also garbage.) It's all such a pain to find anything or use that you'd just hope whatever it is is on Netflix so you can avoid the hassle.

C. There's so much overlap with Netflix's catalogue that if you already have Netflix, it's hard to justify bothering with Prime. Netflix easily outpaces Amazon's originals in terms of quantity and, while subjective, I would argue also in terms of quality.

D. Hope you like getting your email inbox flooded by Amazon if you watch stuff via Prime. I gave a Prime trial a shot a year or so ago and watching anything resulted in a bunch of "You'd also like this!" emails. There's probably some way to turn that off, but ugh.

E. Their anime selection is pretty poor, overall. Mostly Sentai's castoffs and generally not even with your choice of dialogue language. Netflix's anime selection isn't amazing, but it sure beats this in that it's at least worthwhile.

Amazon Prime is clunky to use and the benefits are nebulous. If you're gonna order $500+ of pre-order or recently released video games, then I suppose you might as well since you'll break even if not come out ahead with the Prime 20% discount and anything else is just gravy. But it's difficult to suggest that the average person should even bother with Prime in a way that isn't true for competitors like Netflix or Hulu. And that feels weird when you consider that Amazon has a whole bunch of money they could use to improve it.

But if you want a pair of jeans shipped to your house, Amazon is still totally useful for that!
***

Though it's not as if the physical goods section of Amazon is flawlessly organized either. The first result in their anime blu-ray section was the UK release of Beauty and the Beast. Amazon might want to make it easier for customers to find things they want to buy from them.
***

"Amazon began offering a video-only subscription plan, distinct from its Amazon Prime membership, in the United States on Sunday. In addition, Amazon has added monthly subscription rates for both Amazon Prime and Amazon Prime Video. The monthly rate for Amazon Prime Video is US$8.99 and the monthly rate for Amazon Prime is US$10.99."

Now that they're operating like any other relevant player in this industry, that solves one of my points of contention with the service. Their lack of exclusive content and poor organization/UI/anime library, however, are still factors. But if you're someone who just wants to sign up long enough to watch a show or two, this is surely a welcome change over having to pay $99 for the privilege. If Amazon gets an anime I'm interested in, I'd actually consider paying $9 to stream it whereas $99 would've been a much harder sell. I'd think Amazon'd also be happier getting $9 from me here and there rather than $0.

This is a good thing, but it's also something everyone else was doing the whole time, so let's not praise Amazon too much for finally catching up. (Although you can't get the shipping without also paying for the streaming service. One step at a time.)

(Also, wait, does that $12 monthly rate for regular Prime have the same video game discounts? You'd break even with just one $60 game. Their comparison chart doesn't even mention that aspect which is odd.)

(spoilers)

"Older male meets his new, adopted little brother."

Okay.

"Said little brother suffered physical abuse and has emotional trauma associated with that."

Okay.

"The older male is nice to his new little brother, and gets him to open up to him."

Sure.

"Intentionally or not, he uses his position as an older brother and his little brother's trauma to wind up seducing his little brother This is portrayed as a positive thing."

Nope, hold up. You've taken a typical anime pseudo-incest story ("B-but they're not genetically related, so it doesn't co-") and added an extra layer of uncomfortableness to it. As the anime somewhat clumsily depicts, child victims of abuse can have trouble with both receiving and expressing affection. That can manifest in inappropriate levels of affection being given to people in whatever his brother's name is's position. As a responsible adult, he ought to deal with that responsibly, not indulge in the wounded reaction of a child still recovering from abuse and encourage it further. I mean a basically incestuous relationship between an adult and a child would be one thing, but why did they have to add this?

Some seem to be suggesting that people wouldn't share this reaction if Ren were female. And boy I'd sure hope that's not the case. Taking advantage of abused children for romantic or sexual purposes is one of those things I really need to believe is rather roundly frowned upon regardless of the gender of the child in question. People sure seem weirded out by how Usagi Drop's manga apparently ends, at least. If people criticize this but condone the positive portrayal of exploiting abused children when it's little girls being exploited, yes, that's an issue, but that doesn't negate the shared heavily problematic nature of Super Lovers' central conceit. Nor is it an apples-to-apples comparison to compare Super Lovers' "isn't exploiting an abused child sweet?" to something like Nisemonogatari, as some seem to. Because while both feature an older brother character engaging in incestuous actions with a younger sibling, only the former, and I really must stress this here, glorifies the predatory act of exploiting an abused child.

And I'm not personally comfortable with watching that. Which I wouldn't think would be a controversial stance, but, y'know, anime fans.
***

"Ren has clearly been abused at probably one than one point in his life, and Haru is the first adult who appears to be kind without ulterior motive – at one point Ren thinks that the nice ones always turn out to be the scariest, which certainly would imply that he was lured into something sometime in his past. This makes the fact that the story is BL and that Ren and Haru will eventually become a couple instantly uncomfortable. Will Ren feel somehow obliged to Haru and try to “repay” him? The fact that Haru is the one taking care of Ren in his basic everyday needs throughout the episode already sets any romantic relationship up as unequal, and that looks to be exacerbated by the fact that this episode ends in what appears to be a horrific car wreck right after Haru's dad and stepmother make veiled references to bringing Ren to live with them. Haru stands to become the parent figure for Ren and the other two stepbrothers who live at home in Japan, so I'm having a really hard time seeing how this story is going to pull off “romantic.”" -ANN's Rebecca Silverman

Oh, good, other people also see this.

Also there's the part where this anime isn't made all that well, but that's less important and also is obvious so soon as you know that DEEN's in charge of production.