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(This review is incomplete and will keep changing throughout the anime. I’m simply writing it now to ensure at least one review is up that somewhat understands this show.)

Story: 3
Art: 2
Sound: 3
Character: 2
Enjoyment: 5
Overall: --

TL;DR
... Ever wonder how lovecraftian creatures find love?

This anime is about (self insert)’s journey in the scary world of hot, long-chinned boys: Baramon High School. Boiled down, it’s a parody anime about commonly used BL tropes. Imagine if someone in the anime industry decided to create an official abridged series, and then proceeded to air it on TV in hopes that someone out there would get the joke. Basically, you’ll be playing a game of ‘spot the trope’ with every episode. If all that sounds fun to you, this might just be worth checking out.

Story:
The school of Baramon High is where all attractive boys are collected and gender is irrelevant, all seemingly shepherded by their principal Jirou Natsume. Your literal no-faced self insert moved in not too long ago to unexpectedly find himself on a quest for a romantic partner, and is put through one scenario after another to showcase their rather generic quirks. This story is less about a plot, and more about how many tropes can fit into a five minute episode without spitting it in your face too hard. Here’s just a few you’ll encounter in the first few episodes: A ‘cast full of pretty boys’, ‘if it’s you, it’s okay’, ‘chins that can split the moon’, ‘long-haired pretty boy’ and ‘only has same sex admirers’. That’s just the ones I can remember off the top of my head, so keep hunting!

Art:
The art, while clearly an intentional move, is hideous. Simply slowly jiggling your characters while having a mouth flap move feels and looks like it’s a tutorial for learning how to change frames in Flash. Furthermore, these simplistic loops are used throughout with short breaks involving scenes that look like scribbles, focused upon for far too long in what is a five minute show. The saving grace of this is that this IS actually how it’s meant to be shown; most jokes stemming from this child-like style, resulting in the score of 3 above. If you don’t believe me, then feel free to look up the tween animation used in the ED that also looks like it was made by a seven year old messing around with features on Scratch. The OP isn’t much better with quick still frames and a running loop that’s used throughout the whole show so far. The saving grace of artistic talent is the end-of-show stills, but even they can’t save what is eternally and intrinsically broken.

Sound:
The music isn’t the worst, but don’t be holding your breath. The OP is the generic visual novel song with little to no creativity being closely followed by an ED that’s both out of place and hellish spawn in need of purging. The sound design of the actual show is surprisingly decent with atmospheric sounds and some character's themes not sounding quite as bad as you would (or should) expect. Chalk it up to trying to keep matching the clear satire this show is going for, I guess.

Characters:
Expect exactly what it says on the tin: Stereotypes and under-developed jokes of a cast. Our MC is Maeda, a character without much personality aside from being consistently confused at any man's advances. He's essentially designed for you to slip into his shoes with as little friction as possible. This is closely followed by one-dimensional, cliché bishounens who are all the boys we’ve seen so far, along with a headmaster to encourage his scandalous love life, as mentioned above.

-- I don’t have enough details to fully flesh out this section yet. --

Enjoyment:
The situations thus far have been parodies of the generic scenarios shown in BL visuals with the intensity turned up to 11. They hit hard when you know the background behind them, but I fear it'll run dry fast. Anyway, while not having a wide range of jokes to fall back on as far, they’re usually held up their job of being funny. The merry band of hot men willing to die for the MC will hopefully hold up the ridiculousness of the non-existent plot long enough to keep this entertainment for a 12 episode season along with the up-and-coming OVA. Overall, in terms of enjoyment, I’ve been having a pleasurable time with a show whose animators are clearly having a blast.

Overall:
-- To be filled. --

Story: 5
Art: 7
Sound: 8
Character: 4
Enjoyment: 5
Overall: 5

TL;DR:
This anime is about an insecure, ill-informed shrine maiden and her constant abuses that lead up to an ending so odd that the manga's creator needed to apologize for it to ensure his sales weren't jeopardized. While the music as well as art are surprisingly decent, it's dragged down by the poor characters and lax story. Essentially, if you enjoyed the lip curling suffering of vulnerable youths such as in Watashi ga Motenai, then expect the same without as much payoff.

... Story: 5
Machi is a 14 year-old girl who lives with the large talking bear Natsu who is shown caring for her alongside aiding in development towards cultural plights. You see, Machi wants to move out of her village to the city nearby and rid herself of her 'bumpkin' ways, which seems like an adorable plot in itself. However - the introduction of Yoshio who plays the role as the village tourist guide sends the show in a disturbing direction. He starts by teaching some of the kids about the relationship between the previous priestesses and their bear partners. This eventually devolves into heavy pedophillic undertones as our good pal Yoshio manipulates Machi towards participating in various activities focusing on her body: This at one point involves her being straddled in an attempt to make her wear a 'sexually appealing' dress. What I assume should be considered funny moments fell into nervous laughter knowing how the events came to light, especially with Hibiki - a hotheaded biker - who despite seeming to care for Machi, usually gets confirmation by abuse. This is a often used method to create humor.

The ending can be summed as in one word: Catastrophic. To prevent spoilers, I'll leave the events surrounding the scene a mystery, but don't expect any development towards what was meant to be the key goal behind the series.

Characters:
First there's our main heroin, Machi, the cute girl with crippling social anxiety who wants more than anything to experience the city life, thus making something of herself. Her innocent personality is often the butt of many jokes, one being a cooking incident that's actually quite adorable. Sadly many of these are nullified by our next character - Yoshio. Yoshio's the cousin of Machi and helps advise of the village's development which usually leads to uncomfortable situations for our main character. While seeming quite genuine in his attempts to better the village, he more often than not uses tough love or emotional manipulation to succeed. If there was one crux to this show in our character cast, this is it.

Our last two characters of importance are Natsu and Hibiki. Natsu is a large talking bear who lives with Machi in addition to helping her in daily life scenarios, ranging from conducting dances to simply cooking food. While seeming to be the voice of reason, as mentioned at the start of the reasoning behind my review of the story, his decisions in the later episodes make you severely question his motivations, even giving a pedophilia-like tinge to previous flashbacks. Finally, Hibiki is the token cool girl with the tough personally who prefers to deal with situations head on causing many problems for our poor Machi. While not being a very large character, she causes quite a few panic attacks in her time, all while seeming to care for Machi's health.

Sound:
Now here's where this show shows some promise. Disregarding the tone of the previous points, the ED shows an adorable game-like display with a catchy tune featuring the whole cast - a big fanfare to celebrate the daily life of Machi, this partnered with an OP showcasing the wonderful Maki Hanatani. The OP features all the characters we meet along the show with the fragile, yet endearing attitude of our main character as she completes a few of her daily tasks. This, followed by the daily lives of those around her with a soothing song sets up for a nice tone to what could've been an interesting slice of life anime. Voice acting for the characters is exactly what you would expect: They're adorable. With a nice singing segment, they showcase how good their ranges are, but at no point does an individual stand out as special. Despite all this, I must commend them for having a bear voice that doesn't sound like chalk scrapped across gravel.

Art:
This seems the selling point to most people, as it was for me. The visuals are colorful and show off the studios production vales to their fullest. The backgrounds elevate the spiritual nature of the show with expressions that show off all the characters traits to their fullest. The animation quality is very impressive, utilizing interesting choices of colours to show off emotion. While not being the most dazzling thing out there, for a slice of life this is a big nod from me.

Enjoyment/Overall mark:
I do like a good slice of life, but the problems showcased here really put me off. Most jokes land in a cringe-worthy way, just without the laughs of dark humor afterwards. The selfish, manipulative cast send messages that are rather disturbing; So much so that it took away from the art at some points, instead making me focus of the strange choices in writing. To summarize, I'd say it was as mediocre show that just flat out disappointed me, even being a big fan of shows with similar dark humor like Watashi ga Motenai.

Even if you don't enjoy what's mentioned above, why not at least give the art a go with a few episodes. It's far from the worse show in the world, even with all the flaws mentioned above. Who knows, maybe this might be your cup of tea?