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Sometimes, anime studios do the bare minimum and won't make any real effort at making an anime interesting. Sometimes, they do everything they can, they give it all they've got in order to make an anime good, to make it special, to make sure people who'll watch it will enjoy it, will remember it. With Oshiete Galko-chan, it's the latter.

I will get the obvious out of the way in order to focus on what's really interesting, so I'll start by saying that the art is incredible, which is to be expected from a 7-minutes-an-episode anime. The voices of the characters are great, especially Otako. The ... music does the job, and is used wisely, at the right time. The show is very, very funny, and in regards to humor, my personal favorite episode is probably the first one.

I didn't start watching this show with very high or low expectations. Knowing the anime more or less revolves around sex, all I was hoping for is that the jokes would be original, and the character likable. And this is exactly what I got.

Oshiete Galko-chan has three main characters, Galko, Otako and Ojou. Galko is a walking cliché of the average gyaru, Otako is a walking cliché of the average otaku, and Ojou is a walking cliché of the average ojou-sama, that is, a rich and well-mannered young lady.

Yet, though these characters are very cliché, and their main traits are nothing original by anime standards, they are all very "human" at heart, they all have real depth. They are not the victims of flanderization, which we sadly see too often in anime these days. The creators of Oshiete Galko-chan understood that making a comedy anime that revolves around sex was not a valid reason to not give characters the depth they deserve, as well as not a valid reason to not make the plot evolve to some extent, even if it's a SoL anime. Despite the episodes being 7 minutes long, the relationship between the characters evolve, and that's what I love to see. When I get attached to a character, I want to see him/her evolve in some way, and this is what I got here.

The last episode has a very interesting scene at the very beginning, where Otako explains that despite the fact that it's only the beginning of the year, most of the classes cliques have already been established. She mentions the gyaru group, the honor students group and the outsider group. When I first watched this episode, I just thought it was funny that Galko wasn't part of the gyaru group, but when I watched part of it again to write this review, I realized that those three groups in fact fit perfectly with our three characters, not just Galko with the gyarus, but also Ojou with the honor students and Otako with the outsiders, and that despite fitting perfectly in those groups, Galko, Ojou and Otako decided to form their own group, even though at first glance they didn't have much in common. So what if we hang out with people that aren't 100% like us? There's no problem with that. That was what they creators were trying to tell us here. (And the fact that it can go over one's head so easily is a good reminder that sometimes, you have to be very careful in order to notice the subtle details of an anime!)

Oshiete Galko-chan is an anime that teaches us to not judge people based on their looks. Maybe you'll tell me "Duh, everyone knows that!", and I think you'd be mostly right. But I also think there's a difference between knowing and understanding, and Oshiete-Galko-chan explains it in a way that I find simple yet profound. It's the type of anime that makes you close the file/tab, stand up, look outside the window and think. Think about how great the anime was and what it tried to teach you.

Though I rarely ever cry when watching an anime, I do slightly tear up from time to time, and it's the last episode that did it for me here (It's always the last episode, isn't it?). Sometimes you don't need a lot, you only need a little bit of beauty, you only need the simplest things, and then you're overwhelmed with a lot of different emotions.

It's for all those reasons that I decided to write this review. Even though it's a 12 episodes of 7 minutes anime, Oshiete Galko-chan has something really special, something really precious, something really pure, that I believe the world needs to know about. Despite being so short, it made its way into my heart and I will treasure it forever. I sincerely hope you will be able to enjoy its beauty the same way I did.

Are you a fan of the Slice of life and Cute girls doing cute things genres? If your answer is yes, then this show is not for you. Why? Because you probably already watched much better, much more original shows than this one.

The main character of this show is Hinako, a girl who gets embarassed every time someone talks to her. She moves from the countryside to Tokyo in hope of overcoming this habit by joing the drama club in her new high school.

However, like most SoL/CGDCT shows, Hinako Note quickly abandons its plot, and instead of giving us cute girls doing cute things, gives ... us cute girls doing nothing, or rather, cute girls doing the same thing cute girls have been doing in every SoL for the past five (ten?) years, only with new characters.

The beach episode? Check. Characters trying bikinis/new outfits every five seconds? Check. Characters drinking tea or eating every five seconds? Check. And so on and so on.

This kind of stuff was alright ten years ago with animes like K-On, because it was done intelligently and it was new. This is not the case here.

Talking about K-On, people over at Passione were very obviously "inspired" by K-On and Gochiusa when making Hinako Note, as many, MANY parralels can be made between the two.

In the first episodes, the characters of Hinako Note make it their goal to play at Suzuran, similar to how the characters of K-On make it their goal to play at Budokan.

In the first episode, Hinako is in Tokyo and she's looking for the bookstore where she'll stay, similar to how Cocoa, in the first episode of Gochiusa, looks for the Café where she'll stay.

There is an episode where Hinako's mom visits her, similar to the episode in Gochiusa where Cocoa's sister visits her. Again, and so on and so on.

So, as you might have guessed by now, the story is a 100% not original. There is nothing new.

What about the characters? Frankly, they're not THAT bad. Hinako herself is very similar to Cocoa from Gochiusa, but putting that fact aside, she is rather likeable, although the "joke" of her being embarassed easily gets old and annoying really fast, which might lead you to not like her.

Chiaki is rather original, especially in a CGDCT show. She is likeable. Kuina is likeable as well, although if you don't like the "Eats everything and is always hungry" type of character, you're not gonna like her, because that's 90% of what she'll do.

Mayuki is a dress freak (obviously, otherwise the characters wouldn't be able to try new clothes every five seconds) and she's complexed about her height. She's always there but you don't see her that much. Because of this, I don't hate her, but I don't feel attached to her either.

And Yua. Oh, Yua. I'm not gonna bother talking about her too much, all I'll say is that she is one of the lest original tsunderes I've ever seen (and they're not very original to begin with) and she's worst girl. There. Unless you're 10, new to anime and don't mind bitchy characters, you're not gonna like her.

The music is nice. The sound effects do the job.

The animation is good. With that being said, IT HAS TOO MANY CHIBI MOMENTS. This is becoming more and more of a problem in anime in general. The animators are lazy, so instead of drawing all the details like they'd normally do, and like they're supposed to do, every time there's a slightly silly moment, they draw chibi. This is dishonest animation and I personally dislike this very much.

Overall, it wasn't hard for me to watch Hinako Note. However, there were too many flaws for me to enjoy it. Hinako Note is not bad, it's just not good, and little effort has been put in it.

At first, I thought Blend S would be one of those anime which relies almost solely on the animation and the cute girls, tries to be funny but fails, and then gets forgotten by everyone the next season. This isn't my type of anime, so I kinda knew from the beginning that I wouldn't like it, but I gave it a chance anyways. And I was wrong, it was much, much more worse than I could have ever imagined. It's basically everything wrong with the anime industry in only twelve episodes.

We've got the same old main character, Maika, who's a bit of a klutz but ... she tries her best! She's supposed to play the sadistic character but she is a sweet person so it's hard for her. Even then, she somehow always succeeds at being sadistic, most of the time by trying to be sweet. This wasn't very funny to begin with, but going through twelve episodes of that is pretty tough, especially since it's so easily predictable.

As always, this main character is a self-hating japanese who is obsessed with the west and blond hair. Where could I have seen such a character before?

Then you've got Kaho, who plays the same old otaku character, as opposed to Maika who plays the "normie". However, I believe that a supposed otaku character whose only passion is to play video games on her phone or IPad might actually makes the otaku audience flee, even though the original goal was to pander to them.

Then you've got the same old deadpan loli "who looks like she's ten but she's actually 20!". It might have been interesting to give her the sadistic role to try something slightly more original, but they went for the safe imouto role instead.

Then you've got the same old pervert character who makes doujins and starts drawing really fast at the mere mention of something slightly lewd. Don't forget to show the Comiket at least once to make the otaku feel like he's part of a secret club.

But hey, at least, there wasn't an episode solely on Comiket, which is pretty rare. (Yuru Yuri, Maid dragon, Lucky star, etc)

Then you've got the trap. Can't be fully unoriginal unless there's a trap, you know? Don't forget to make him do smug faces and let him with the pervert to make sure you can mention as many fetishes as possible.

Another important thing is to include a serious character who overreacts everytime another character does something slightly odd. In our case, this character is Kouyou.

Dino might be the only character in the bunch who is slightly original, altough it doesn't change the fact that he's still bad and that his whole character is "Oh my god, Maika just touched me, my nose is bleeding, aaah, I'm in heaven !"

But the characters being unoriginal is not all. The "plot" is at least as unoriginal as them. I'm so happy I could witness this little group of friends setting up a barbecue near a river. Or going to the beach. I literally have never seen this before and I love it. I also never saw a group of cute girls working in a café, and I'm happy I had the chance to witness it.

All in all, Bland S is a fitting title. Everything is bland, nothing is new, nothing is original. The animation might be good, it might be colorful, but there is nothing behind it, there is no soul, there is no content.

Pandering to otakus is something a lot of studios have tried since KyoAni made Lucky Star. Unfortunately, Blend S is yet another failure.

I recommand Blend S to all the people who either :

-Want to increase the amount of animes they have watched
-Want to show to someone (or witness with their own eyes) how low the anime industry can get

To the others, I say don't watch it, there are many other anime out there who succeed at being SoL, or a comedy, or both.

The first half of Nichijou was extremely good, I often laughed, the episodes were original, it had something that I had never seen in any SoL anime. Up until Episode 12 I really thought I would give it 10/10.

The second half was the total opposite. It became unfunny, unoriginal, the jokes were for the most part forced. This is mainly due (but not only) to Hakase, who is an unoriginal and annoying character in an anime full of original and interesting characters. This would've been fine if she had been a side character, unfortunately they suddently decided to give us more of her even though ... everyone prefers Mai/Mio/Yuuko.

Hakase is an interloper that is to me the most at fault for the mediocrity of the second half.

There was also all of this romance crap near the end, with Mio/Misato and Sasahara. I really don't understand why they did that. Not needed at all, and very sudden.

It feels like a waste to give it 6/10, but I simply can't ignore half of the episodes, I wouldn't be objective otherwise.