I want to start positively before I become more critical and the positives that stand out most to me are the sound and the art, so kudos to the studio for that. The characters are well drawn and some of the landscaping, particularly the sunset are very easy on the eye and aesthetically pleasing. The themes were pretty catchy as well - in the quirky way that they were made. While the female characters did not sound anything like the seniors that they were supposed to be, I felt the actors didn't do anything wrong (barring Fuuko) and my qualm is more with the production and directing. I thought Sunohara's and Okazaki's VAs were both very good as they captured both character's personalities superbly.
One of the main problems I have with this anime is how one-dimensional everything is. It spends so much time on trying to create sympathy for its cutesy female characters that it forgets the one thing that all media should be doing: entertaining us. The story (well, if you could call it that) focuses on a young 'delinquent' - although that's probably the one adjective I wouldn't use to describe him - whose boring life drastically changes after he meets a cliché cutesy, quiet, innocent girl looking to make friends. This baffled me as if he was supposed to be a 'delinquent' wouldn't he try bullying or annoying Nagisa instead of becoming her best friend and devoting all his time to her? The anime was also very slowly paced and at times I was in two minds about dropping this anime. However there were some interesting twists and turns (E.G Fuuko) however outlandish and strange they were.
The characters were also a major weak-point of this anime. The best characters always have multiple dimensions to their characters whilst also have a relation to the audience, I felt like that was completely non-existant to this anime. Fuuko, while generating a few "Awws" from me, actually really annoyed me as she was constantly referring to herself in the 3rd person in an incredibly unrealistic high-pitched screech as well as having an unhealthy obsession with starfish, Kyou was your typical tsundere type and Nagisa was the 18 year old who acted like she was 5. Even so, all this variance in character was pretty much lost once this anime started to take shape as a harem and the "Mr. Perfect but Average Joe" Okazaki made all manner of females tumble head-over-heels for him, including both sisters Ryou and Kyou; which disturbed me a great deal.
Despite this, the anime did give me some satisfaction as for a change it was a harem which actually had a resolution with the male taking a female for his own unlike so many others where we never get an answer; much to the dismay of my hair which often gets pulled out in stress. I also particularly enjoyed Sunohara's character and his comedy relief did genuinely make me laugh as he played the failing bully.
In reality though this anime is nothing special and for me it falls into the doldrums of mediocrity. I wouldn't advise you to watch or not to watch this anime as it has such a wide spectrum of opinions that I don't think it would be fair, so watch it at your own peril as you may become frustrated and/or bored. I'm not sure whether i'm going to watch the Afterstory, i've heard it is alot better, but after this I don't really have any motivation to watch it. It's a solid, average 5/10, nothing more, nothing less.
