Animation:
Hoshizora is a fair looking series with minimal CGI elements and some pretty good looking water effects. It uses a pleasing color palette ranging from a slightly under-saturated base appearance to heavily-oversaturated scenes (such as sunsets). The backgrounds are also quite good; in fact they are so detailed at times that the less-detailed characters look comical when superimposed in front of the background. While lacking in details occasionally, the character styling is fairly good. All important characters are easily distinguishable, including siblings with impossibly different hair colors. My only major critique is Ui; the real world is not so forgiving to those who gorge on monster parfaits and snacks on a daily basis. The series could have also done with a better QA as there were instances of mysteriously, instantaneous costume changes.
This is a relatively calm series where the highlight in terms of action is a school race. There's no hint of magic (other than Ui's metabolism) in this series as well. What you will find, instead, is a fairly generous portion of ecchi panty shots and naked scenes full of god rays and mystic mist. The series' overall approach is a bit more conservative than 30-sai in terms of sexual references and the characters are (thankfully) a bit more mature in feel than those in R-15.
Sound:
Each episode starts with a progressive but melodically challenged OP. It starts as a calm lullaby but then evolves into a frantic-paced jpop song. I can't put my finger on it but I didn't particularly like the singer's voice. The main ED is a fast and playful work that sounds as if it served as the baseline inspiration for Nichijou's OPs. It heavily relies on synthesized sounds, which makes it blend with the BGM quite well. The 10th episode is special in that Madoka gets her own fitting ED, you can probably guess why. The BGM is unusually limited in variation so be prepared to hear the same playful synthetic songs over and over.
At the time of its release, the voice cast for this show isn't what I'd consider an all star team. While the VAs gave an adequate performance, I think the script severely limited them at times. Consider the following example from the first episode:
Kazuma (with an incredulous tone): "Hey... you're a girl?"
Ui: "Yes, I'm a girl."
I still can't quite grasp what the scriptwriter was thinking at some points. Script aside, I was also a bit annoyed at how girlish Ayumu sounded. Overall, don't expect this to match the level of drama in other shows such as Ano Hana.
Story:
Kazuma and his weak brother, Ayumu, move in with a family friend in a quiet, rural town, where the residents gloat about their convenience store that closes at 8PM. Soon, Kazuma starts bumping into girls (literally) left and right and before you know it a harem has developed.
The story is told in a slice-of-life, episodic manner with only minimal connectivity. It's a bit strange in that episodes sometimes end abruptly, not at cliffhangers but just as if the director decided to chop up one long movie into chunks. The overall pacing is a bit slow and, with the random episode transition points, the series doesn't really push you forwards.There are a handful of episodes where the ending isn't so arbitrary, specifically episodes that focus on a particular harem candidate. The story doesn't really have any rising action until the last two episodes, which builds to a predictable but satisfying climax and conclusion.
Overall, the plot is extremely predictable and closely follows established harem patterns. The majority of the involvement comes as a big lump towards the end of the show so pace accordingly. Compared to other shows in its season, the story is a bit boring and overly conservative. Luckily the characters bring a bit of life to the series.
Character:
Kazuma is your typical harem lead, a nice dude who is oblivious to girls' feelings and who blushes at anything ecchi. He somehow miraculously adapts to the slow pacing of rural life after having living the majority of his life in "the big city" and is shortly somehow surrounded by all the school's idols. The series makes use of a lot of established character patterns (useless comic-relief guy friend, a bunch of tsunderes to spice up the mix, etc.) but successfully presents them in a mostly plausible manner. Though, honestly, the bulk of the juicy, drama-filled interactions occur very late towards the end of the show. This is where you'll find some decent character development and some hard choices. If not for this last glimmer of inspired presentation (similar in feel to the better parts of Mashiro-iro Symphony), I would have called this series a flop as well.
Value:
Overall, the series had some decent comedic scenes as well as some solid development late in the season. If you can deal with some minor inconsistencies and some shamelessly haphazard episode transitions, this series is a fair watch. It treads on very safe grounds using existing cliches and harem patterns but is brave enough to at least forces a conclusion that may disappoint some fans. This is by no means an outstanding harem, but seeing how bad some of the other 2012 harems have been, it seems directors ought to be looking back in time for some much needed inspiration.
