Now, Acchi Kocchi. If you are looking for an anime that has zero cliché, this anime will feel right at home in the best possible way. Its comedy is quick, yet humorous. Its love story is portrayed hilariously well and the overall enjoyment you have in this anime will be at an all-time high. For its short run, I feel like they knew they had a short amount of time to work with and aimed to fill every episode with nothing but solid comedy.
It's a skit anime, something that normally only gives you a few laughs from time to time. However, this one gives you a laugh in nearly EVERY scene you watch of it. Never will you feel like this anime is boring you because it honestly would have trouble boring anyone, even somebody that hates the medium. From start to finish, its flow is always the same and the only real development is between the two main characters that the anime heavily advertises.
However, it does not feel like a harem at all. Yes, there is a majority of girls, but there are two guys and the amount of girls is only one more than the amount of guys; counting every character from not only main, but recurring ones as well, there are a total of five females and three guys, so it still balances out rather well.
Though, I am only counting students here, cause you actually rarely see the adults where I can only put them in the minor category; and for an anime of twelve episodes, that means they basically do not show up at all. And yes, sadly, if you never watched a harem, some do pair up the high school student with adults at times. If you are into that stuff, it is not a problem of course. Just some free hentai! Ha, just kidding, nothing usually happens anyway when that scenario actually IS in play cause the plot is usually the male pervert, or even innocent, usually being scolded by them anyway.
In an actual harem, all of the girls are usually main characters, so that is why I can not call this a harem in the slightest at all, in that only three of the girls are main characters and all they do is entertain the audience, rather than drooling over the main boy.
In defense, though, the main boy DOES deliver his romantic lines, alongside doing other noble things, well enough to give two of the main girls nosebleeds a lot; probably the only real cliché that this anime has, though two of the girls are not madly in love with him anyway. And it happens quite often, too.
It's always funny whenever it does happen, though, so you will probably never grow bored of it. Outside that, the main boy is basically portrayed as Mr. Perfect and has a lot of unique talents, skills and has a rational sense of thinking. So, there is NO way you could ever call this a harem even if you tried your hardest. He is just a generally good character and it is very rare to actually see a comedy where they not only threw in male leads, but actually made them saints. It reminds us that not all males are perverted.
Now, his friend on the other hand...at the very most, is still just hilarious and funny. So, nope, he is not a pervert, either. His delivery of comedy is pretty good as well and he does become the butt of some jokes in a few episodes, which is handled very well. He also thinks quite rationally at times, but not as much as the other one.
As for the females, you have one that is down to earth so that the anime has some normal balance to it, complete with generic brunette hairstyle that actually IS a natural hair color. Okay, actually, two more of the females do have natural hair colors, too. Her purpose is to just have a normal opinion on the absurdity that the anime is and it is quite funny as the end result. She has the most contrast from everyone, but only in that she is the most normal of all of them. She actually is one of the main characters, so you will see her every episode.
The other two could honestly be paired up with the two males due to lacking any noticeable differences from them. Two of them think rationally and have special talents that the others don't, well the other two aim to entertain the audience in the most original fashion possible. They make the characters so obviously similar that you would not pair anyone else up with them; and yet, they also are opposites in a few ways as well that gives you all the more reason to ship them. And, I do not want to describe their characters because they are too good where I'd rather you watch them in action yourself.
My only negativities of this anime strive from the romance finale being a bit disappointing, especially when you watch the episode before it that hinted at something much more serious about to go down with the two characters. Though, in spite of this, the finale episode was the most serious of the entire anime and does actually turn it into a pretty casual Slice of Life with balanced comedy and drama as it progresses. However, I am just going to call what happened at the end a "kiss" since I do not know what else to call it. It was still heartwarming and sweet, though.
Also, well its English name makes sense ("Place to Place") as it implies that the comedy is always on the go, and I believe that is the translation of the anime name in general, I just like calling it Acchi Kocchi.
Oh, and unfortunately it does have just ONE cliché, but it still does it in an original fashion. As you know, a MAJORITY of comedy anime usually use cats as a plot device for the comedy, and Acchi Kocchi follows this standard yet again with a few characters.
Firstly, the main female lead. Instead of her having them on her head all the time, they only come out whenever she is expressing more emotion than usual; which is funny since it doesn't leave them on her the whole time like most cat cliché anime comedies do to be funny, or whenever the girl reacts just a little.
The other most notable female lead also usually ends her sentences with the Japanese terms for cat noises. In most cases, the way she times it and how she pronounces it are actually quite hilarious. So, again, reinventing anime cliché done right once more.
Lastly, one recurring character has her hair in the obvious shape of sprouting cat ears, which are on her head all of the time. However, unlike the main female lead, they do not look like obvious cat ears (yes, I am implying that the main female lead's do and actually move as such as well) and, rather, just looks like her hair was shaped like them. They never move or anything, and she never makes cat noises, so it is more of a visual sight that you would only notice if you are familiar with anime. They are about half the size of how big they normally look as well.
But, yeah, I barely put any depth in this review because I did want to avoid spoiling anything, even the NAMES. That being said, a lot of my reviews have been lacking depth lately, so I will try to fix that when I review something that has the depth for me to analyze it with a more insightful approach, cause it has been a while since I had one that had a ton of effort into it due to my interest being mostly into comedies.
Anyway, Acchi Kocchi does comedy again like most in its genre do, but I give it such a high rating because its delivery of comedy is very original; and I do not want to go on about that to avoid spoiling the experience for you, even though I already did a bit earlier.
It is something where, if you decide to watch it, you will not be upset that you did at all. At the very least, you would still be above average on your opinion about this anime, cause neutral or anything below just means you do not enjoy anime or comedies for that matter. It would take a very hateful person to truly dislike this one, let alone feel neutral about it.
