As the title implies, our main heroes are named Haruta and Chika, who are both members of their schools brass band club which at the beginning of the show only has five members. The duo tries their best to find new talented musicians to join the band and get involved in random mysteries along the way to achieving this goal.
Unfortunetly, this anime gets off to a bad and slow start. The mysteries are not very interesting and Haruta is nothing but an anooying smartass solving everything by himself while Chika just tags along. This changes for the better from episode 6 onwards when they start to work more as a team finally. However, only a few mystery cases were really interesting and executed good. So storywise, this anime is not the highlight of the season, that´s for sure!
Another weakness of HaruChika are the supporting characters. Not a single character apart from the name-giving duo leaves a lasting impression or adds something great to the anime.
A saving grace besides the general improvement in the second half is the Artwork which is beautiful as always when P.A. goes to work. You might have to get used to Chikas´ weird eyes though o.O
It´s a shame music plays such a minor part in this show as the Opening song is in my opinion the best OP of the season and the performance the club gives at the end is amazing.
All in all, this is not the greatest anime ever, but i has some good points to avoid it being a complete waste of time. It is still a little disappointing, especially if you go into this with high hopes of a Hyouka/Hibike! mashup kind of thing which could´ve easily happened given the genre tags.
I ended up giving it a very gracious 6 as i am a huge P.A. fan and couldn´t bring myself to rate it lower. I have to admit a 5 would also be a justified rating for HaruChika!
