Story wise, Yuki-Chan doesn't really manage to pick-up to around midseason. We start off with our protagonist Yuki Nagato, a shy video game playing introvert who shares none of the original Nagato's traits or mannerisms. She's in the literature club, and thanks to the recent additions of Kyon and Ryoko Asakura, the club is finally safe from being shut down. Now she's free to never read a book in the club room ever again. Woot. Anyways, the show's story leads along an extremely trodden path. Its all your standard fare slice of life show, with just enough blushing and stammering to slap a romance tag on as well. The only reason I found it enjoyable was only due to its virtue as a Haruhi spin-off. I love Haruhi and its characters, and seeing them interact in this way was pretty much only enjoyable on a fan-service level. So pretty much, unless you're a Haruhi fan, you're like not to enjoy this. The best part of the story is still only enjoyable if you're familiar and fond with the OG show. So in short, story is cliche but its fun if you wanna see Haruhi and Kyon have a basic ass romantic moment together and then see it go nowhere.
Every single character in this show is the OG show's basic vanilla ass counterpart. Kyon isn't nearly as snarky or funny as he usually is. Itsuki is not mysterious and two-faced, he's just overly kind and rigid. Haruhi is a little less of a bitch, but she's still manic, pushy, and overly energetic (still bae). Mikuru is exactly the same, but she can't say "That's classified" anymore so that kinda sucks. Yuki is no longer quiet because she just doesn't talk much, she's quiet because she's the shy, mousy girl now. We already have one of those already (the m in mousy is for Mikuru), but hey, party on guys. Their interactions are fun to watch, if only for the reason I stated above. So yeah solid enough, if cliche as heck.
Art/Sound wise the show is different from the original in some major ways. Due to the production house swap, artistically Nagato Yuki-Chan differs greatly from its elder show. Its a much more cutesy style, in a way, emphasizing less the "cute" aspects of the situation and characters for a more calm and soft feeling. The show looks and feels like a warm blanket. I like it. Animation is low budget, unfortunately, being just good enough to be satisfactory.
The voice actors tapped for Yuki-Chan are, praise be, the original cast in both Japanese and English. This is one show I (emphasis on I) love dubbed. Crispin Freeman, Michelle Ruff, Wendee Lee, Johnny Yong Bosch, the gangs all here kids. Japanese dub is good too, I just use english for nostalgia reasons. So still dope. Finally, the soundtrack unfortunately pales in comparison to the OG show, and fails in its own right. It just lacks any memorable tracks. The OP and ED are nothing of note either. Really here its just poor to average.
All around, Nagato Yuki-Chan kind of sucks. Its not bad, but standing as its own show rather than a fanservice-y spin-off of Haruhi causes everything to fall apart. So end judgement; Nagato Yuki-Chan is a somewhat below average slice of life romance offering that only offers nostalgia value. It's really just-
6/10 Fair
