From summaries and reviews, one might be thinking Tanaka-kun defies mainstream narrative clichés, and that the overall product tends towards a certain general calm feeling.
The truth is: Tanaka-kun had the potential to be that. It had the potential to tell an entertaining, relaxing, non-stereotypical story, while having an upbeat general tone and characters.
Then it became... something else. There were a lot of harem hints, and a lot of moe that didn't really add anything of value to the story, and also a lot (A LOT) of unnecessary emphasis on the romantic feelings from one of the characters towards Tanaka.
Does this suck in general? Not really. If you're watching something from a romantic, moe, or harem genre, then you're expecting this. If you're not, and you've come here looking for some nice gen slice of life, or have been bought over by the first episodes, then you'll feel like me, which can be summed up as: :/
I feel like Tanaka-kun dropped the ball. It could've been something incredibly engaging and somewhat original, but instead it chose to be... basically the same as the 1000 harem, school life anime that came before it.
All that said, there ARE some episodes that are funny and entertaining, and some of the characters are GOLDEN (Miyano, Ecchan and Ohta). The art style isn't anything groundbreaking or particularly remarkable, but it accompanies the general atmosphere and feel of the story, and the coloring is really, really nice. The animation is okay most of the time. Just that. Okay. It gets below average, but never above. The sound is one of its best points, to me, since there are moments where really interesting things happen, diegetically. The opening song is really fitting.
