I'd place Ben-to somewhere between being a typical shounen, and a typical harem show.
The anime definitely tries to get far on a far-out concept and initial reaction of "ha-ha, it's about fighting about half-priced bento isn't that crazy?", but doesn't ultimately have enough style or sustenance to ride out 12 episodes. It relies pretty heavily on the hype of it's gimmick (and it is definitely one hell of a gimmick) then it does trying to flesh out it's characters or plot. The novelty in concept wears thin pretty quickly when there is no tension in the character interactions, or plot.
The characters are all typical shounen or harem fare. Though past being an average high-school self-insert type, the MC is as dense as some others in the harem genre. He does remain the typical everyman dragged into a strange new world by several cute girls, and adapts quickly and with minor stumbles. Remains to be the butt of jokes by every girl in the series at all times. The girls are all mean to him at virtually all times outside of the fights because. Just because, there's no end to that sentence. They're just supposed to be because he's the lone male MC that is human trash.
The girls are pretty much all typical run of the mill copy-paste character types one would encounter in a show like this. There's the stoic one, who is smart (though dense when it comes to social interactions), cool, and a bit of a badass. There's a glasses-chan best friend type who is obsessed with bl, and her gimmick is making everything about bl. Cousin from MCs youth who is very invested with putting her boobs on the MC at all times. The twins, who embody every trope about twins in one fell swoop, twincest, one is dumb, the other smart, one is a crybaby, one is serious, etc. And then the younger, almost moe, plucky cheerful unlucky one.
Outside of the fight scenes, there is nothing especially worth talking about. The show desperately tries to get us to like the characters, but does nothing new with their tropes, and keeps interactions between them fairly standard for the harem genre. It doesn't break any boundaries or toe the line outside of the formula.
The animation and character designs are pretty standard, nothing new or innovative, nothing especially strange. The show isn't ugly by any means. All the characters are nice, if not a little uninspired. The fight scenes are nice and well-choreographed, but with such uninvesting characters, it definitely lacks tension.
The music is fine, if uninspired. The seiyuus all seem to put in some good work. I'm always a fan of Emiri Katou and Yui Horie, so it's always nice to see them show up in things.
Mar 31, 2017
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