However, what the story is actually about is the development of Kaban's character as she makes friends in an unknown world. Trying to help Friends and being helped, the meek girl slowly discovers her qualities and starts to believe in herself. This aspect of the story, of self discovery and improvement, is very satisfying to watch. This isn't, however, the only likable aspect of Kemono friends.
I've seen reviewers say that you can only grasp if this is a show for you after watching the second episode. This is, however, untrue. The first episode is a good representation of what you will see happening most of the time on this show. This also includes quality drops in animation, which are unfortunately present within the first minutes of the first episode.
Kemono friends is a story about friendship. It portraits things such as affection; sympathy; empathy; honesty; altruism; mutual understanding and compassion. While real friendship is a very long and complex process, this show does well on establishing convincing friendships between its characters (given how short is is, even if full length), which is pleasant to watch.
Most characters, however, get very little screen time, and one may or mat not care for them enough to keep watching and keep discovering new characters.
Not only the setting is interesting, but is presented in an interesting way. Kemono friends is an excellent example of "show, don't tell". Even if this is a show targeted towards children, there are aspects about the story that you need to think and discuss quite a bit to understand. Doing this can be very interesting. However, it's not necessary to enjoy the main aspects of the story.
The character designs are inventive and pretty. Even if the animation is lackluster, and sometimes outright bad, you only need to see the amount of fan art made for this show to understand how much the character designs are highly acclaimed. The voice actresses manage to pay homage to these designs.
The worst aspects of Kemono Friends are the quality drops in animation and repetitive, unremarkable soundtrack.
The amount of enjoyment that I got out of Kemono Friends is outstanding. Throughout the final episode, many scenes made me very emotional. This was only made possible through the convincing friendships that were established throughout the show (as I mentioned earlier) and what these characters meant for me. Anime has not made me this emotional in a long time. For this reason. I rate Kemono Friends 10/10. It doesn't need to be perfect to be a masterpiece.
