Story:
What exactly IS the story of Kuragehime? Is it about the imminent closure of the apartment complex the main character lives in? Or is it about the love triangle between her and the two brothers? Or is it about Tsukimi coming out of her shell? Hard to say, maybe it’s about all these things, maybe about none of them. The direction isn’t clear at all, but that is not a fatal issue thankfully. The comedic scenes work regardless of the context and the romantic aspects are at least interesting. On the downside, that’s pretty much it. If we’re talking about a story having flesh on its bones (and I have no idea if that is even a real allegory or whatever), this anime is slenderly built. Certain things, like the older brother romance, suddenly get aborted while others, like the potential sale of the building, lead absolutely nowhere. I get the feeling, that Kuragehime would have been better off being an episodic show than trying to tell a continuous story.
5/10
Art:
Kuragehime doesn’t have much to show off in terms of special effects, obviously, so the focus is automatically on the character designs and the overall color scheme. For a story grounded in reality, the anime is quite colorful and features a bunch of creative and distinct characters. I liked what they did with Tsukimi a lot, she is not exactly ugly in her “usual” form, more very plain and unkempt. Once she does dress up, she actually looks pretty good. But not too good, that would have been unbelievable. Featuring a pretty boy transvestite also gave the creators the possibility to play around with outfits, which I will not comment on further as I have no sense of fashion whatsoever, but I will say that they were creative with that. This show feels a bit older than it really is, which may or may not be intentional, but it seems a little odd to me. To break all this down into a single sentence, Kuragehime looks fine, nothing special but for what it is it’s absolutely okay.
7/10
Sound:
The opening song is kinda cacophonic, but it’s so charming that this doesn’t matter and I ended up enjoying and rarely skipping it. Now that I think about it, that was probably intentional. The ending song was also quite likeable, though less morable. All the voices were pretty good and fitting, especially Mitsuki Saiga as the androgynous Kuranosuke. The side characters ended up annoying me after a while, including their voices, but that doesn’t have anything to do with how well they were done. As far as score goes, I didn’t notce anything exceptional.
8/10
Characters:
I already mentioned the side characters, so let’s start with them first. Most of them are one joke ponies, which isn’t bad in itself, but if you expose them too much they really get on your nerves and some of them have this problem going on. Jiji for example is rather harmless, she does have no other character trait besides being into old men, but she only speaks up very rarely. Mayaya however talks a lot, all the time. And it is never funny or doing anything to advance the plot or whatever. In general, I had the feeling the girls were more concerned with keeping up their nerdiness than facing the problems at hand. The only one having anything reminiscent of depth was Chieko. Tsukimi and Kuranosuke on the other hand were much more interesting and likeable. At least they actually did something. They were also quite believable in action and words, having some awkward moments (like we all do), but being somewhat fun to be around, though in very different ways. The brother was a nice guy, but his character development just kinda stopped when the relationship focus went from Tsukimi to that other slut. In total, the main cast is fine, but it lacks the strength to carry the show with a mediocre at best sidecast constantly interfering.
6/10
Entertainment:
I didn’t have a bad time watching Kuragehime, not at all. But in the end I have to ask myself weather I was really entertained or if I simply wasted a couple of hours with nothing getting stuck. I’m still not entirely sure about the answer to that question. It doesn’t hurt to watch this show, it does have a different approach to female characters, being completely devoid of sexualization or fanservice and having “ugly” heroines as well as a transvestite that is not played for laughs or hardcore molesting gay, so if nothing else, it’s a breath of fresh air if you want to escape the titty monsters of most anime. There isn’t much else I can say to recommend it though, except maybe that if you have nothing better to do, you might as well just watch this. A nice show with little to no lasting impact.
6/10
Overall:
6.4/10
