The first half of this anime is all about character development. It's light hearted, goofy and... painfully boring. If you're not a fan of the characters within the first few episodes, my advice is to prevent yourself from watching any further. In order to get to any sense of urgency, danger or even interest, you'll have to wade through four hours of dialogue-rich and cicada buzzing background noise. If this was any other show, I would have dropped it much sooner but out of respect to its status and regard, I had to watch it all the way through.
Then came the second half. For me, it never seemed to click. There was a brief moment where I thought, "Oh yeah, this is about to get good. This will be a tale of two halves." It stays good for about two episodes and then it wears itself out. It's at that point I realized that I was in too deep to let go but too far removed to ever give a damn. By the time the show had a heartbeat, it was too late. My interest flatlined.
Amongst a cast featuring an overweight pervert, a cafe maid, Mr. Clean's third cousin, a scientist who isn't quite as confident as he seems, a secret ninja warrior with a bad haircut and a few others; the true standout is... Mary Jane from Spider-Man.
Kurisu carries the show the same way Brian in Family Guy provides a voice of reason needed to balance out the personalities in Quahog.
As a man who tried this flavor of tea for 24 episodes, I cannot recommend this unless you're into that flavor of green, jelly-banana tea :P
