But somehow, it works.
I think it's the characters that really do it here. You have a pretty stock standard "genki girl" in Odagiri Futaba, but she's so over-the-top with her love for food that her one-note role becomes incredibly endearing. Besides her, the rest of the main cast is pretty great, though; no stereotypes and boring moe roles, but exciting and memorable characters. Youko-sama, the former rich girl, is a bit of an airhead with no special skills but a good attitude and childish charms that make you want to pat her on the head in sympathy. And Hayama Teru is one of the most multi-faceted characters in a slice-of-life show I've ever seen; she's sweet and kind while also being a huge jerk and incredibly self-centered, and her love for animals that overpowers everything else adds a completely new layer. Any scene focusing on Hayama is better than anything else in the show.
The side-characters are mostly bland or one-note, except for Youko-sama's former servants Yamaji, who is a MALE for starters (extremely rare in this genre), as well as a constant worker devoted solely to helping his former mistress's life, and Sonobe, a former maid who looks fourteen but is actually in her thirties, and is sardonically self-aware about everything around her. They are both very creepy, and it's hilarious.
These five characters bring the otherwise-boring show to life and make it really interesting.
The first three or four and the last two episodes all hit it out of the park, while the middle section wanes a little bit with the generic beach and holiday episodes that have too many side-characters and not enough of the main trio just hanging out. The show works when it powers through with its cast instead of relying on the same old gags a dozen other shows have tried, and while it doesn't always take advantage of that, it's consistently good and sometimes even very good.
One strange aspect of the show, probably due to its manga's 2003 start date: there is almost no yuri subtext, no undertones, no overtones in the entire show. There's one minor character who may or may not harbor a lesbian crush on Youko-sama, but other than that it's completely devoid of yuri bait. Being fed up with animes using unfulfilled lesbian tension between characters as a selling point, this was a nice surprise for me... though I probably would have been fine if they ramped up the currently-nonexistent romantic tension between Hayama and her rival character Nishiyama.
It's a pretty good investment of your time if you like spending time with really funny characters. It's nothing new, but Sansha Sanyou does a standard set-up an above-par service.
