In which we get to shows like Slow Start. Shows that first of all don't present almost anything in terms of originality and are the epidomy of the word generic. And second of all don't have remarkable overall qualities or much memorabily in themselves. Shows like these get ignored, which is understandable from a certain POV, but a shame from the other. Because it happens sometimes that a show this generic and unoriginal surpasses the others of the same genre in it's most important aspects. Which in terms of moe comedies are funny moments and cute girls.
And Slow Start does exactly that.
To completely understand what I meant with that opening rant, we need to clarify what can be considered generic in the world of CGDCT shows. The list would propably look like this: A shy girl getting into new environment, meeting new people; almost always the same character cast of a loud girl, smart girl and the loli; different chest sizes; pool/beach episodes; meta jokes; yuri feeling. Slow Start checks every single one of them, so keep in mind that if you really care about originality, it surely isn't an anime for you. However, while I personaly didn't find to be a problem, the fact that there is almost no originality whatsoever has to impact the rating one way or another.
Anyway, for what makes Slow Start so good is that while it includes all the clichés and things we've already seen, it does an excelent job at balancing everything out. There is a yuri episode there, beach episode there and it never felt like I was watching the same thing again. Which was the case with the shows like New Game or Blend S, which focused so much on it's main theme from the start that the second half was either not as good, in the case of New Game!, or they suddenly started doing things way more randomly, in the case of Blend S. Slow Start doesn't have that problem. It's a sheer randomness from the very start and I sincerely feel like that's a good thing.
While I already said that the whole character cast consist of very overused characters, the show does a a really good job at working with them nonetheless. It's always able to put them into funny encounters and the dialogue writing was also decent. That is a reason why you could see characters like Tamate or Eiko (the loud girl and the seductive girl), which tend to be less impactful most of the times, really thrive under the heavy-dialogue conditions. On the other hand Kamuri (the loli) was not able to make as much of an impact as it does elsewhere, which however I didn't mind as much as I'm not a person who would go crazy for this type of character. Strangely, I haven't even mentioned the MC yet, so I propably should. It's Hana, and like always she is the shy and confidence lacking individual. Kinda like with Kamuri I thought she wasn't as flashy here as her similiar instances are, but like I said, I don't mind. If anything, I welcome the change of making the less popular personalities the most entertaining to watch.
The comedy is, of course, the most important part of all moe shows. And once again, Slow Start was able to deliver very well. The gags were not only damn funny, but also suprisingly original at certain times and the comedy thrived the most when the main characters had to interact with other people. That seriously resulted in many laughs on my side. Especially the way Eiko was able to 'seduce' most of the characters she met was a thing a beauty and really made me like Eiko as a whole. Some of the characters introduced only for certain episodes really helped too and made the whole show more refreshing.
The moe factor, how I like to call it, was also of a very high quality. There were a lot of times I smiled at how cute the show managed to be. The whole artstyle, which I consider to be one of the better I've seen, surely helped with that a lot too. I love how it managed to make even the adults look really good yet still more mature than the younger ones. Overall, the show just did a really good job at staying nice to look at.
The overall animation quality is something a bit more different however. Oh, don't get me wrong, I don't think that the animation was bad or something, but surely the fact that the arstyle is nice doesn't mean I'll consider it very good as a whole, because the animation itself was very average. The sound was actually very good for the most part. The OST wasn't really there, but voice-acting was great and the opening for whatever reason became one of my favourites in a long while.
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To be completely honest with you, under normal circumstances, Slow Start would propably get a lower score from me than this. But seeing all the hate the show gets just because it's 'generic' even though in reality it's better and way more funnier than most of moe comedies out there boosted my impression from it. Generic? Sure. But it's fun, I like it and I would go as far as call it one of the best balanced CGDCT shows out there.
