Amagami SS is a series that tries to play romance in a different way using an omnibus format. Unfortunately it fails to deliver engaging, interesting, or otherwise fun stories for the viewers.
Despite the low rating I'm giving this series, I wouldn't say I hate it - I just find it incredibly boring.
STORY:
This is a romance anime in an omnibus format. If you are not familiar with that term, it means that there are many girls and many arcs, and each girl gets her own arc. You can think of each arc as a parallel universe because they have their own endings and there's no continuity between each arc.
Anyway, Because of this, it's hard to rate the story as a whole, but we can talk about the arcs on average. Each arc is 4 episodes long in the first season, and the second season has continuations to each arc that are 2 episodes long. Unfortunately none of the arcs are really that interesting. Everything always goes well. They don't really take the time to develop any kind of drama, and if they do, it gets resolved really quickly, failing to justify the length of each arc. The romance is poorly done in each arc - it just isn't interesting. In fact, there's situations when it can actually be creepy and overdone. And one thing that is particularly jarring is that the arcs take place in the same timeframe every time, the main character has the same backstory in all of them, and they always end in the same event, with it just playing differently. You will probably find yourself rolling your eyes each time they repeat what happened to the main character at the beginning of each arc.
The humor falls on its face most of the time. It doesn't come off as natural, and it just follows the typical troupes you would find in a romance comedy anime. There are some exceptions to this, but in general, the humor is not well done.
ART:
The one thing that can be highlighted from this show is the art. While this part of the review can only be objective, I really enjoyed the character design. The girls just look really cute, and the backdrops are detailed. They didn't slack off in this area.
SOUND:
The sound is nothing special. If you have played VNs, you will notice that it has that same "type" of music. In the first season, each ending was sung by the main girl of the arc. Sometimes they were OK, sometimes they were average. They were never BAD, but I wouldn't say music was this anime's biggest department.
CHARACTER:
So the character design is nice, but I have mixed feelings regarding their personalities and interactions. I think most of the characters, other than the MC, can actually be pretty likable on their own, but everything falls to the ground when they start interacting with each other, or at least when they interact with the MC. I wish we could see each character do their own thing a bit more often without having to involve the MC so we can get a better idea of what they are like. Many characters have good backgrounds, interesting personalities, and hobbies. But we can never see that because the series doesn't take the time to develop each character. When one of the girls show up, the MC is almost guarantee to be with them, and if they don't they aren't doing or talking about anything important.
ENJOYMENT:
Ultimately, how I rate an anime is mostly decided by how much I enjoyed it. It can have the nicest art in the world or the most bombastic music ever, but if it wasn't enjoyable, it's rating will go down.
And Amagami SS fails to deliver any kind of enjoyment. With the comedy failing to deliver, the romance being so poorly done, and the character development being boring and mostly non existent, I found myself checking how much left of each episode was left when I was watching it. This is never a good sign.
OVERALL:
I sincerely find it hard to justify a score bigger than 2. The biggest problem with this anime is how the arcs develop and they always end up being boring. If you want to watch a romcom, rest assured the market is full of them, and only watch this when you have exhausted all your options.
