In the end, this is a story about a group of friends. A show like this relies heavily on the ability of the audience to connect with at least one of these characters, and thus benefits from having multiple characters to connect to. I happened to like the three females in the show (Nagase, Inaba, and Yui), and these characters are well developed almost immediately in the show. Thankfully, this development is not of the "here's my problem, now let's let the main character fix it in five minutes" variety. You learn more about the female characters as they learn more about themselves, and they grow throughout the show.
In particular, I would applaud the writing for creatively incorporating the surreal elements of the show into the development of the female characters. The show stands out in my mind for that feat alone, as many times the shtick of a plot ends up not having anything to do with how the characters develop. These characters have believable breakdowns and come back together in a way which makes sense.
I was careful to only talk about the female characters here: that's because the two male leads are particularly unmemorable. Taichi, the arguable main protagonist, seems to simply be a conduit for the female characters' love interest through most of the show by having a "helper" personality. It's not a harem show, but at points it seems unnervingly like it. Taichi is in a long list of male protagonists like this, but that doesn't excuse this show from having this kind of character.
In general, the show's plot and characters was often gutsy. The show would sometimes take unexpected and unnatural turns in a completely different direction than the expectation. These moments were pretty well sold as well, and weren't just one-offs. This is appreciated in a genre traversed by so many other anime. This doesn't mean that the plot was perfect (far from it), and sometimes the writing suffered from both lazy writing and the fact that it is a light novel series being adapted to TV.
The character designs were, in general, fairly standard fare. However, I did feel as though this show's detail work on that end were well realized. The character animations were pretty crisp for the time that the show was made, so that was also positive. The backgrounds were slightly jarring though; often they really contrasted to the characters' crisp designs. I often did not really feel like the characters were living in the world at large. In general this is just nitpicking; this type of thing, again, is fairly standard in a genre focused on characters and not setting.
Overall, this show was fun to watch: Its comedy was hilarious and fairly lewd, and its melodrama was often permeated by real issues with real consequences. It does its best to run the middle line between these two modes, and did a good job without wowing me. If you're looking for a quick laugh or a good cry, this show will do just that.
