Come for the cute anime girls, stay for the... wait, nope, that's pretty much all this series has to offer.
Harem is a genre I've had a really poor track record with. While I love romance anime, I find it nearly-impossible to suspend my disbelief when hordes of hot girls or guys fall in love with the typically vanilla, self-insert protagonist. For that reason, I held off for awhile on this series, up until the week of the season finale, when I binged the first 11 episodes in preparation for the last one. But after hearing some good things and seeing enough Miku pictures plastered across social media (and let's be real, the latter was the larger motivating factor), I decided to give it a shot. So has The Quintessential Quintuplets changed my mind on harem anime? If you couldn't already tell by the score and opening line of the review, that's an emphatic "no".
If you read the synopsis, I assure you, there will be no surprises in this story. Smart but poor guy gets tasked with the job of tutoring rich and attractive but academically-challenged quintuplets, who apparently live alone together, and then for some reason they start to fall for him one by one. The quintuplet thing is basically the only semi-interesting aspect, but if anything, it makes the whole thing even harder to take seriously.
The characters all fit nicely into their little archetypes. You got the tsundere, the genki girl, the big sister type, the quiet quirky one, and the "normal" one he meets first. The protagonist is decidedly more serious, and is often forced into the "straight man" role, as he tries to get these darn girls to study. Of course, we have the adoring imouto playing her role as well, doling out the "onii-chans" at an impressive clip. I would say it's worth noting her and the MC live with their single father, but it's really not, as that aspect wasn't explored much at all.
As far as the sound, a couple of the seiyuus preformed admirably, but the OST and OP/ED were all pretty sub-par. The OP, in particular, grew to be borderline-grating the more I listened to it. Having all 5 quintuplets perform might have sounded like a good idea at some point in the creative process, but the result was a really disjointed opening number. However, as always, Kana Hanazawa killed it as the big sister character, Ichika. Ayane Sakura, too, really did a great genki girl as Yotsuba. So it's not all bad in the sound department.
The animation will surely not blow anyone away, as it's probably the most underwhelming of all the Winter 2019 anime I've seen. I don't know if many fans care about what anything in the show looks like besides the 5 girls, though. And I will say, if nothing else, the creator knows how to draw cute anime girls. So cute, in fact, that in reality, each of them would likely have their own harem, as opposed to pining after MC-kun. Miku in particular, seems like she was created in a lab to be the perfect anime waifu. Like the female version of Hak Son from Yona of the Dawn. (Now THOSE would be some good-looking hypothetical offspring)
So anyway, to wrap it up.
Cute anime girlsl: check
Everything else: wait, were you expecting anything else?