With little description, you could probably just call it the story of a girl in a kinda crappy situation that learns to make the best of it and grow up a little in doing so. However, there's a lot in play throughout the series that is hard to describe without spoiling the show and much of what made this a work of art. To spoil it would spoil it, but not saying why it's so well put together...well, I just have to hope people are willing and able to find out.
Story: 9/10
The primary story as we are given is basically a teenage girl thrust into a cold relationship with her grandmother, living/forced to work at the grandmother's Inn, while trying to learn to cope with her duties and all other relationships. Underlying stories run rampant throughout the show, however, and in the end tie a lot of the primary story together.
A note here would be that the story is pretty slow paced, and if that's not your thing this show is not likely to be your thing. It progresses very naturally by a realistic timeline, and where several episodes can be only days of length in their world you aren't going to see a ton of development in an instant.
That same realism factors, to me, quite heavily into the information you get about everyone in the delivery of the story. By the end you have a pretty solid idea of where everyone is from, how they get there, and why they do what they do, but it's not a complete picture of everything. The entirety of the show takes place in less than 1 year, you can only expect people to reveal so much about themselves in such a time, and they did a hell of a job making that reasonable.
Art/Sound: 10/10
These are a little difficult to rate on a hard line (and I'm ignoring the opening/closing because those don't really matter for the show itself). The art style was fairly reserved, but they kept a lot of accuracy between scenes, and small details were not left out of consideration anywhere they appeared. Motions were fluid, natural and included everything down to nervous ticks. If there was an area that could have been improved while keeping the feeling of life put to animation for all its flaws and features, I certainly missed it.
Sound was masterfully done, though not memorable in itself. The scores worked to help the scenes, but as background detail. The sounds and songs aren't likely to stick in anyone's minds, though instead work to help enforce the scene itself and what you are meant to remember.
Characters: 8/10
Some of the tropes went a bit far, which was off-putting. There wasn't a really apparent reason for the characters to have hard stereotypes forced in several scenes and it actually detracted from those episodes every time I saw them included. Usually it's a love story trope that gets me cringing, but not this time, just the characters themselves, and it's a shame because I think that I might have given almost everything a 10 if this hadn't been a factor.
Enjoyment: 9/10
Characters hit this mark a bit, as noted above, but also trying to recall Japanese culture to understand story elements. I feel like this is one of those shows that hit home for many people in Japan, but has so many elements that are unnatural to foreigners that we can't fully appreciate it. Even with some research into culture and history it's hard to actually relate to the mentality and it hurts the enjoyment, like it or not.
Overall: 9/10
A very solid show for the target audience, and definitely one of my favorite anime of all time.
