The show focuses around the life and times of a senior in High School, Tomoya Okazaki. He's a self described delinquent and frequently skips school, however, underneath his tough guy facade and satirical jokes, he's just a regular student who lacks direction in his life. That is, until he meets the love of his life and several other buxom beauties.
The story is great as it mixes real life problems, such as relationships, troubling pasts and the inability to articulate oneself in public with other problems of a more supernatural nature.
While I wouldn't describe this story as entirely realistic the message it communicates is very strong and the voice acting and music is lovely. However, I will complain about the opening and ending songs, as, I felt they ruined the atmosphere of the show or just didn't mesh that well no matter how well they were actually related to it.
Tomoya's friend, Youhei Sunoharo, remains particularly static throughout the series, and while that does leave some disappointment as I was hoping he would come into his self during his senior year of High School as the other characters did, he was still amusing for comic relief.
On Tomoya's quest to do as little as possible during his senior year he meets a variety of interesting characters, ranging from ex gang members to super genius's and in doing so recruits a makeshift harem of weirdos and oddballs. While not every member of this harem is interested in him at first, he soon captures the hearts of all of them with his satire, cruel jokes, and compassionate side he modestly brushes off.
While there are no actual cat fights over Tomoya, there is still a sportsman like competition for his affection. In so doing, Tomoya learns of the many problems of his friends and possible lovers. These side back stories of the main characters were poorly done in most cases. Whereas the characters could have been much, much deeper they instead portray the entirety of the character and simplify them. By this I mean, the entire personality of the character can be summed up in a few episodes regarding an event in their past - making the characters slightly shallow and lacking the many intricacies of the human psyche.
But, this story is a tear jerker, if you will, and does have some really nice moments where it's completely depressing, and thanks to the wonderful voice acting and beautiful music, they really hit home - especially if you have some semblance to one of the character's past.
While times are good while the story's progressing, in it's finality it felt lacking. For some reason, after watching the final episode the story felt unfinished. It completely left the story open for anything to happen, and the main character, just like in the beginning of the story, has no balls.
There weren't very many inconsistencies, however, it never actually describes how the main character gets money. They say that he has a part time job, but they never explore that and with his situation at home, his unlimited funding seems out of place. While it's a small complaint, things like that just bug me.
So, despite a few static or shallow aspects, a bad ending, and a few inconsistencies along the way, it's really a great anime that I would suggest to anyone who likes the stereotypical romance story. Not bad for guys, either. I'm telling you, I was really pleasantly surprised with this one.
