The reason why the show is good is due to the interactions of the many characters. I really like how characters interact with each other. They bring out their personalities in a bunch of different scenarios and dialogue. The fact that there are so many different things that these characters do in the limited setting is honestly pretty impressive.
However, not all the characters are very good. I do think that Kana, Chiaki, Makoto, Touma, Uchida, and Maki (barley) are good. What I mean is that they go past their character archetypes and you see a lot of variety when it comes to how they act and interact with others. They always bring something unique to the table, and their interactions aren't just limited to a few token things that they are responsible for. On the other hand, the rest of the characters, especially Harkua and Hosaka, are pretty bland. Whenever they're involved in a scene, they usually don't contribute much to the discussion, if at all. They're more of just to make more numbers, and don't stray off their few token lines and personality traits at all. Truly a waste. I would totally understand if this was a 1 season show, but this was a 52 episode series. 52! That's more than enough to have 10 or so good characters. Instead, we see around half or more of the character cast waste away since there's not a lot of attention on them, or if there are, just repeat their same lines over and over again with not much development in their personalities. Haruka, probably one of the characters with the most screen time, also doesn't pass this hurdle. For such an essential character, you'd think that she'd be fun to watch, but she just fills the role of "responsible older sister that cooks," and barely has any personality outside of "being lazy sometimes." Hosaka also gets an absurdly large amount of screen time for his entire personality being "taking off his shirt, crushing on Haruka, and cooking." It's always the same exact routine when it comes to these two character, and that's not okay when they take up so much screen time. I also can't agree how the attention of the characters are so lopsided. It's clear that the story is surround the three Minami characters, yet, most of the time, it's Chiaki's friends that the viewers see the most. I think that a lot of characters with good potential, like Keiko, or even just Touma's family, were ruined because they just didn't have a lot of screen time. Kana and Haruka's circles of friends are obviously mentioned in the episodes, and they have an adequate amount of attention, but it's nothing compared to Chiaki's circle of friends. If there was a more balanced distribution of scenes involving different characters, I would think that there would be not only more variety, but better characters.
Enough of characters, though, what about the setting? Honestly, Minami Ke suffers from a bland setting. Usually, or almost always, the setting is at the Minami Household or at school. This is still okay, since there are many shows that only use those settings, but Minami ke doesn't really interact with the setting very much. It's always the same type of scenarios, and there isn't a lot of creativity or variety when it comes to many scenes in the show. This can be seen even when they're not at their own house or at school. The fireworks, beach, pool, family restaurant, and festival scenes are really repetitive and don't actually involve any interaction with the environment, or if there are, they're extremely simple ones. If the show had more interesting scenarios where they did different things, it would be a lot less repetitive. I really have no idea why this is the case. I mean, even just going to another person's house could really spice things up, or even just going on recreational activities like bowling or skating could be nice too. there's really not a lot of variety when it comes to the setting, and as such, things get a bit repetitive.
Lastly, I'll talk about art. For a series that started in 2008~, the art was really good. Season 1's artstyle was simple and minimalistic. There was not too many shadows, attention to detail, and everything was simple. That made it so that at least, the movement and animation of facial expressions were fluid and vivid. It's not like an anime like Minami ke really needs that much detail. Season 2, they probably wanted some more detail, and detail it got. The problem was that it was sloppily done. Movements were choppy, animations were always reused, and there was a lack of this fluidity and completeness that the previous animation had. Most importantly, though, the art style didn't fit the anime at all. Not only did season 2 feature the most boring character ever, Fuyuki, who really sucked out any fun at all in a scene, but the art was just horribly paired. Seasons 3 and 4 stuck to the old season 1 art style, and you can really tell how much that art style elevates the entire show. Season 4 especially, had attention to detail, and also still maintained that initial minimalistic approach which really elevated the show.
Overall, I liked the show. Characters were cute and scenes were funny. There was a clear theme of repetitiveness when it came to settings/scenarios, like pool, beach, flower viewing, new years, valentine's day, etc etc, and there were some characters which were boring and lacked any depth, but it was still a good show overall.
