The art and animation are some of the best you will see in any romance anime. The OST is unique and fits the anime well. I liked all of the characters and their voice actors did great jobs bringing them too life.
There were many aspects of this anime that I really enjoyed. But, after completing it I am still left with some feelings of disappointment.
The sole problem that holds this anime back is the narrative. More specifically, the problem lies in the pacing and overall narrative structure.
This is an anime that trues to adapt 16 volumes of a manga into 13 episodes. Obviously, there is going to be pacing and structural issues. The scenes in episodes often have little-to-no continuity with each other. Scenes just end on a dime and then transition to a new group of characters doing something unrelated to previous scene and occurring in an unknown date and time.
To put simply, most of the episodes feel like highlight reels that were cut out and animated from the manga. In the first half of the anime, the highlights are focused on the main couple (Hori and Miyamura).
The scenes in these episodes take the most neccesary stories that develop their relationship from the manga and places them together so we feel like we are watching their relationship grow as they fall in love with each other. The problem, however, is that the pacing feels wicked fast and that negatively impacts our emotional attachment to their relationship because it develops so quickly.
While this certainly is not ideal, I was still enjoying it because the stories that they do show are very good and had some genuine heart to them. The real problem comes in the second half of the anime when the relationship between Hori and Miyamura is placed on the back burner so we can focus on the side characters.
Like I stated previously, I liked all of the characters in this anime, both main characters and side characters. However, I do not like it when almost all of their development that is not tied to Hori or Miyamura is condensed into one or two episodes of highlights.
There are many large problems with this approach.
The first is that the highlights portray the relationships between characters in very inconsistent ways. In some character highlights, some characters are not as close to each other as we have seen them be or are much closer to each other than we have seen. Since the development of the side characters is placed in episodes after Hori and Miyamura’s relationship has mostly developed, some of the stories in these episodes come from before their relationship fully developed, yet it is portrayed to be happening after the fact. Also, some of the stories come much later in the manga series, so some characters are really close in one side character’s episode and not as close in a later side character’s episode.
The second large problem with placing most of the side characters’ development into individual episodes is that once a character’s episode is done, they may be completely forgotten by the next episode. This mitigates the development of the side characters because they can have episodes that start to give them some real depth, only to be back to normal or completely absent in the next episode.
But the last large flaw with placing all of the side characters’ episodes toward the end of the series is that it makes the plot feel like it hasn’t moved anywhere by the final 2 episodes. The 11th episode of this 13 episode anime is entirely dedicated to a side character whose name I didn’t even know. He was never really introduced nor did he take any prominance in the previous episodes, yet he got his own episode with only 2 more episodes left in the series.
Something that I feel I should clarify about the narrative is that even though episodes are mostly comprised of highlight reel scenes from the manga, they are still enjoyable. The stories are all well written and the comedy aspects stay true to the characters. This anime does follow some common tropes and clichés, but they are usually done well enough to be enjoyable.
It is just how the overall narrative is structured that stops this anime from being as great as it should be. I really like a lot about it. I can tell that if this series was a 1-to-1 adaption of the manga that this could have been great. Why this decision was made for a widely popular and acclaimed series is beyond me (but then again, this IS Cloverworks).
I would still recommend this anime despite the glaring flaw of the narrative structure. It is still a good anime, all things considered, and it is an enjoyable experience. Just don’t expect a cohesive story tocome along with it.
It is closer to an 8/10 than a 6/10
