The artwork was sweet and cutesy to the point of cringe. The boys are prettier than Tohru The animation started out mid, but sank quickly, until the last few episodes it was barely above kid-vid. I didn't expect much, but it even exceeded my lowered expectations.
The characters are what really kill this series for me. Tohru might be the worst character I can remember in 50 years of watching anime. Her actions and motivations are insufferable, and poorly written. The Souma family at least started out interesting, but eventually they fell victim to the poor writing, too. Way too often I was asking myself, why TF did this character do THAT?
It didn't help that the narrative writing was no better. The premise seems interesting enough. At first it is amusing. But the writers go to the well too often, and in time the gimmick becomes lame and boring. Tohru got a little development, very little though. Not so much for the Soumas. For the most part they are props for Tohru's fantasies. It didn't help that the middle episodes were really plodding along and became a chore to get through. And the ending was a total bomb. It was so bad as to be unbelievable. Dialog was an issue as well. Poor enough where it was laughable.
I didn't think the main VAs were anything special. Some of the side characters were plain awful in the original English dub. Can't say a whole lot about the direction, as there was so little to work with here. It would be like beating a bunny with a 2x4 to place the blame on the direction.
Didn't need any astrological divination to see this was a total trainwreck. If I was grading, this would get no better than 35/100, a complete failure F. The series is Taurus the Bull; a huge, heaping, steamy pile.
