Soremachi is supposed to be cartooney. Goofy yet endearing. It's not LOL funny, but the gag punchlines in the source material are pleasantly fast-paced and sketch-like. While it is fairly dialogue-heavy, the author's paneling and compact retorts squeezed into small boxes make it clear it's supposed to go by pretty quickly. For some reason, Shaft decided to stretch that dialogue. It doesn't matter if it's a character thinking to themselves, a funny reaction, or banter: every line comes out at the speed of an audiobook. Add in all the cuts and unnecessary shots that Shaft likes to do, along with bits of dialogue they inserted, and the comedic timing and mood is thrown off completely. The manga is fairly long, so this tedious approach is even more puzzling, and might explain why the anime never got a second season.
For the background music, it sounds like they borrowed samples from Shaft's more famous works: short bursts of instrumentals that don't match Soremachi's aesthetic. All it does is distract. Then there's the voice casting, which is the biggest question mark. Not a single person sounded as I expected, which is a first. Even the narrator(s?) they decided to add sounds monotone, which leads me to believe that the weirdness must have been at least partially intentional. Why did they do this? The characters are supposed to be likable dorks, but instead, they just sound annoying. That said, apparently, the VA for Hotori was specifically requested by the author himself, so who knows?
For scene changes that would have been separated by chapters in the manga, Shaft decided to use commercial break bumpers featuring Hotori's dog Josephine spouting random factoids. In the manga, the dog is featured in omake and a few chapters, where it has thought bubbles and communicates in dog language. But in the anime, it never gets introduced, yet suddenly pops up to talk for a few seconds in the middle of every episode in a rather weird voice. It's not a big deal, but it extends the list of dissonant things that keep taking me out of it.
Altogether, it feels like Shaft's main interpretation of the manga was that it was a group of eccentric high school girls doing eccentric things. Something like "High School Girls Are Funky" from Danshi Koukousei no Nichijou, but in Monogatari's style. Just the thought of that makes me figuratively throw up in my mouth a little bit. On the other hand, if the team that made Danshi Koukousei had worked on Soremachi, I trust the anime would have landed closer to the original vibe. For now, I guess I'll just stick to the manga.
