As we get into the story, it feels like it was trying to be a lot of things but just couldn’t decide on what it wanted to be. It feels like a harem with how many girls love Tomoya, but its not, it feels like a magical girl show with at least one of the characters, but its not, and so on. There are even stories of sci-fi and fantasy elements that don’t fit a real slice of life show. Most of the show is basically them dinking around with some of the little side stories and no real motivation in what they do. Even the characters don’t feel like they get flushed out. Tomoya is one of the only characters that actually feel as though there was a little push to get him to feel real but everyone else around him seems like single personality characters. We just don’t get enough character for any of the others. That is the problem with basing an anime on a visual novel, they all want to date your character and you get to pick who you want most of the time. In the anime, they have one person to him and yet Nagisa gets barely any screen time, any real character development except that she is a sickly girl but she is the main love interest throughout the show. I want to have some reason to like her, some reason to fall in love with her the same as Tomoya but it just never really happens. Hell, any other character might have been a better love interest with how much screen time they got with their personality.
This paragraph might have spoilers here so a little warning. I really wonder what the point of Fuko being in the show is. I get she is the most moe of the group, but the problem is when her story is over you would think she would go to where ever she was supposed to go. Spoiler, she doesn’t. She shows up every once in a while at the most random of times and does the most random things. The group even seems to forget her and yet she pops up in front of them with there faces saying they have no idea who she is. She doesn’t even really help them all that much.
The art style is what makes the show worth most of the time. It’s not fully detailed or as clean as some of the shows out there but it has a feel much its own like the other three Key animations. The soft designs and almost glow of whatever fog filter they put on this show gives it almost a sort of dreamy experience. I feel like we are Tomoya looking back at his childhood and remembering it how he wants to remember. It’s not what is happening but it feels that way. The characters fit in to the different stages of moe; the cutesy type, the tsundere type, the innocent type, the childish type. Even the guys are given a sort of place to fit into the stereotype including the sort of bland main character. I am only talking about looks here, not their personalities. Even without fully knowing the names, you can pick them out by what they look like even with the twins. As the story gets darker, the art style changes very slightly but only to a point like they used a very thin dark wash over the scenes.
The English voices are not that great. I consider it pretty much average across the board that the one or two that are the worst just don’t stand out enough to bother me. I liked Tomoya’s sort of manly design. His friend however just seems a bit overboard with the pure squeak of preteen angst. Nagisa is a rather cute little voice that surprisingly doesn’t annoy me at all. Her voice is slightly raspy and any other time, I would be annoyed with that but with how sick she has been, it makes sense that this soft spoken girl woul have that. The music is rather sweet and innocent which adds to the Moe feeling in the whole show and the ending song gets stuck in my head to this day. I can understand that family is a big part of this show but I think that the Big Dango Family song should have only been inside the show song and not really an ending song because of how stuck in the head that song gets. (Still cannot stop seeing the Hetalia mochi creation someone did with that song.)
Overall, the show is not all that it is hyped up to be and yet it is still a good slice of life show. It doesn’t really add much to the genre but it stays within the line area it needs to be. If you don’t think too much on it, or are reviewing it like I do, then it’s an interesting watch and has a really awesome meaning behind the show. Just don’t try to think too much into the parts of the story and you will be fine.
