Minami-ke Tadaima

This is the, wow, 4th season of Minami K. Aptly named Tadaima (Im back).

This season was amazing. The last few episodes are good as well. The last 2 seasons, the last 3 episodes were depressing. This time not the case.

I am still sad though, I watched 52 episodes of Minami K and its gonna end.

The story is about the 3 sisters, Haruma, Kana, Chiaki. Kana is the wild one, Chiaki is composed, Haruma takes care of them. They are also accompanied by a ton of friends.

My favorite character this entire season is Hosaka. He was the funniest, wittiest, and best character this season. ...
I wish he got what he wanted :(

Music and Animation: OP 1 still on top, but animation is the best out of the 4 seasons.

Final Score: 7/10 really good
Thanks!
-CyanCheetah

Hmm, this is...hmm. Just finished this one, so this review will be my freshest of the seasons of Minami-ke. Prepare for disappointment. But, before you get the wrong idea, well this IS because the studio changed again, this review is not centered on its art style alone, but it will play a major role on how this review goes.

This season did something that I was heavily afraid of: they embraced cliché again, something that has not been done since the second season. And by embrace, I mean EMBRACE. Right off the bat, it appears that they are repeating old elements from prior seasons, recycling ... old ideas to be specific; and they did not do a good job with it at all.

Before I go on, I HAVE to say the positives now. From the looks of it, all the voice actors returned yet again and the writers were still capable of writing humor that made me laugh a lot in a few areas. They finally had a moment where Fujioka almost confessed to Minami, which was all I needed. Given it is a comedy, I knew it was not gonna happen, but it was amazing to almost see.

Lastly, the charm of the anime is still there, but now it has mixed with Okawari and Okaeri from the looks of it, as far as delivery and art style go; and just throw in things from season one, too. But, not in the way that you might think. With all that being said, though, it is still Minami-ke at the core and DID bring back the voice actors, alongside the soundtrack once more, so you might still enjoy it in that regard.

Now, with that being said...wow, this is a handful. Um, as I said before, they DID embrace generic anime cliché again, but they took it to a new level. They brought up the infamous Ninomiya-kun show again, alongside the mysterious loincloth people showing up at festivals, and they were trying to recycle a lot of old running gags from the first season.

This would be fine, but they delivered them quite badly. On top of that, they had actual cringe-worthy moments quite a bit, but made up for it by returning one of my favorite elements of Okaeri: the background talk. In some scenes, two sets of characters will be talking to each other and whenever the main conversation is not humoring enough, the other one usually is and it is quite enjoyable to watch their reactions throughout it all. The background alone is almost more enticing than what they WANT you to pay attention to.

Oh, and the worst of it? Hosaka. Now, they just decided that he would be a mental case instead of having him confess to Haruka, though they brought up the whole reason why he was doing this to begin with: the volleyball club! ANOTHER season one reference, and one that I actually forgot myself, but he actually WASN'T in love with her! I completely forgot about that, so that was a surprising reminder.

Right, the mental case part you're curious about. Well, apparently, he didn't talk to her for so long that he fell in love with himself. To elaborate, the "Haruka within himself" of whom he saw in his thoughts. Apparently, nobody could find out why Haruka was "imperfect" and so Hosaka just believed her to be a goddess. The problem? He worshiped her like a fictional goddess; one that he would never actually meet because he never talked to her.

But, the one thing that irks me is that he was actually about to and Hayami STOPPED him, ate his offering to her and basically turned him insane; making her my least favorite character of the entire anime after that. She basically took away his only chance of talking to her, and he was pretty casual about it, too. He had a lunch ready and was actually steps away from her, but thanks to Hayami, he never saw her for the remainder of the season and, well, as I said before, went insane basically. Also, he still sees her sisters as her daughters.

Okay, let's see, what else. They introduced a new character, but she is purely filler at most; named Miyuki, she has a lifeless personality and was meant to be somewhat of a mix between Keiko and Kana at first, though she later went from recurring to minor quite rapidly as she only had one major appearance in a segment and, well, she was not as interesting as their newest addition, Riko, whom still brought up one of the more humorous love triangles I have ever seen.

So, the question. Can I recommend this one? That, I can actually say ONLY if you're a die-hard fan of the anime series, because well it did retain most of the charm, it was not that enjoyable to me and I did not prioritize it as much as I did with Minami-ke (my default label for the first season) and Okaeri. Heck, Okawari would be better than this, personally because it had less cliché in it in comparison and was actually more enjoyable in a few areas.

I won't be too harsh and say this season was pure trash, but it didn't appeal to me too much. The only major thing it did was give the anime the most detailed backgrounds I had ever seen, but they still didn't breath the same color into them as the first did. Regardless, they were still very well drawn and detailed.

My score is about as honest as I can get here. And, normally, whenever I dislike an anime, I don't even put too much life into myself to write the review for it; hence, this one coming off as a bit cluttered and not as high on vocabulary as the first review was. But, I do have a few anime that I literally hate to death, so this one is not that bad. If you're a fan of Minami-ke, go for it.

But, if you enjoyed seasons one and three, I might want to skip this one; keyword: might. If you enjoyed season two, you perhaps will like this one a lot as it brings more of that one's style here again with the cliché elements and all, but it is really up to your own personal preference on which seasons you enjoyed the most.

Minami-Ke Tadaima is the fourth season of the series Minami-Ke. It’s a slice of life comedy with elements of high school romance sprinkled into the mix. To say that this show is unique and is a “must watch” would be stretching it. The slice of life genre has always been one of my favorites, but this show just didn't do it for me. The jokes are pretty stale and some of them lose their potential humor simply because of the way they’re set up. But let’s stop with the general impressions and get into the specifics, shall we?

Story:
Being a slice of life school comedy, Minami-Ke ... Tadaima respectively does not have a complicated plot. It follows the ordinary lives of three sisters: Kana, Chiaki, and Haruka Minami. Each episode is formatted linearly: An ordinary problem is presented, hijinx ensues, and a conclusion is met. It’s simple and should be effective. I say “should” because the sheer quality of most of the jokes and the reactions of the characters actually works against this linear format. That's not to say that the show never made me laugh. It got me a few times, but for a comedy, it was rare.

Characters:
Aside from Hosaka and Kana--huge shout-outs to their voice actors by the way--most of the cast is a bit uninteresting. Again, most of the show's failings are brought up from the lack of reactions and lack of exaggerated responses from the characters and some of the characters ended up as tropes. Take Makoto's character for instance. In order to hang out with Kana without drawing the suspicion of his classmates, Makoto takes on the form of Mako--a female version of himself. You would think that this could draw out a few laughs, but the setup for the jokes are really typical and not fun in all honesty. In truth, I think the whole show could be described as “really typical and not fun,” but I do think the music helps ease the boredom.

Music:
The music from the show is actually pretty good. The music used in the comedic scenes generated a silly, albeit cheesy, atmosphere. More specifically, the opening was always something I looked forward to listening to. It was really upbeat and I think it captured what the show really tried to be: a heavily emphasized comedy. The ending theme was less than addicting, but my ears didn't bleed because of it, so that's good.

Art Style / Animation:
Being a show from 2013, Minami-Ke Tadaima actually doesn't look great in comparison to some of the other shows that came out at the time. While the art style is a bit dated, the animation is serviceable enough and the character designs are unique and even a bit fun at times. While I wouldn’t consider the artistic direction of the show to be its strong suit, I can see how others might enjoy it for its simplicity.

Overall Impressions:
Minami-Ke Tadaima was a pretty below average experience for me. It just wasn't as much fun as I thought it'd be and I really like the slice of life genre, so I know that's not the problem. Aside from Hosaka's and Kana’s characters, the show was a bore to get through. With its lack of good characters, its repeated use of unfunny jokes, and without a solid reason to keep me coming back to the show, I had a really hard time getting through this one. Even some fans of the show found out that they didn’t love this season of Minami-Ke in particular. In the words of Chiaki herself, “Please do not expect much out of it.” I cannot and will not recommend this show, even to slice of life fans.