Ristorante Paradiso

It's been a long time since I sat down and watched something as slow-paced as Ristorante Paradiso. To tell the truth, I was actually longing for a good slice-of-life anime to come up somewhere. When I stumbled upon it, the whole idea of "a restaurant with a single lady worker and lots of aged men" interested me. I mean, the abundance of grown men is curiously odd enough. It's not a plot that's usually used in an anime. And, I'm a guy, so at first I felt a little uncomfortable with the show with lots of males on it, but after watching, it's not like ... they're those guys on anime that lives just to attract females, so guys are welcome to watch this josei anime with peace.

Anyway, if you don't like slow-paced, quiet shows, and dislike works without much action, then Ristorante Paradiso will surely disappoint you. It's a story for people who like the quieter, more peaceful side of life and anime.

-Story
Ristorante Paradiso is all about a restaurant, somewhere in Rome, with its employess consisting of lots of aged men with glasses. Then, enter Nicoletta into the picture, and the restaurant's never the same again. Don't get me wrong though. The show has this quiet atmosphere that makes you feel like you're at the restaurant as well, eating its delicious delicacies.

-Art
Old people ahoy! The anime's full of the art consisting of old people's faces. It defies the usual standard that you need a sexy/moe/whatever type of character design for the anime to work. Anyway, the art is okay, with its dreamy-like colors and all. But the food! They drew it well!

-Sound
Listen to the opening song and agree with me: the music is well-thought of. It meshed well with the overall theme of the anime: slow-paced slice-of-life. The background music gets it right with the scenes.

-Characters
Ristorante Paradiso's working point is its characters. Each one of them (from the weird Gigi to the old Luciano) has a story of their own, and it worked well with the overall feel. From the beginning, you'd wonder what kind of people works at the restaurant; don't worry, everyone will be focused on.

-Enjoyment
I really enjoyed watching this. The combination of the setting (Rome), characters, and good food, makes this show worthwhile. But, as I've said, it's for people who enjoys quiet anime, so it really depends on your preference if you'll enjoy this or not.

-Overall
Can't say much more; it made my day. Imperfect, yes, but it is a worthy slice-of-life anime, so go try it. Contrary to the common belief, it's not shoujo; it's josei, intended for an older, more mature audience. Not that there's anything wrong with it, but you'll appreciate it more if you're old enough to understand how elder people's minds works. And, this anime's not limited to women. Men can appreciate it as well.

It is a calm story to appreciate another side of life as it is more adult people and spend moments of everyday life with them.
It has some weak points as some pasts , flashbacks tucked quickly or actions of the protagonist that leave some doubts that make you say ''Why?'' or make you feel uncomfortable and with anguish (I do not know if it is good or bad) .
In addition we have the theme of the mother , in general , many times it comes to annoy and had a rather inadequate and at the same time sad ending in the sense that she treated ... her daughter like that for years and she just assimilated it , it lacked a lot of development at that point being one of the main plots . Next, it does not have a very good quality as far as scenarios are concerned because of the limited budget that is understood when watching it, although they are quite unique and satisfying to watch.

On the other hand they deal with interesting themes and have characters that are easy to get attached to like Luciano who makes you feel like you are his grandson or Gigi (at the beginning I didn't like him too much) but as the episodes go by and the subtleties that surround this gentleman make me love him.

Spoilers ahead!

I didn't drop this one only because, being from Italy, it was fun to see italian newspapers, brands and famous places, plus hearing the character randomly speaking in Italian was also hilarious, but I found the story itself boring and I didn't enjoy the animation either, especially the cgi that has been used for most of the dishes and some parts of buildings.

To me it was pretty obvious from the beginning that the staff would have found out about Olga and Nicoletta being mother and daughter, Nicoletta ending up with Claudio wasn't a surprise either, even though I really hoped that they wouldn't. ... The side stories about other characters were interesting enough and useful in order to distract the public from the main one, but it would have been better if they actually influenced the main story, while most of them ended up being just some facts about the character's past that Nicoletta got to know