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The art is fine. Sometimes it's beautiful.

The main character is incredibly engaging. Some of the heroines are fleshed out well, some are one dimensional, all are run over by the plot.

The enjoyment is a roller coaster of emotions that feels like it's building up to an incredible payoff. Instead you get kicked right in the balls.

I can't believe it ended like that.

Slight spoilers ahead:

... This is an omnibus story that goes through a bunch of relationships in order.

I don't understand why the girl the manga spent the longest time on acted the way she did once she started dating him. Her personality completely flipped. I can only weakly assume that she got bashful about realizing that they were dating so she stopped the playful banter and was too embarrassed to show any intimacy. But that's completely different from her character, unexplained, and doesn't really fit with the information we get after the fact. Although I can forgive a lot of that because the point of the manga is that you can't know why people act the way they do. It's still jarring to have that moral delivered in such a heavy handed way by dismantling a perfectly good character. Especially after his high school girlfriend had the same arc but shorter and actually justified.

The "mysterious girl" premise of the manga is a total red herring and an excuse to flashback though the guy's whole life story. Although that sounds like a clever and engaging story element, it has mediocre execution.

He does the same thing to the girl on the phone that he did to the girl at the Ramen shop even though she chewed him out so much about it. Although even that was just a variation of the same mistake the main character repeats every arc.

The main character drives himself into a corner repeatedly for over half his life in a deeply gripping, believable, and emotional way. This manga is so absolutely fantastic in this regard that I can forgive everything else about the characters and the plot. It doesn't hurt the portrayal of this deeply flawed MC that he continues to make almost exactly the same mistake over and over again. You've spent 7 volumes with this guy hoping to finally see him grow and be happy. He never changes from this self destructive behavior until the very last chapter, which is split into two parts and a hundred pages.

We get one panel of that (maybe) paying off.

I have never been so utterly disgusted by anything in my life.

If I hadn't read the manga I probably would be giving it straight 10s. Probably.

The movie cuts out enough of the side character's personalities that you don't really wonder too much about their backstories that were also cut out.

Everything actually story-related for the two main characters is pretty much in there, and absolutely gorgeous.

10's for art and sound but story and characters get a 6, impacting my enjoyment and overall score down to an 8.

So, I'd definitely have to say either watch this one before reading the critically-acclaimed manga, or pick the manga over the film. It's hard for me to say this as a ... die-hard KyoAni fan, but KyoAni, you really could have done better on this one.

It's ultra-moe propaganda for casual mountain climbing and camping. All things I am definitely into. And it's divided into 3 minute concentrated shots.

And I mean concentrated, every shot, line, moe noise, and character are perfectly distilled to their most moe in an effort to get people going to easy to climb tourist mountains. Every syllable of the 15 second 7-line ED is dripping with moe.

The only complaint I had with this show was that it's adorable and good-natured atmosphere baited me into watching the last 4 episodes in front of my roommate. Half of the last episode is in a shower room with a lot ... of nudity.

It really came out of left field, but I kept watching it thinking it would be over after a few pans and he's probably too engrossed in Skyrim to notice. Well I was wrong on at least one count.

Let me get this out of the way: If you didn't think K-On! was for you since it was a slice-of-life show more than a show about a band of cute girls, this show is a show about a band of cute girls, with an actual band-related plot structure.

It was absolutely great and adorable. I would say it doesn't have as much loli fanservice as you might expect. It's ratio of loli fanservice to loli moe is somewhere between GochiUsa and Dragon Maid.

I'll check out the no-fanservice edit and report back.

Story:

The show is adorable, although a bit formulaic. The first half of the first episode ... is focused on what led our MC to become a music-obsessed high-school NEET, including subtle encounters with two clearly soon-to-be main characters.

From then on we hit straight into the story arc introducing the loli band, their immediate motivations, and two side characters including the suspicious characters from the first episode.

Then there's a story arc bringing the MC and the other 5 characters together, with a drama arc instead of a concert arc this time. A romance subplot is introduced for the most appropriate character.

The drama overflows into the next 3 episode story arc about introducing 2 new lolis and their tragic backstory, but this time it's a concert arc. The romance subplot becomes a joke harem.

Finally we get a 3 episode battle of the bands arc between the 3 loli band, and the remaining 3 lolis. The newest loli band loses, but there's no sense of closure as they say that it's only the beginning, and the romance subplot fails to even come up.

It's formulaic and arc driven story combined with a huge "read the source material or pray for Season 2 as you buy Japanese Blu-Rays" ending, knocked off a few points for me. But it was a serviceable story with it's heartstring moments. And it was more than enough to bring out the loli moe characters we're all clearly here to see.

Sound:

Sound was great, loved all the rock tracks. A bit lazy with the editing at times, but the soundtrack was phenomenal for a loli-rock band show. The amateur aspects sounded amateur enough to be convincing. I really enjoyed one character's increasingly terrible piano practice.

Art:

The art in this show is good, but I wouldn't say it's fantastic. You can tell it was drawn rather cheaply, but they have great character design so the moe comes through when it needs to. I'd love to see what the blu-ray brings to the table, but I don't want to be put on any more lists.

Characters:

The characters are all adorable and all get sufficiently enough backstory and explanation to make them believable. Which is a pretty high bar in CGDCT territory. Obviously, not as much time per character for development is available compared to other CGDCT anime, due to this show having a plot, but you're not left wondering what a certain character would do in any given scene.

Enjoyment:

I got a lot of great enjoyment out of the series, it was bright, cute, happy, and fun. The entire ride was comfy, but with enough bumps that it wasn't boring. I feel like they nailed the sweet spot for a balance in:

fanservice / moe
CGDCT/harem
plot/slice-of-life
drama/comedy

as well as tone and having great versions of a whopping 6 different types of loli waifus. The "main" girl is also pretty great.

Overall:

Overall, I'd say this show delivered a lot more than I expected it would. I'd say it's a CGDCT show with just enough plot and romantic spice to keep you from sinking into complacency. Also, it's about a band, they play music pretty often. You get to see an animated 3 piece loli band play music pretty often.

If that's not worth a 9, I don't know what is.

EDIT: The source material is a light novel released in 2012, along with a manga adaptation that started in 2014. Neither is translated by an official source, or a fan scanlator. If you don't want to be blueballed by an inability to finish the story, learn Japanese or don't watch the show. If you just want 5 hours of cute moe lolis in a band, regardless of story, go on ahead.