English isn't my native language - I appologize for my mistakes beforehand. I just finished watching "Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou" (yeah, I know, it's August and I finished watching anime from spring season... I really don't have enough free time ;| ) and decided to make a short review of it.
This show is one of those love comedies which decided to take a different approach to romance and... failed. At least in terms of that type of romance I was looking for. But let's not rush, first things first.
Story
The protagonist, Kazunari Usa (though I don't remeber a single time when he wasn't
...
called "Usa-kun"), is a completely average highschooler. Starting this year he'll be living alone... or so he thought. His mother rented a room for him in Kawaisou complex which, as he quckily finds out, is full of weird people. "Accidentally" among them there is Ritsu Kawai - a girl Usa had spotted (and immediately got a crush on) in his school's library.
No, there are no sudden plot twists or surprises - the beginning really is THAT cliche. The plot centers on craz...ekhem daily life in the complex and development of protagonist and herione's reationship. As you can see the setting for the story is pretty similiar to the one in "Sakuraso no Pet na Kanojo".
Characters
Usa's fellow residents drive this show. They're not, by any means, orginal. In fact it's the opposite, but who said that stereotypical characters can't be good? So before we proceed to descriptions of the main couple let me tell you a bit about this crazy bunch.
Let's start with Shiro (short for Shirosaki). He's my favourite character in this show. Well, that sounds kind of weird once you know that he's a 100% M - a masochist, who's not even trying to hide it. Obviuosly that makes him a source of many gags, but there's more to it - I'd say Shiro is the most mature character - you'll see him giving advices to other people quite often. Also he's the only character who gets to have his own side story.
Next we have Mayumi and Sayaka - two girls who seem to be always fighting each other. There's not really much to say about them. Mayumi - ~30 years old, had dozens of boyfriends, but still gets easilly tricked by men; currently single, and veeery unhappy because of it. Sayaka - university student, master of deceiving and manipulating others (especially guys); in short she's so evil she could easily terrorize the devil himself.
The last but not least is Kawai Sumiko - an old lady and a governor of the Kawaisou building who treats her residents as if they were her own children. She's the only one who can stand against Sayaka and win. For most of the time she doesn't get much attention but her infinite cheerfulness and wide smile contribute greatly to creating warm atmosphere.
Now it's time for the main protagonist. I should be able to easilly relate with Usa, after all I'm a highschooler myself, right? No. Nope. Just no. I do understand the cultural difference between Japan and Europe, especially when it comes to relationships between men and women, are huuuuuge.Still I find it simply impossible to relate, even just slightly, with a guy who starts blushing and getting flustered just by looking at the girl he likes, or starts crying from happiness because she showed her care for him. I'm not an emotionless bastard, I think it's nothing abnormal to fell stressed when around a girl you like, but still - there are limits to everything. However, aside from that annoying behaviour I just mentioned Usa isn't a bad character. He's a normal guy and his only trait that stands out is his ability to attract weird people.
Most of the time you see the heroine, Kawai, she'll have her nose burried in a book. She pays little attention to the rest of the world (that includes Usa). Thanks to that she developed the hard-to-approach-and-lonely-girl-aura.
However, if you're expecting cold and dignified ojou-sama with kuudere personality you'd be dissapointed - she's much closer to the shy girls from a typicall shoujo manga. The main difference is that she doesn't fall for the protagonist few minutes after he appeared. In fact it's the opposite - she's stays rahter passive, even after she realizes she may have some feelings for Usa. Therefore times when she behaves more lively and active, even if she's doing something seemingly insignificant, are very precious for Usa. She also gets some adorable scenes, for example the frog costume during the water-guns battle was ridiculously adorable.
"Romancy-thingy"
I said earlier that romance in this show is a failure. Well it depends on what you're looking for. I've alerady mentioned this anime is similiar to "Sakuraso" and that also applies to romance aspect . Unfortunately if I were to give a proper explanation someone would definitely yell: "Ha, look at his review! It's full of filthy spoilers!". So yeahh. What I can tell without revealing any spoilers is that there's simply too little romance in romance (geez, that sounds terrible but I really can't think of any other way to put it).
Art&music
The art in this show is pretty good. The colors are nice, characters' faces don't look too simple and the animation is smooth. The only outstanding thing about art were shots of the Kawaisou complex from above - each with different lightning and colors used looked really good, especially the ones during sunset.
As for sound... even though I just finished the show I barely remeber it. Opening, ending, OST - they were all painfully average.
So to sum up, I wouldn't recommend watching this anime unless you have enormous amounts of free time. It has major flaws but none of them are crucial enough to make this unwatchable. On the other hand if I were to name something what would make up for those mistakes I could say: characters and humor. At the beginning jokes were pretty good, escpecially the ones which were a parody of typical scenes in love comedies, but in later episodes they get weaker and repeatable. That, unfortuantely, also applies to characters (except Shiro).
In conclusion Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou is just as the description of the 6/10 mark on MAL says: "fine". Nothing less, nothing more.
This review came out to be slightly longer than I thought (OK, OK, to be honest I wanted it to be half as long as it is now) and if you managed to get the end - thanks a lot! I'd aprreciate any kind of support you can offer. Feel free to PM me, be it about the contents of this review or the use of language.
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Aug 15, 2014
Bokura wa Minna Kawai-sou
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English isn't my native language - I appologize for my mistakes beforehand. I just finished watching "Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou" (yeah, I know, it's August and I finished watching anime from spring season... I really don't have enough free time ;| ) and decided to make a short review of it.
This show is one of those love comedies which decided to take a different approach to romance and... failed. At least in terms of that type of romance I was looking for. But let's not rush, first things first. Story The protagonist, Kazunari Usa (though I don't remeber a single time when he wasn't ... |
