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[Spoiler free review]
I'm going to keep this review short, because there's not a lot to say about this show. It starts off pretty weak with more than 10 episodes of build up before the actual premise is reached and then it suddenly gets good. The thing about it though is you could always see where the plot was taking you well in advance, and it just turned into an observation of a constant cycle. It was a loop of witnessing the main character's unconditional kindness, followed by a harsh dose of cruelty and finally a few tears shed and determined vows are made before the ... reset button is pressed. However, this doesn't mean it didn't have enjoyment to offer, it just didn't surprise me often.

When the anime gives you a bone, to makes you think subsequent progression is finally on it's way, it violently tugs it away from you to remind you that there is nothing idealistic about the main character's position. It reminds you that only at the end will you get to savour the bone. And that it did. The ending was no surprise, but I feel like it would be unfair to fault it based on the ultimate outcome as apposed to rating the execution of it. I was prepared to see how they would execute the end and progress towards it and. While the execution was unexpected, it made me feel more disappointed than I had been in a while. The ending, metaphorically speaking, was like seeing an oil drum, filled with all the liquid idealism that the other episodes were starved of, pierced sharp by a pickaxe from a quarter bellow the top of the container - leading to it's contents uncontrollably gushing out until the level of it's contents quickly fell bellow the hole and thus stopped spilling. This ultimately meant that the built up was wasted as no one really got their just deserts. In fact, the ending pretty much excused all the heinous cruelty we witnessed and essentially touted forgiveness on the basis that it all worked out in the end anyway. This would be fine if it were not for that fact that the moral of the story ended up being "don't mistreat people that seem like they have nothing to give, or else they might just not give you loads of money in the future" - with an emphasis on the word "might", since all the antagonists in the plot were spared a serving of revenge and rewarded...
I think it's clear that I was deeply disappointed by the ending and felt betrayed for investing time into the plot. I was especially annoyed by the fact that the most hate worthy antagonists were portrayed as good people void of maliciousness, when the complete opposite was the fact. It's impossible for you to think that the the character who spent the whole series bullying most the other characters in a disgusting fashion did not despise the main character, simply because she said it - but was in fact her ally in disguise who did nothing to aid her. I was extremely confused by the character who fit this descriptions having an immediate transition from antagonist to ally.

Nonetheless, I chose to give this anime a 7/10, because as much as much as the ending disappointed, I enjoyed the majority of the series. I got to see Victorian era London is action, and was immersed by the environment. I was impressed by how much detail went in building the atmosphere and I enjoyed witnessing the main character discovering new things about working class London life during that era. Although the cycle I previously mentioned was sometimes damaging to my enjoyment, I don't think many episodes felt repetitive in terms of their content and there was still some progression that remained after the rest button was pressed every few episodes. Although the music was pretty mediocre (even for the standards of anime made during that time), I thought the voice acting was well done and the anime was pretty decent. The paintings of London used in the backgrounds were great too, and as a Londoner, it looked familiar to what I see everyday when I pass or go into old houses and buildings. And finally the characters (apart from a few) were very consistent and were somewhat unique - with my main issue only being the fact that some of the characters didn't seem to retain emotions spawned from previous episodes. Therefor I think it's deserving of an above average score, especially considering how much more enjoyable it was watching it compared to the majority of the other anime I've watched.

[Spoiler free review]
To summarise Makiba no Shoujo Katri, it's an anime about a diligent, precocious and endearing young girl, who takes it upon herself to face the many trials of adult life within an early 20th century Rural (and later Urban) Finnish setting - all so she can pull her own weight and help her family out during a pinch. You watch her overcome many tough obstacles through hard work and determination. Other well crafted and unique characters are gradually introduced, most of which fall in love with her zeal and dedication. You will likely resonate with these characters and develop a sense of paternal ... love for the sweet girl who you watch over. The series may cause you to gasping in horror at the mere sight of her tripping once it has tapped into your paternal or maternal instinct. If you want an anime with the same mood as popular iyashikei anime (like Natsume Yuujinchou), but with significantly more progression and realism, this is the right anime for you.

After finishing Romeo no Aoi Sora I was ready for my endeavour into more older anime series, to find the gems that dwell within. I had a whole list of pre-21st century anime I wanted to try out, and Makiba no Shoujo Katri was the first one my list. I honestly just wanted something that I wouldn't binge watch or get too addicted to, something I could just watch on the train ride home for the next few months, but it became clear I made the wrong choice. It was very hard to resist the urge to watch next episode of the series, because there was always some intriguing progression forecasted in the next episode and my attachment to the main characters kept growing. The thing about this anime is that when it felt like the story would stagnate, it pulled a new rabbit out of it's had and and introduced something new into the story or completely changed the setting.

If you're anything like me, you would assume this anime was simply about a girl living in her home village, herding animals and playing with locals, but there's a lot more to it. Each episode introduces you to something new about early 20th century finish life, with mentions of their politics, customs, culture, hierarchical system, social norms and much more. It does all that and manages to spend a lot of time developing characters and deepening your feelings towards them. The only issue with the plot is how idealistic it can be, with the main character always being left in a recoverable position after facing a dilemma. Nonetheless, this aspect of the story is admitted to be a part of it's premise by the narrator, whom occasionally makes an appearance and explains some of the details of the plot from time to time. The problems the main character faces are not minor either, as I mentioned in my summary, she is exposed to many of the cruel aspect of adult life - despite being not even being in her pre-teens yet. There's a lot of realism involved in the plot, and not everything ends happily. But you get to witness the recovery after such an event, so the anime is never dark for too long. Through the cycle of dilemma and recovery, you get a lot of character development which further improves the immersion of the anime as you end having the same level of familiarity with the other characters, just as much familiarity as the main character has with them. Nearly every character is unique and has a quirk, so it's always interesting when a new character is introduced.

Nearly every episode begins with a show casing of Katri's current setting, with drawn images of the Finnish countryside, villages, cities, etc. The show gives you some time to admire the art, which isn't the usually computer generated backgrounds you see in modern anime. They're comparable to the hand drawn backgrounds in Ghibili's productions and have a good amount of detail present in them. The fine details shown in the backgrounds significantly improves your immersion. The way the characters were drawn are, again, comparable to a Ghibili anime, with the outlines and details being simple, but the physics and movements being above average. Considering this anime was made in the 90s, I was surprised by how little the art an animation bothered me. It was better than many older shows made after it, like the Black Jack TV series and even some modern series airing this season (at least when you forgive the fact that you have to watch it in a low resolution).

The music in the series was always a joy to listen to. It wasn't mind blowing, but it fit the setting and was well utilised to set the mood. I really enjoyed listening to the music on my train ride to work, it was chirpy and endearing and not at all as generic as some of the sound tracks for many of the anime I've been watching recently. However, I would say the music was of the same quality of most pre-21st century anime, with the standard array off quality autistic instrumental songs. The voice acting was also quiet pretty standard for the time this anime was made - albeit it void of static sounds that you can hear in some anime when a character starts talking without background music to hide the poor microphone quality. Nonetheless, the voice acting was convincing and not at all bad, even by modern standards.

All in all, I really enjoyed the series. The story was constantly engaging, the characters were interesting and lovable and the show really immersed me in the setting and plot. I would have happily scored this anime a 10/10 if the ending was rushed. I felt like there could have been more episodes dedicated to the ending and other sub-plots. As a result of the show being quiet progressive (with 3 years of Katri's live being portrayed through the whole series), there are many time skips, so as to avoid dwelling on something too long. I was fine with this for the most part, but on occasion, I felt like there was a missed opportunity to add a new sub-plot or expand on an on-going one. The show would introduce a lot of new topics and details that seemed interesting, but would on occasionally not address them future, which always felt like a waste. Nevertheless, I have to accept this was an enviable constraint, as series can't go on forever. Regardless of this issue, I think this Makiba no Shoujo Katri is a really good anime for those interested in other cultures before the 21st century, or those looking for a relaxing anime with progression. I enjoyed every episode and I hope to enjoy it again if I have time to re-watch it a few years later.

[This contains no spoilers]
I started this anime, expecting the usual hot mess you get from combining an industrial age war setting with a fantasy concept. Usually, anime like this get convoluted, lose focus and resort to blindly padding the plot with action sequences and tropes. They also end up allowing their sub-genres (like comedy and romance) to dominate the plot, and in turn, stagnate progression. The first episode forecasted that prediction, and I was certain that I didn't need to give it my usually 3 episode trail to determine if I liked it, so I forgot about it for a while. However, this week I ... thought that I might stick to my original principal of giving shows a fair 3 episode trail and just use my train ride home from work to give it a fair try (since I had almost let Youjo Senki slip out of my redar for the same reason - only to realise that I had missed out on a great show). Surprisingly the second episode of this was quiet enjoyable and I realised I had misjudged it a little. Nevertheless, it didn't turn out to be a masterpiece or an anime that changed the formula that is commonly applied to the genre it belongs to, but it didn't it turn out to be a complete waste of my time either.

Upon finishing this anime, I was curious to see the general consensus of it, and was surprised to see it had a bellow 7/10 average on MAL weeks after it fished airing, which is a score you'd usually see on something that was so generic to it's core that it didn't even managed not to capture it's own target audience well enough to score a few free 10/10s. Perhaps it's because I score base on comparison to other series I've seen (with consideration of my personal enjoyment included). It baffles me that this anime was in that score range when anime of it's same calibre would still on the top end of the 7/10 rating with worse art and music.

To summaries my thoughts on the plot, the premise was not original in the slightest and reminded me of Berserk, minus the build up that made the betrayal in Berserk all the more dramatic. Nonetheless, the show did not divert the focus like I previously predicted and kept a good pace for it's progression, while changing up the formula each episode to not make it feel less like an episodic series where the reset switch was constantly pressed to extend the plot further. By this I mean, despite having the opportunity to include some comedy and romance (to potentially mask the fact that the story may not have substance), it went straight to the point and gave you the explanations you needed then jumped into to action sequences - which didn't last for more than a third of the episode and had dialogue that added to the plot instead of reiterations of it. Surprisingly, it didn't keep you with the same set of main characters and didn't always follow the format of "discovery, investigation, interactions and fight sequence" which it had for a few episodes - instead you had some episodes dedicated to looking into the backgrounds of characters who had been established as the villains of this anime (who were anomalies in a few cases and no villains) and you had some episode revisiting previous aspects of the plot to further reflect on them.

On the other hand, the plot didn't avoid the many tropes you'd find within these kind of story. It had randomly included a female solider character with oversized boobs to constantly act as the ice breaker and to be the token strong woman character (which I see inserted into plots like this sometimes) - despite some of the other main characters being able to easily assume that role more tastefully. Her presence was mostly unnecessary, and her lines could have been given to a less flamboyant character that didn't need time invested in them to have some boob physics for an unrealistically massive pair of breasts - which are boldly displayed (while mostly uncovered) during serious dialogue.... It honestly ruined the vibe of the anime.

In addition, sometimes it felt like the plot didn't dig deep enough into the backgrounds of certain characters and missed opportunities to more comprehensively look into the mindset of villains. At times, there wasn't enough time spent in showing characters transition between different emotional states, so you would get stubborn and angry characters become submissive and calm in the next scene, which would break immersion. Also a lot of the lore of the setting wasn't explained at all or in depth, you were left to assume the setting was some 19th century industrial American cowboy setting, since that's all you could gather from the visuals. Though I do appreciate that unlike my experience with many anime of this genre, I wasn't subjected to a complicated explanation of the politics and factions and then expected to remember it, it spread out some of the explanations of politics and kept it simple - albeit too simple sometimes.

In terms of the voice acting and music, it was decent and was good enough to set the mood. The voices fit each characters and the music usually fit the scene. I can't say it did anything amazing, but it didn't have any flaws either in my opinion, so "good enough" is the best way to describe it. However the art was indeed above average, with MAPPA not resorting to using CGI for some of the action every scenes with a lot of movements, body transformations and lib distortion. The designs for uniforms, hair styles and the look of guns were well thought out and considered the setting well. The backgrounds were the usual mediocre stuff, so I can't give it much praise, but overall there was a decent amount of effort displayed through the character design, animation and presentation style - and it was definitely was not an anime filled with lazy and loose animation and character designs like some of it's counterparts.

So in conclusions, I think this anime isn't something to write home about, but it seems to also not be deserving of it's poor reception, when at best it was lacking certain element, rather than being completely void of them (like character development). I feel like the above average art and animation, as well as it's consistent focus on a premise (that is decent enough to enjoy) and the fact that the execution was not too shallow, boring or filled with repetition - makes this a 7/10 at the very least to me. I say that as someone who was probably not the target audience for this anime - since I'm not being a huge fan of action fantasies and value dialogue heavy plot with character development over fight sequences. I managed to enjoy this series despite my preferences, and I think that's great.

[No spoiler review]
It's ironic that I just wrote that disclaimer, considering I'm about to tell you that there is nothing to spoil - unless of course you consider what is already a stale and flavourless anime as something worth consuming.

If you haven't notice by the score and opening line, I didn't enjoy this show, and don't think it's worth your time - which could be better spent proving Obama is white. Initially the anime draws you in with an interesting snippet from a future episode, one that was audacious and just screamed "This anime is filled with ironic and over the top sexual humour". And ... then we a greeted with the generic male protag who's just the observer/victim in this adventure and plays the all so important task of commenting on everything in the most unoriginal way possible. By this point you'll realised you've found what anime archaeologists call "cliche". It doesn't get any better from there with the full generic set of side character who felt like they need a pair of square brackets with the words "Insert unique characteristics" embedded in them.

"Alright, it had generic character, what anime doesn't?" - You say. While I can't expect every anime to have a totally original set of characters with an unheard of combinations of traits, I expect it to use it's generic base structure to construct a unique plot or series of situations that I haven't seen more than a dozen times before. And unfortunately the anime fails to do that with the set ups for jokes always being ones that almost force you to roll your eyes as you anticipate the sexual comedic situation that they thought up - which are barely on par with the comedic product of a 7th grader new to puberty giggling over the mention of the word "Penis" in his biology classes. It come nowhere near the lever as Seitokai Yakuindomo which had it's petty boring moments but created an elaborate twist of events that lead to funny misunderstanding and setups for really good puns and clever sex jokes. Here we get no elaborate situation outside of the characters looking at people in the wrong angle - hence misunderstanding a situation that takes effort to misinterpret. It starts to get old when the main characters act surprised in situations that they would clearly be able to decrypt and class as a misunderstanting - at least in Seitokai Yakuindomo the characters were shown to be aware that there was a misunderstanding but went with the flow purposefully because they enjoyed messing with the main character - in ShoBitch there's a constant stream of what seems like genuine shock followed by a reset in all emotion and a full sweep on any saved data from previous situations - which make me reminiscent of how a brand new episodes of the Simpsons started post 2007 where the consequence of actions were volatile.

So why bother giving it a score above the lowest? Well I can't lie and say there wasn't genuinely good puns and jokes here and there - though that quantity of them is minuscule to the point that the the really bad ones eclipse it. I also can't say the above average art style didn't enchant me enough to keep me from dropping it. The art isn't amazing but from other anime I've seen like this - such as hajimete no gal - I can say it deserves some brownie points for the slightly better art direction (and story direction considering how unbearable Hajimete no gal's plot got). It is by all means watchable, there's just not much you'll get out of it. It won't have you slamming your head on the table as much as some other mentionable Ecchi comedy anime and I think many will enjoy the somewhat disturbing "homosexual misunderstandings" - If I can paraphrase it to that, they're definitely one of the most extreme jokes when it comes to misunderstanding between 2 male characters.

There's not much to be said about the generic sound track so I think I'll conclude. Who is this anime for? Probably people who are into 7th grade dirty humour or new to the ecchi comedy genre of anime and don't want something as intense as Seitokai Yakuindomo. However even if that is the case I'd recommend you just don't bother wasting your time and search for an alternative, because this anime will frankly put you off the genre if you're giving it's your first try and it will leave you unsatisfied if you came for a good laugh, a decent romance or even something to tease your sexual desires with (If you're looking for ecchi you're better off somewhere else, this is pretty much void of it visually other than covered breasts moving around). If you want the a better alternative with 2 seasons and an upcoming movie go look up the one I've referenced 3 times now, I don't think I need to retype it here.

The problem with this anime is that it struggles to find it's own Identity. Is it a Comedy harem? A seinen romance? Or perhaps a psychological drama?! The anime had mixed and match sub genres that were in conflict with each other as they did not, nor could not mixed without adverse affects.

Within this struggle are poorly developed characters that make no absolute sense, such as Fujinomiya - who represented the spontaneous insertion of harem as a sub genre. She and the characters were strangers and pretty much remained strangers by definition. Her backstory turned out to be anti-climatic, despite it having some potential, ... and frankly, her presence in the anime had no purpose, aside from trolling the audience. This redundancy with character traits and presence was a common sight in the anime.

In fact all the characters can be summed up with one world - "horrendous". You had your basics set of Visual novel characters. The Himedere, the Kuudere, the sickly observer/lover, the energetic/popular girl, etc. That set up is fine if you get creative with it, but in this case nothing extra was added to their characteristics. Most anime modify these traits - for example a self-proclaimed rich girl who's father is actually bankrupt, or a cold-hearted girl who enjoys the company of domestic animals. In this anime we get all the default traits with the default back stories.

The concept was great, but where it fell short was it's execution. It could have went down any route, but it crippled it's outcome - by choosing to make a story more suited for a Romance/Drama - into a cheesy comedy with unimaginative scenarios, and completely redundant characteristics - that obviously have the intent to amplify the comedy, but fail to do so. The story is honestly pathetic, with it taking short cuts to skip look dramatic build ups in exchange some progression. It's pretty much forced to since the comedy genre slows down progression and at times makes it stagnant .

What personally ticked me off was the fact that whenever the opportunity to thicken the plot came around, they ruined it with a gag or just outright ignored it so they could progress onto a beach episode or school festival scene that just reiterated the same sections of the plot and character traits, such as the Main character's motives.

The art wasn't that bad, nor are the special. The art is the sub standard 2 tone drawings with a bit of glow added in the few romance senses. It was simple with only basic creases outlined on characters and an environment that has minimal affects on the animation. I wasn't a fan of the over sized boobs, the clearly unrealistic uniform (which seemed to have no consistency) nor the comic comedy drawing style. The sound was decent - but again- nothing special. I liked the really audacious tune they played in sticky situations, but the rest again was sub standard and boring.

Overall did I enjoy the anime? No. Will you? Most likely not.
As a fan of comedy and an avid watcher of Romance anime, I can't advocate this to any anime veteran, considering how unoriginal it is. It seems like a nice starter for someone new to anime (If the understood Anime cliches and basic Japanese culture), but even then I can only imagine it putting them off anime or the romance genre. It's deceptive high school seems to be from it's heavy marketing (target at casual through something like Crunchy ads) and the appeal of it's synopsis (which likely has a few stubborn watchers on the defensive, as they wait for the plot to get better to tell the early sceptics "I told you so!")

[This review contains NO spoilers]
This is a story about the importance of listening and the effects of not doing so. It something we can all understand and learn from.

Social anxiety, Suicide, self loath/pity, forgiveness/acceptance, attachment, the desire/difficulty to be connect and most of all the complexity of human communication and emotions - all covered in this Movie as you delve into a journey to unravel a facade to find emotions we all contain and hide from others to void the difficulty of conveying them. We follow a character who closes his mind and refuses not to listen to create his own cynical narrative and in ... it we learn voice (koe) - or communication - has many shapes and forms (Katachi) and that it's shallow to think it's all monotonous.

When I heard Kyoto - with their legendary art style - was going to make a favourite manga of mine into a movie, I contemplated packing my bags and going to Japan for it's premier. Sadly I lacked the funds so I had to settle for the nearest cinema in London - 3 excruciating months after it's release.

It was sad to see the seats half empty, but when the movie started, the 60 year old man behind me was laughing, gasping and getting emotional along with the rest of the diverse crowd and this shows how well the message of the movie resonated and how universal the enjoyment was.

The plot evoked a roller coaster of emotions, some easy to emphasis with, and others MADE easy to resonate with! The plot starts vigorously but with a pace you could easily keep up with. It slightly stagnates to build context until the plot's climax - which got my spine tingling - a climax that I don't want to ruin for the unsuspecting! But the stagnation is what stops it from getting a 10/10 for it's plot. The strategic retreat from the plot's focus enabled for a good few laughs and set up what was to come very well, but it turned a 2 hours movie into what felt like a 3 hour movie, where I was anticipating the end mid way though as it seemed like they had reached a happily ever after. It somewhat ruined the experience for me and I felt like it could have been executed better by adding some more romantic develop (because I felt more pity for the characters than love).

I hate to be the guy who boasts how much better the source content was, but it's necessary to mention that a lot of the 60 + chapters of plot couldn't fit into the 2 hours time frame - hence we got hastily implemented and unexplained developments that the manga could easily clear up (one of the biggest being that fat that they all set out to make a movie and that is the real crux of how the MC makes and learns to socialise with friends), frankly the manga and movie could be considered separate entities considering their different approaches and focuses to this plot. This is a clear limitation the anime movie medium of story telling has so I can't personally penalise too much for doing the best it could, certainly better than other movie adaptations - and I rate based on comparison. There was room to fix some of the issues related to this, such as by removing some of the pretty/still/un-progressive scenes in exchange for progressive and informative development from the source content. Then again removing them could have made it feel too dense/melancholic and would likely have ruined the nice pace it set out and the mood those particular scenes set - so it hard to criticise.

The art was stunning, and Kyoto included their trademark extra, where the frames are never still - there are always subtle things happening in the background that just adds the cherry on top of their memorising art. The art could get any anime brownie points including Phantom world. Every nook and carny was accounted for, from the curves in the fingers, the change in colour form skin to nail to the glow emitted by the bright lighting and the distortion of their realistic dynamic multi tone shadows. Kyoto kept to their cutesy shiny art style with tranquil backgrounds and scenery - and props for their consistently amazing colour pallet.

The voice acting was ace, like most anime - at this point it's a given considering how serious people take voice acting in Japan. The music hit the spot, it started of with an English song, which may have confused the Japanese audience if they were unable to translate the lyrics, but it was pretty clever and a good way to summarise the first few chapters of the Manga which the movies wanted to power through with to save time. The Musics crept up on you and exploded sometimes, others it gently wrapped it's arms around you as you desperately tried to hold the tears back, And as your face prepared to unleash an unforced smile, the music came in to amplify it.

All in all, coming out of the cinema was hard, there was a plethora of emotions and thoughts swirling around in my mind, it created a moral dilemma that still has my mind in conflict now. Nothing felt too cliche apart for the typical anime personalities, which can be over looked considering what the plot done with them. The movie was truly touching, the ascetics was mind-blowingly good and the music was on point.

I enjoyed it as an avid fan of Romance, particular dramatic ones - despite the romance not being completely conclusive in the movie. I enjoyed this more than any other anime of it's type, and I'm sure anyone with the same taste wouldn't hesitate to give it a 10/10 and others wouldn't dare give it bellow an 8 unless it's not their thing.

*=======================================================================================*

Personal Onion/side note:

Many had an issue with what they saw as an emotionally manipulative plot that stereo typed emotions and disabilities and thought it gave a shallow outlook on them. However I think expecting a movie that tackles these theme elegantly with precision is too much to ask for, especially of the length of this plot and with it's density in content. Some people are choosing to get offended by how deaf people and suicidal people are presented here - as if this anime was tailored to be the political ambassador for these groups of people and has a duty outline the existence of a variation of people in these groups, as well as representing them as strong independent people - rejecting (or at least wanting to mask) the existence of vulnerable people in this category. It seems like this leads them to think adding convenience in a plot and a catalyst for progression is inherently a bad thing, as if the purpose of media itself isn't to entertain with by showing a collision of stark stereotypes that enable recognition and empathy (as well as saving time on unnecessarily developing a character from birth to present day) but to make a perfect recreation or reality without abstraction and stereotypes of entities (something even a computer is not capable of) that is primarily to educate viewers and not provide entertainment that's not difficult to decipher.
Of course not everyone who make such points fall into the pitfall of expecting too much form their medium, but many seem to give these point significant weight in their score, with a few minor flaws seeming to elicit a deduction more than 3+ points out of 10. They are free to do this and I have no right to lecture them on their scoring system, but I just think it's inefficient, ineffective and lacks the investment of deep thought with a widened scope - IE. it clashes with my philosophy. If you fall into this category and can enlighten me on your perspective I'd really appreciate it.