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I think this anime is a good companion piece to the game itself.
Although, standalone, without prior knowledge of the game, I can see it maybe being a little hard to watch.

One complaint I read about was that the pacing of this anime is too quick, some scenes are long while others are very short.
The anime also tries to follow the calendar that is ingame, though it sometimes skips a lot of days forward.
I did notice that while watching it myself, but then I thought about it for only some minutes.
What the anime is skipping out on is the downtime between more major events, it won't ... spend time on showing the days where you do almost nothing, like grinding the current dungeon or walking around Inaba.
So I think the pacing is not really a problem, it is even less of a problem if you have already played the game.

Most of the scenes are faithful to the game, it even uses a lot of the music that is in the game, along with completely new tracks.
The fighting scenes that are spread out a bit are fine enough, it mostly depicts the game mechanics and combat well.
Other than some things, things you can't do in the game, like putting your Persona in front of a party member to shield them from an attack, two party members using their turn at the same time.. etc. Good to see it is taking advantage of the difference in medium.

Persona 4 is a long game with a lot of story beats, long social links and a bunch of other content, I think they managed to cram it all into 26 episodes well enough. It's not a completely perfect adaptation but still great.

This anime also has some completely new scenes or added something new to already existing scenes.
For example the scenes where we get backstory on the characters, and some of the social link events.
I won't spoil anything, cause it was pretty fun for me, a player who loves the game, to return and watch what they did with this.
To me it feels more like it was meant for people who played the game, so they could experience the story again but with new insight and some nods to things that the fanbase think about the game.
Because of that, I think going into this completely fresh, without having played the game, there probably is a lot you won't catch onto or understand. It is mostly smaller things that will be hard to appreciate.

That is why I made this review, I've judged this anime as an extension, or rather, a companion piece to the game, instead of it being its own thing.
So, I want to recommend this to anyone that likes the game and other Persona 4 media, to try it out.

I didn't originally plan on making a review, cause I rarely do, but reading through the other ones made me want to.
This story is sorta short, being only 25 chapters, the pacing makes up for it though.
(There aren't any explicit spoilers, by the way)

Kase-san is one of the two best romance genre stories I have ever read.
I'll skip the part where I summarize what the basic story is about, and instead go to the reason I wrote a review.

Kase-san is a rare encounter for me when it comes to romance manga, for one very special reason.
This story, their interactions with eachother, all of it feels ... reasonable, I could be fooled if someone told me it was a true story.
The romance and love feels like it tries to actually make a middle ground between cuteness and realism, to me.
Even with the chapter count of it, it still takes itself slow, it doesn't rush anything other than the very short time skips rarely.

Yes it's very cute, the sweet gardening comittee president noticing and slowly falling in love with the popular track team star from afar.
Even the best friend character, Mikawachi, is always nice to see when she appears, she's not obnoxious or anything bad, but actually feels like the best friend of Yamada. They've both been friends since the start of the school, and they get along well.

I'll stop rambling and get to the actual point though..
The whole story takes place across one and a half year, a very happy school year where they both noticed eachother, met up and became inseperable. (Until you get to the sequel manga)

There is more than just the happy moments though, which is what surprised me when I read reviews for it.
This manga is very emotional, or I am very emotional, cause a LOT of the story content was somber or just pretty sad, pretty much tear shedding.
It is not only happy, but also full of the anxiety you could feel, which I appreciate.
I think it accurately portrays realistic problems that some people can face in a relationship.

I'm not talking about the dumb anime trope where they make weird misunderstandings constantly, but I'm talking about things like not being open enough to eachother. Bottling up bad feelings, and not communicating so you can both help eachother in making the relationship better. That is among the many problems I'm talking about. Of course, there is one certain problem that the manga puts the most focus on, and it is also the climax of the story, but I won't even explicitly say what it is, cause it is such an obvious thing if you think about it for a minute (It could also be a spoiler, actually).

Essentially, before I write too much, I want to say that this manga is great if you're like me.
I like romance stories that take place in a real world setting, during modern times, and the whole thing is actually leaning toward realism instead of just entertainment or badly written relationships.

So, that is why I made this review, so I can highly recommend this to anyone that also likes more realistic feeling romance manga.

This'll be a pretty short review to mostly just say that this particular anthology manga is pretty good and barely has any connection to Gou even if Gou is in the title.

This manga is an anthology full of multiple different stories from different mangaka and they all have different art styles.
The thing that I want to say the most, is that most of them have nothing to do with Gou at all.

Other than Gou being in the title, the only Gou things about this manga is that a few of the stories use the Gou art style.
One of the stories also explicitly has a spoilerific ... Satoko in it.
All the stories do not actually pertain to Gou (Other than one), and this manga can be enjoyed without having read Gou.

That is why I have this at a 10 while Gou is below that, because these stories are all effectively one-shots.
So, are the stories actually good?
I think they are, I certainly had a fun experience reading them all.

I'll throw some examples from my memory so people can have some ideas of what to expect (Cause the synopsis is bare bones).
The first story in the manga follows Rika waking up at the Hinamizawa branch school to see that all the club members suddenly turned tiny. This is among the multiple gag, gimmick stories in the anthology, they are fun nonetheless.
A different story is about Rena's signature dress getting completely dirty, then she meets Shion who wants to dress her up in tons of different outfits. Another story is about the sisterly relationship between Shion and Satoko, as they both wait for Satoshi.. Another story is about Rika getting isekai'd into a fantasy world where all the other characters fit various fantasy roles and they go on an adventure (Similar to Kira). Also a story about the club members all individually finding something kyute to gift to Rena, because she has been feeling down.
Yes, the tone shift in these stories is a bit major sometimes. Some of them are wholehearted fun and the other could be a little somber. That's what Higurashi is though.

That's my major point with this review, it is enjoyable without having experienced Gou.
And I recommend experiencing this rather than the main story of Gou, really.
The only thing is, as I wrote earlier, a single story has explicit spoilers for Gou, so if you care about Gou spoilers, I'd avoid the third story in this manga, which would be chapter three.

This'll be a pretty short review, as this manga is short too, so mostly anything story-wise is almost a spoiler.
Kokoroiyashi-hen is the best epilogue to Matsuribayashi-hen, in my opinion.

The story of this manga is set soon after the conclusion to the main story.
It follows mainly Rika and her huge bucketlist of things that she wants to do now that they are all free.
More specifically, this manga is about her wish to travel somewhere with everyone to have fun.
We also get to see everyone else and hear about their immediate plans forward too, and what they're currently up to.

I think, compared to every other continuation of ... Higurashi, this one makes the most sense to me.
Realistically, this is probably what would happen forwards in their lives.
Yes, I'm pointing fingers at both the Gou and Rei manga.
(Outbreak and Saikoroshi also exist but they're actually great)

I highly recommend for anyone who enjoys Higurashi to read this manga, even if it might be a lot shorter than any other alternative continuation.
It is also a manga original chapter, unlike the main story which you can experience through the novel.

(Spoilers for the main story)
The thing I remember the most about this manga, a whole year after reading it, is actually the sort of soft plot twist midway through.
Not to spoil it, but it involves Hanyuu and Rika.
I really like how this manga treated Hanyuu, as an actual adult and parental figure for Rika, instead of a cream puff brain.
It also surprised me with something that I haven't seriously thought of before, and toward the end of the manga, it really puts that entire idea in the spotlight. I think it was conveyed beautifully. (You'll know what I'm talking about after having read it)
A final note too, this is a rewritten review, I originally made one in November of 2023.

I really enjoyed the anime, and for being an anime, I went to the manga afterwards expecting it to be even better despite the change in medium.
I'll start by saying that this is really a faulty review, as I have not actually read the entire manga.
However, that is the major problem with this manga, if you're an English reader like me, it is just not possible to read all of it.
There are no official translations in English and any fan translations were last updated more than a decade ago.
Despite that, I still recommend it highly.

For the chapters that can be read in English, well, they ... are simply very great.
The artist and art style are different from the anime, but oh so wonderful, that is what I love most about the manga.
It just looks so good in most panels, especially the big close up drawings.

Story wise though? From what I'm able to read, it is pretty different from the anime.
Difference is not the story itself but how it is told, the anime is sort of episodic but still linear, in the end it goes somewhere.
The manga has mostly very short chapters where it focuses around one thing, in each one it is told by what the title of the chapter is.
It is more "episodic" than the anime, really, which is not bad at all.
Sort of gives a nice difference to the anime, you can enjoy them both without experiencing the exact same thing twice.
Well, the same story events do happen in both manga and anime, but weirdly enough the order of events is way different.

The biggest nail the anime hit for me though.. In the manga, there are a lot fewer characters.
It goes both ways, there are some characters that are only in the manga.
But the majority of the characters in the anime are not in the manga, which has led me to think the anime is the better version to experience really.

Now, I really love the anime, and I love the manga too.
But in short, I really wish I could actually read the rest of it, without learning how to read Japanese.
Oh right, another bonus of the manga is the nice extra drawings at the start and ending of each chapter, I think they are neat.

One last thing, while I do recommend the manga.. I really think the anime is enough on its own, especially if you can't read Japanese.
The story in the anime is already very great by itself and it wraps up nicely at the end.
Including all the other characters that are only in the anime (I won't list all of them, but there are a lot), I really think the anime is the more definitive version.

But hey, those are just my opinions though, and I'm not even able to read the entire manga, I might aswell be judging a bit too hard.

This is less of a review and more along the lines of advice.
Pupa, the anime, is really bad.
Each episode is only four minutes long and the entire show is almost forthy minutes long.
The only redeeming quality of the entire anime is the art style and soundtrack.
With only two positives, I'll shortly say that I do like the art style the anime has, and the music is pretty good too.
Thing is, other than the opening song titled "Pupa", and the ending song, the entire soundtrack is unreleased.

What I really want to tell people is.. Read the manga.
The anime severely cut out A LOT of scenes and ... content, the first episode alone has three or four missing scenes that are in the manga.
And it simply becomes worse the more you watch, by episode two and three, there are so many scenes removed that the entire plot barely exists and is pieces of a shell from its former self.
The scenes that are left in the anime, are pretty bad, especially later into the show.

Most of them are wildly different from what happened in the manga, and they are even played in the wrong order.
Yes, the episodes shuffle up some of the events, for example, scene A happens in the future, while scene B is going to happen right now. However, it is switched up so that scene A happens first, then the scene that follows after A, before B is allowed to be shown.
(None of scenes I am talking about are originally flashbacks, the events of the story are just played out in the wrong order for some reason)

Essentially eighty percent of the story is gone and what story the anime has is mostly not in line with the manga.
The hardest offender in my memory is from episode two and forward. Because of the missing scenes, and the messed up timeline, a lot of the context of what is going on is gone, the entire thing is just a mess. The laboratory scenes were especially bad.

So, here I come to the actual point of my review.
The only reason I chose to recommend it in this review, is solely because of the manga, not the anime.
Though to be fair, watching the anime after having read the manga surely is an experience (Cause it is adapted horribly).
Manga wise, it is pretty good, there is actually a larger story and everything just makes sense.
As you can see, for the anime I've rated it a low four, but with the manga I have it up at a nine.
It is also decently long with five volumes and thirty-four chapters.
This is not the manga page though, so I'll only recommend steering away from the anime and instead trying out the manga.