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A great show if you can overlook its faults.

Now that may sound really stupid because isn't anything going to be good if you ignore the bad bits? So let me explain. First, it's a slow-burn romance, which is not a bad thing in itself, but it's slow enough that the initial story arc is just too long to fit comfortably in a single cour. And that's inevitably lead to massive amounts of cutting and rejigging, which would be a huge task to pull off for any studio but was evidently just too much for Project No.9. The end result is a story that doesn't flow ... as well as it might and has awkward moments where characters are forced to say things out of context in order to clumsily bridge over missing sections.

Second, there's the animation. It starts off just fine but then rapidly deteriorates. The characters often don't stay on-model and there are even some scenes where the characters' ages appear to change between shots, or where Mahiru, who is supposed to be stunningly beautiful, turns into a potato. It really shouldn't have been difficult to make this anime because the majority of scenes take place in Amane's apartment, yet so much screen time is taken up with panning shots of static backgrounds or ultra-close-ups of the characters' faces so that their lips don't have to be animated whilst they are speaking. That said, the voice acting is really good and the OST is nicely atmospheric too, but apart from that it really is bargain basement stuff. Covid-related production issues? Maybe, but I can only review it as it is, not as it might have been.

As for the actual story, at first it might seem like a typical trope-infested "top-tier girl inexplicably falls for hopeless loser boy" romance, but once things develop, you see that's not actually how things are at all. Mahiru and Amane wear their outward personalities almost like armor but they are both quite different underneath. So different, in fact, that you wonder sometimes if it's Amane who's really the angel and not Mahiru.

Amane's character might seem to be totally unrealistic for his being so utterly unable to realise that Mahiru has fallen hard for him despite all the huge hints she keeps dropping in the later stages, but it captures perfectly that mix of elation and agony when you begin to wonder if a person might actually have feelings for you yet at the same time you worry that if you try to do anything about it then you might ruin everything. Admittedly Amane's hangups go way beyond that, which seems strange for someone apparently brought up in an open and loving family, though perhaps he feels they were too open about it!

On the whole, then, the show has serious problems, but the story and the characters somehow manage to shine through. I wish I could score it higher than I did, but I guess there has to be some justice in this world.

I don't care if the visual style is more than reminiscent of Afro Samurai. I don't care if the plot is Wacky Races with a side of Akira and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. I don't even care even if Muttley has grown up to become a commentator. This is an instant classic and goes right into my top ten.