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I was really looking forward to this anime, especially since it was so positively received by the anime community on TikTok, but unfortunately it falls short in critical areas, namely: pacing, storytelling, and the overall anime direction.

I'm a big fan of the manga. That being said, I'm not usually one to tout the source material to say it's always better than the adaptation. In many cases, I actually prefer the anime over the manga because there are certain scenes that are just better animated, like fight scenes which can get pretty confusing in black and white panels. Animes also have the unique opportunity to fix ... issues that existed in the manga, such as pacing and transitions, or improve certain aspects to make scenes more impactful such as as adding character development or subtle visual elements. All of that to say--I came into this anime excited to see it translated into the anime medium.

Unfortunately, I think the director and storyboard staff misinterpreted Horimiya. The manga is a rom-com, with unique and funny characters, that occasionally have deep and moving interactions and backstories. Those serious moments are very much interspersed throughout the lighter, funnier, happier, and slice of life moments so it never felt too serious or dramatic. It made sure that you saw a lot of these fun, daily interactions not only to keep a lighter feel to the story, but to also better acquaint the reader with the characters, show in depth character development, and make readers feel a deeper connection to the characters. All of this groundwork and thoughtful pacing led to the serious climaxes being very impactful. If Hori was crying, I was crying, if Miyamura was in pain, I felt my stomach sinking.

From the opening to the very last episode, the anime skips all of this important groundwork, making Horimiya into an edgy drama that occasionally has funny moments instead of the mature rom-com it was written to be. The vibes are completely off. The opening song and animations are way too serious and depressing. The first episode cuts what feels like an entire volume of Hori and Miyamura getting to slowly know each other, and exposition about the characters, and jumps straight into internal conflict and deep relationship emotions. There's just no way I'm going to be connected enough to characters in the first episode to care about them crying, especially if it's pieced together in a way that makes it seem like they've only known each other for like a week.

This is a reoccurring issue throughout the anime, where they cut exposition and minor character development to quickly get to climatic moments. I guess the director didn't realize how important those small moments were, and how cutting them would lead to anticlimactic, confusing, and quite frankly jarring dramatic moments. The anime is faithful to the manga in that all of the content of the anime was technically in the manga. But the way they pieced it together and the elements they added to certain parts turns it into a very different story. It looks like they tried to make this into an edgy, we're-not-like-other-shoujo's anime by their sound choice, animation choices, and story choices, and then failed at even doing that.

Another side of the pacing issue aside from the selection and emphasis of certain scenes, is the transition between them. Some scenes lingered on screen for way too long, to the point we thought our TV was frozen, while others were cut so abruptly short I just couldn't help but wonder if they were having problems making it within the time allotment for the episode. It felt and looked clunky.

The order of the story clips did not aid in this. The manga is a collection of short stories, with longer ones requiring more exposition interspersed into the shorter stories. Which stories are where and the order of them in the manga is very international. I always thought that every story, no matter how small or seemingly inconsequential, was absolutely necessary, and I had thought at the time that if you got rid of even one of them, the story overall just wouldn't be as good. And I was right. Whether for time purposes or drama purposes, the anime cut out almost EVERY single one of these smaller stories. Outside of ruining the exposition, connection to characters, and character development like I mentioned before, it makes the transition between stories so jarring. The smaller stories in the exact order they were in were necessary as buffers, as transitions, and as pieces of information for character development and for the bigger, more climatic stories to flow naturally, make sense, and be more impactful. Every single climatic scene (of which there were many crammed into each episode) in Horimiya felt anticlimactic at best and downright jarring and confusing at worst. So these scenes that are supposed to have high emotional impact just completely miss.

And then after one of these high tension scenes, without any warning, it cuts to a comedic moment. In the manga, it was clear when we were switching from one story to another. It's a lot clearer and easier to understand due to panel and page structure. In anime, if you want to keep this same structure, you have to do something similar to indicate to the viewer that we're switching to something else now or else it looks like you're just randomly cutting between seemingly unrelated scenes. A title/break card is sometimes used for that and I think would have worked well in this case. But no. One moment a character would be plagued by their past, and the next there would be a joke about Hori's kink, and the next would be a different scene of the same character being plagued by their past. If they didn't want to use title cards, they should have reordered the scenes so it made more sense as a comprehensive story. It makes more sense to have larger sections that tell a full story rather than trying to maintain chronological order when you've cut so many little pieces out.

That being said, there are some positives. The voice actors are great and so is the general animation. Unfortunately, even with good individual elements like voice acting, animation, and source material, the directing really fumbled this one. The director and storyboarding team misinterpreted the essence of this story, which turned it into an overdramatic mess.

With all of the great shoujos coming out now and getting anime adaptations, I would recommend skipping over this anime. If you'd like to see a proper adaptation where you can tell the director and studio not only loved the story, but really understood it, I'd recommend Skip to Loafer. It really does seem like a love letter to the Manga from the Studio. If you read and watch Horimiya and Skip to Loafer in a short time frame, you'll really see the difference a good director who understands the story and the mangakas intention makes.

It is enjoyably bad. If your guilty pleasure is isekai trash and you're looking for something to casually watch while you do other things, then you might casually enjoy this.

Objectively, it is not good. The main character is a Kaneki Ken ripoff who went through his transformation from demure to edgelord in a matter of like 3 minutes. The harem girls are all quite cliche tropes whose introductions are increasingly rushed the further you get into the season. The art, oh god, the art is below par at best and Ex-arms bad at worst. That being said... it's bad but it's so bad that ... it's tolerable. The worst animes to me are the ones that had potential and were so close to being decent but ended up being a dumpster fire. This one never had that potential. You know right from the synopsis that it's going to be isekai harem trash. So when stupidly cheesy lines are said, story or plot points are ridiculously rushed, or random CGI is thrown in with the 2D characters, all I could do was laugh. This anime made me laugh more than most proper comedy animes. Like the stupid fight scenes where the characters are acting really serious because it's "life or death" and then the worst CGI dragon you've ever seen emerges and is dragged around the screen with a weird, stationary smoke effect tacked on-- it's just funny!

Therefore, I can say I honestly did casually enjoy this. It's bad, but it's funny, and since I don't care too much about it, it makes for a good show to put on in the background while I'm working.

I started watching this series while I was teaching English in Japan at an Elementary school because a student of mine passionately recommended it to me. She's an aspiring mangaka and her favorite character of all time is Meliodas. To better bond with her and my other children (this series was wildly popular among elementary school age children in Japan at the time), I watched it. It would be casually enjoyable if it wasn't for the child grooming, harassment, and pedophilia.

Like with a lot of shounen and anime in general, the main character's "gag" is harassing/molesting the female lead, aka Elizabeth. It is constant and ... never-ending. They eventually try to justify this with some spoilers that I won't go into here, but my issue is that she doesn't know anything about that justification-- only Meliodas does. She doesn't know why he targets her as his object of molestation and she doesn't like it; it just gets played off though as a quirk and is normalized over time.

The other male leads also have similar issues. Ban's is the least offensive as it's a cliche played out in literally every anime trying to justify a character having sexual relations with a character that was designed to look like a child: she's actually thousands of years old and a mythological creature. I feel like most people don't even register King's problematic behaviors since his character is designed to look like a child, but he's arguably worse than Ban because in his backstory, you spend entire episodes seeing how he literally groomed Diane.

Why am I giving this series this much grief when plenty of other shounen series also laugh off harassment and infantilization? 1) Because it's not a good enough of a show to make it forgivable. 2) Because I personally saw how popular this show was with Japanese children.

Japan has a major issue with pedophilia and sexual harassment. Possession of child pornography wasn't banned until 2014, and that only happened after international backlash essentially forced them to. Up until it was passed, the government and citizens against this ban used the excuse of "artistic freedoms" to justify legalizing the possession of child pornography. Despite having one of the lowest crime rates of any developed nation, it consistently has some of the highest sexual harassment and sexual assault cases per capita out of any developed nation too. There are women-only train cars for a reason.

The things laughed off and normalized throughout this show continue to normalize and perpetuate those behaviors in society. And not just in adults, but in children. This show isn't marketed towards adults. It's a shounen--it's marketed towards kids. My 5th graders IDOLIZE Meliodas. And what are they learning from him? Their idol that they think is so cool is teaching them that it's funny to harass women and molest children. My 5th grade girl who's an aspiring mangaka is learning that if a boy touches her without her consent, that she shouldn't say anything because it's normal and funny, even if it makes her uncomfortable.

It's the obvious societal repercussions that I've seen first-hand that makes me so uncomfortable with this series. Because in the west, we don't think about 8-year-olds watching this show. But the actual demographic and targeted audience of this show is in fact Japanese children. MOST anime are targeted towards Japanese children (anime and manga is considered to be something really only children watch and pass their time with in Japan, although that is changing overtime. After high school, you're supposed to have grown out of that phase like in Western cultures with cartoons.)

Knowing that and knowing a child is the one who recommended this show to me, it just makes me feel really uncomfortable and kind of gross. And the show itself isn't even good enough to justify that.

I was recommended this series by a manga reader with the warning that the main character's a bit gross in the beginning but that he grows past it and that the story and characters focus solely on the plot in the future. Being a veteran anime watcher, I assumed it was the usual hypersexualization of infantilized female characters. But it is in fact NOT the usual, and it does NOT get better in season 2.

The conflict is the care the studio put into this series and the actual beautiful world building the series does. It's the most effort and the best world building I've seen ... put into a fantasy anime since Made In Abyss. The problem is the author. The series feels like it was written by an incel for other incels. Like another reviewer put so well, sensitive topics like rape, pedophilia, cheating, and harassment are played off as gags, but not well enough to pull it off. 7 Deadly Sins is a wildly popular series, particularly in Japan, that has a lot of the same issues as this series with infantilization, child grooming, harassment, and pedophilia, but doesn't feel half as gross as this series. At least in 7 Deadly Sins, they try to make excuses with it like the classic, no she's actually thousands of years old, she just looks like a child. Mushoku Tensei doesn't even try to make excuses. His childhood friend and cousin are blatantly children. His cousin, on top of being a child, is blatantly his cousin. And although he is in a child's body, the show goes out of its way to constantly and blatantly remind you that he is very much a middle-aged man.

In many isekai's where the main character is reincarnated as a child, you usually slowly accept them as a more mature version of their younger age, and the author usually pushes you to make that assimilation because love interests get really creepy really quick if you don't. Mushoku Tensei does not do this. One of the most jarring, and constant, transitions is between the main character speaking and thinking. Rudeus' voice is that of a child. Rudeus' thoughts are played by a voice actor that sounds like a 40-year old shut-in. And its in his thoughts where he grossly thinks about/announces his decision to molest the children around him.

And for everyone hoping it will get better, it hasn't. Season 2, in my opinion, is actually way grosser than season 1, largely because the main character canonically becomes an insestuous pedophile in the second to last episode. I had hope at the end of season 1, which is why I ranked it higher. Season 2 makes it impossible to truly enjoy all the hard work the studio put in and only left me sick to my stomach and honestly shell shocked by the end.

I wish the same production value and care went into making an anime out of literally any of the other amazing fantasy, isekai stories out there, like The Beginning After the End, because this level of dedication could really propel them to the forefront of the genre. And unfortunately, in this case, it's propelling a series that normalizes and perpetuates pedophilia.

Basically, a 9/10 without the main character and gross normalization of rape, cheating, pedophilia, and harassment, 7/10 with it without knowing what happens in season 2, a 0/10 with it while knowing what happens in season 2 because I honestly would not have even started this series if I had known what I know now.

My short, 6-sentence review:

The world building, animation, plot progression, and adventuring levelled up even more this season, but unfortunately so did the grossness of the main character.

I'm conflicted because as a lover of fantasy and isekai, I want to love this series because so much time, care, and hard work obviously went into it from the studio. But the actual incestuous pedophile of a main character (warning: now explicitly cannon with episode 22) makes it impossible to truly enjoy it and only leaves me sick to my stomach and honestly shell shocked by the end.

I wish the same production value and care ... went into making an anime out of literally any of the other amazing fantasy, isekai stories there are, like The Beginning After the End, because this level of dedication could really propel them to the forefront of the genre. And unfortunately, in this case, it's propelling a series that normalizes and perpetuates pedophilia. Basically, a 10/10 without the main character, 6/10 with him because his gross thoughts and actions take that much away from the overall enjoyment of this season.

I've been binging a bunch of isekai romance manhwa's recently and this was one of the best I've read in the genre.

While we all know what isekai's are about, what I liked about this story is the mystery aspect about it. It's not just "why was I sent to this world?" but also "Who's trying to murder me and why?" It has vibes from the isekai reverse harems that send the main character into a dating game as the villainess, but the protag here isn't a villainess.

My favorite part about the story is the characters and some of minor twists that the story takes along ... the way. In Doctor Elise, characters play out exactly as you expect and the main protag's personality plays very much to the good girl image. Raeliana and the Duke, however, are like the opposite to that. They're sassy and sarcastic and flawed and quirky. They're combative towards one another and very much are an enemies to lovers sort of pairing. They have fun personalities and feel just very human, which makes their interactions with one another and the world entertaining to watch. Some of their interactions actually made me laugh out loud (which is very rare for me when reading a manga/manhwa).

The manhwa isn't perfect. There are moments in the story that I felt were rushed. For some of the climax moments, I wish they had drawn out the moment more with more panels because it felt like we were zooming by pivotal and much anticipated moments. I wish we got to see more of the physical moments between Raeliana and the Duke, not just because spiciness is appreciated, but because at one point it felt like we jumped from no touchy to essentially married couple.

With that said, it was still a very entertaining read that I would highly recommend it to someone else looking for a completed manhwa in this genre.

I'm not sure why this anime is ranked so low. Without taking my personal entertainment into consideration, I believe this anime should be a solid 7.

There's been a MAJOR lack of representation of women in sports animes. So when I saw Harukana Receive and Hanebado coming out this season, I was so excited! I had low expectations going in, especially with the ecchi genre tacked on to it, but I'm having a great time so far.

The animation is absolutely gorgeous!! The sand particles are animated to perfection and the different camera angles help to capture the difficulty and excitement of this sport. Even if ... the story was crap (which it's not), the animation alone makes this anime a treat to watch.

The voice acting and music in the anime is nice, with some numbers shining more than others. I wouldn't say any of the music's going to end up on my playlist, but it's pleasant and adds to the scenes.

Despite one of the genres being listed as an ecchi, there is a surprisingly minimal amount of fanservice. I'm not sure if this will increase as we continue, but I kind of doubt it as the anime has set itself up to be mainly about volleyball and character development/relationships. I know, surprising right? A sports anime with women as protagonists that is ACTUALLY about the sport they're playing?? Revolutionary.

Now mind you, yes, there is fan service. There are butts and boobs, and they do wear bikinis. But all of this is pretty normal in beach volleyball. Now just hear me out...

As someone who's played court and beach volleyball for about 11 or 12 years now (and participated in both tournaments and school matches), I can positively say that this anime is surprisingly accurate to beach volleyball. Yes, we wear bikinis when we play. Yes, we do tend to wear tighter bottoms and tops so everything stays in place better. And yes, we get to pick the matching bikinis we want to wear so it can be as conservative (if a bikini can be that) or scandalous as the pair wants. I was excited to see how much accurate information was given about the sport from the outfits to the actual rules and shots themselves. You can actually learn a lot about beach volleyball and how to play it from this anime.

I also love how it's women playing beach volleyball. I have loved both volleyball and anime from a young age, so I've been waiting for a volleyball anime with women in it for a very long time. We got Haikyuu, which I was happy about, but was still frustrated with because they even made it a conflict in the beginning how their middle school didn't have a men's volleyball team because it's such a female dominated sport. So if mainly women play it, why not have a sports anime about women instead?

Overall, I believe this anime deserves more love. It has surprisingly minimal fan service but plentiful and accurate information about beach volleyball. I think this anime will surprise people with it's focus on character development and the relationship development between the pairs. People who want to enjoy an anime with gorgeous animation about how some girls love playing beach volleyball while learning about beach volleyball with the main character as she develops into a full-fledged player, and doesn't mind a little fan service along the way, should watch Harukana Receive.

UPDATE: After finishing Harukana Receive, I still stand by most of this review. The animation was pretty with some exceptions, that being episode 7's terrible CGI. Around episode 7 is when it got a bit cringy and they seemed to rush the story. I much would have preferred to see them training, honing in on new tricks and techniques, and doing practice matches or smaller tournaments before the prelims. Some of what I liked in the beginning got lost because of this rush. That on top of ep 7 and some cringy moments made me drop my score down to a 7. I still enjoyed watching this anime though, especially since it picked back up at the end with the prelims. I just wish the whole anime could have been as good as that last match. Still recommend it to those who enjoy watching girls develop as characters through beach volleyball.

I really enjoyed Kuzu no Honkai because the romance and characters felt more real to me than any other anime I've seen in the romance genre. While aspects of the story weren't exactly the most realistic (especially for a high school in Japan), the complex emotions that the characters were dealing with and trying to convey throughout the whole anime is what felt very genuine to me.

Generally, romance animes tend to be in the shoujo category and have very simple, cookie cutter characters and reused plot devices. They tend to retell the same story of a rose-colored, first love that satiates a certain kind ... of hunger if that's what you're looking for, but doesn't leave you with anything more than that. Kuzu no Honkai really delves into a bunch of complex emotions and takes its time in elaborating on some of them. Moments like when Hanabi and Ecchan were hanging out and Hanabi was like "I don't want to label this" were fantastic and very realistic moments to me. Love is hard to define. And it can be different from person to person and relationship to relationship. It was fascinating getting to see each characters' complex emotions regarding love and desire and personal opinions about themselves and their self-worth. These different perspectives and the mature way in which the topic was approached and delivered was absolutely compelling. All throughout the anime we get to explore characters' sexualities, their tumultuous emotions, their thought processes behind why they do certain things or why they think this way, and learn about them as they learn about themselves. I would almost go as far as to say that this is a coming of age anime since we get to live through the casts' self discoveries and final maturations.

The beautiful thing about Kuzu no Honkai is that it's a seinen, and therefore has a more mature, if not cynical, view on romance as a whole. Because Japanese culture is very homogeneous and places a lot of emphasis on avoiding real conflict, female innocence, and gender roles, we rarely get something that deviates from the norm in the romance genre, especially since the anime market has settled down from the experimental years of the early to late 2000's. This anime bends this genre in a darker, more pragmatic way that I, personally, have not seen before. Refreshed isn't exactly the word I'm looking for, more like I feel very satisfied after watching Kuzu no Honkai, like I've gotten to watch something I've been waiting to experience for years now.

Some additional notes:
5 seconds into the first episode and I was in love with the animation style. The art and music complimented the characters and story phenomenally. There was a lot of visual symbolism throughout the anime with colors, or the lack thereof, representing characters emotions or mental states at the time. I thought it was all very well thought out and well-executed.
The voice acting was also above par. No voice ever seemed out of place to me.

Overall, this was a very rewarding experience for me. I feel like I've gotten something more out of this anime than just entertainment. This isn't just about a guy and a girl getting together. This anime is about the complexities of human emotions, self-discovery, and different kinds of relationships from various perspectives. It was a very interesting watch to say the least. =)

Boku no Hero Academia is fine. Just fine. If you don't mind a severe lack of character development and not caring about anyone at all really, then you'll like this anime. If not, well, don't blame the studio because they animated it just like the source material. It's just really disappointing to see something so average. Like, they don't give me a reason to care about the characters at all, so why would I care when they get hurt? The action is fine, I guess, but it's hard to get into when you don't give a flying horse-feather about anyone that's fighting.
On the bright side, ... the animation and sound is nice. Silver linings.

Overall: very average. If you actually want a fantastic shounen done right, I would watch Hunter x Hunter instead.

Aoharu x Kikanjuu is a fantastic anime. It is an awesome gender bender, an awesome sports anime, and an awesome friendship story. I feel like a lot of people ended up not liking this anime because they based their opinions off of the first two episodes and then were shocked with the turn it made once it really started in the 3rd ep. I want to clarify-- this is not Ouran High School Host Club with machine guns. There IS a host club in the beginning, there IS a girl who wears pants instead of a skirt, she DOES break something and initially is forced ... to play on a team to repay her debts, and yes they mistake her as a dude. But this doesn't matter. After the 3rd ep, none of that matters because the beginning was just a quick means to introduce the main character to survival games (aka paintball with beebee guns). I'm not happy with how they did this or how they rushed it, but couldn't be bothered to care too much about it after I got to the amazing main plot.

Story:

If you enjoy dramatic sports animes with a slightly darker overtone, hilarious moments, and an emphasis on friendship, then this is for you. I was surprisingly entertained and excited about an anime about survival games. If you like paintball like I do, you'll probably be pretty thrilled since you never thought there'd be a paintball anime. But like any sports anime, it's dramatic. Sometimes it's hilariously dramatic, sometimes it's seriously, heart-string pulling dramatic, either way it's dramatic in a good way. What I really enjoyed about this story is that it progresses basically like it would if it were a male protagonist. She trains to get better, she sucks at first, but has great potential, and is determined to get better for herself and for her team. I really enjoyed this aspect of it.

Art:

It's nice, it's new style, it's smooth. Nothing really stood out to me regarding the animation, besides an occasional really sweet angle.

Sound:

The opening is fantastic. The song gets you pumped up, the animation really suits the song and gives it a darker feel, and it's sung by the voice actors of the three main characters which is always a good +1. I thought the soundtrack of the whole anime was pretty good. They're really good at pumping you up during battle scenes and at important moments, but I felt that their weakest link here was during the softer moments in the anime. They're really good at battle sequences, but during downtimes and more heart-felt moments, the music was either a little bland or just plain forgettable. I felt like they could have done better during these moments.

Character:

The best thing about this anime is the characters. Without trying to spoil anything:

Matsuoka is a host in all the best ways. He's attentive, a good listener, and also caring to a fault. As a captain of the survival team Toy Gun Gun, he successfully utilizes these skills to bring out the potential of his teammates. As a character, he's very well-done. The more you watch, the more layers you see of him, the more you find out why he acts the way he does, and the more you find out just how much they thought about his underlying personality. He's a great example of a well-developed and well-written character that can be both strong and sensitive.

Yukimura is hilarious. Yukimura is a hentai mangaka with racy tastes, and isn't afraid to show it. He's the type who would creepily sit in a corner reading porn magazines. He's also a first class survival gamer. Pretty early on you find out that he has a dark past that's led him to only trusting and relying on Matsuoka (Matsuoka also has a dark past that's been touched on in the anime but hasn't fully been disclosed yet). He brings this obsession with Matsuoka into the survival games, playing as a sniper who always has his back. Yukimura undergoes some amazing character development throughout the show. I won't go into details, but I'll just say it was nice seeing him become more trusting and also more independent as the show went on.

I'd also like to take a moment to say that the side and supporting characters were also interesting and nicely developed. For example, the "evil" team Toy Gun Gun is fighting against has striking characters who will quickly become either your favorites or your most hated. And then they'll be developed a bit more, and your view will quickly change from black and white to grey. I can't wait to see how these side and supporting characters will continue to develop in season 2 (really hoping for a second season).

Now for the main character. I could write a whole research paper on why Tachibana, Hotaru is such a good and necessary character. It's so refreshing to see a sports anime with a female lead who's actually treated like a proper main character. Tachibana is like a classic shounen lead: she's all about justice, likes to battle people who go against her sense of justice, and is athletically talented. She's also extremely naive at first and a little oblivious. But through a misunderstanding and a journey of self-discovery and friendship, she learns what and who she's fighting for. In the end, she matures into an even more amazing, and hilarious, lead who I hope to see develop even more in the future. For a shounen, this is a standard character setup. But for a female protagonist, this is anything but. Like "Moribito - Guardian of the Spirit", she is a physically strong protagonist who isn't afraid to show both her femininity and masculinity, holds her own against her male teammates, and is proud of being herself in all that that entails. She doesn't consider females weak, and she doesn't consider males strong. She believes in herself and her strength as Tachibana, Hotaru, just as she believes in Matsuoka and Yukimura's strength as her teammates. She is a valuable member of Toy Gun Gun and is, eventually, treated like a valuable member. Knowing both her strengths and her weaknesses, Matsuoka recognizes just how amazing Tachibana is, and just how amazing she could become. It is so exciting to see a female lead like Tachibana in a medium so devoid of well-written female protagonists (without a story solely focused on a love interest).

Enjoyment:

I absolutely enjoyed the heck out of this anime. It was hilarious, it was thrilling, it was heart-warming, it was refreshing-- I can't say enough good things about it.

Overall: 8/10

While I loved this anime to death, there were some shortcomings regarding the first 2 episodes. Despite that, the anime was still a fantastic watch.
I would not recommend this to people expecting Ouran High School Host Club, people who're just in it for action and guns, people who want Ouran High School Host Club with machine guns, or people who're expecting a weak, moe female lead holding a large gun.
I would recommend this anime to people who enjoy sports animes, well-done gender bends, comedies, and heart-felt friendships.