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This is a story about four colleagues turned friends who are refreshingly open about their feelings and who do their best to make each other feel comfortable, valued, and happy. It's not soppy, though, it's absolutley hilarious! Besides one running gag that might become a bit old, the humour is on point, resulting in a dopamine inducing mix of cuteness, wholesomeness, and hilarity. The anime is also surprisingly progressive (one of the guys is openly bisexual) and sends an important message about growing as a person and finding happiness in life. In case you start watching and don't like the cat: Neither did I (at ... first), and I still enjoyed myself immensely, so please don't let that bother you.

This anime is an ephebophile grooming nightmare. If you're into that kind of thing: This anime is for you! If you aren't, but you're morbidly curious enough to watch it anyway, here's what you can enjoy about it:

1.) Umehara, Yuuichirou's voice (i.e. Keiya's VA).
That's admittedly a very subjective reason, but as a huge Umehara fan, this is what mainly drove me to keep watching until the end.

2.) Isaku's friends and the hostess.
Those three female side characters were surprisingly likeable! Because of Keiya and Isaku's huge lack of communication skills, the happy ending (provided you see it as such, considering the controversial nature of the relationship) ... literally couldn't have come to pass without those three! It was only through their support that Keiya and Isaku could sort out their feelings and solve their issues. Other shows might have made the hostess a love rival to Isaku, but this anime utilised her much better, namely as an older, more experienced source of advice.

3.) Animation/continuity/editing fails.
There are numerous of those, and whenever they show up, you can be sure to laugh your ass off. They range from characters moving awkwardly/unnaturally, over characters talking when their mouths aren't moving and vice versa, to characters changing positions or even clothes (!) in between shots. There are also a couple of still shots during which dialogue is played, which first makes you think your screen has frozen. It's absolutely hilarious!

4.) OP+ ED song.
Musical tastes vary, but chances are you'll find the OP song very catchy and the ED visually pleasing (the song is also quite nice, but less so than the OP imo).

To round off this review, I'd like to mention the two things that would have fixed this anime, the only two things that would need to be different for this to be a decent romance anime (at least in my humble opinion):

Make Keiya 18, and let him have a character arc.

Or make him 17, if you wanna go for a fully non-controversial anime, but that's all. That's all that would need to be changed, and you'd have an anime with basically the same outline, but without all the controversial stuff. If you're interested, please let me elaborate:

5-year-old Isaku moves to her grandfather's place after her parents died. To keep her company, her grandfather organises her a friend, Keiya (here he'd be some yakuza's relative, not a yakuza himself). Isaku and Keiya spend all their time together, even go to the same elementary and middle school. They are each other's only friend, which makes them highly emotionally dependent on each other. Keiya is extremely possessive and protective of Isaku, while Isaku is extremely reliant on him. When Isaku turns 15, she decides not to go to the same high school as Keiya because she wants to get over what she thinks is an unrequited love for him. With the help of Isaku's grandpa and some bribery, Keiya gets into the same class as Isaku and things pan out as in the original anime (also the fight scenes because this young Keiya took combat training to be able to protect Isaku whom he is so protective over). Unlike the original version, however, Keiya actually takes Isaku's protest against his behaviour to heart, sees the error of his ways, and develops into proper boyfriend material by the end.

And that's it. Not a perfect or revolutionary story, but decently enjoyable, at least imo. Thanks if you have read this far.

The anime is at its strongest in the first couple of episodes when it focuses on the four main characters (Katase, Shinozaki, Akina, and Hayakawa). All of them are likeable and interesting (particularly Akina), and their interactions are wholesome and endearing. Instead of developing those relationships (much) further, however, the show starts adding new, less interesting characters around the midpoint and wastes a lot of time on them. By the end, the romantic plots remain underdeveloped.

There was also a noticeable change in the use of fan service. While some viewers might be annoyed with it from the very start, it definitely becomes more prominent (some ... might say obnoxious) as the anime continues.

All in all, it could have been another (maybe even better) "Senpai ga Uzai Kouhai no Hanashi (My senpai is annoying)", but ended up as an okay show with much lost potential.

I’m an anime-only watcher and enjoyed the movie quite much. The last scene with the “reveal” to one of the movie’s mysteries kinda spoiled the ending for me, though. Besides that and the imo ugly character designs, I have no major complaints, however.

The main issue I gathered from the other reviews, that being the story structure, was actually a positive for me. Isn’t it kind of the point of Alice inspired media that nothing makes sense? That’s how I see it anyway. Therefore, I didn’t mind story elements lacking an introduction or explanation, plot threads leading seemingly nowhere, etc. They augmented the madness and nonsense ... of it all, I think.

This story structure, where time and place changes constantly, (new) characters come and go, and you don’t know what’s going on most of the time, was one of two aspects that reminded me very strongly of the two original books by Carroll. The other one was the characters’ hostile, harmful, or inconsiderate behaviour towards Alice. To me, both these aspects are the main reasons the Alice books are so unique.

In that sense, I think most people who like the books/stories for the same reasons as me are going to have an enjoyable time with this movie. That being said, the aforementioned “reveal” at the end really puts a damper on things, at least for me. It’s possible that you won’t mind it at all, that to you, it’s just going to be another plot thread we don’t see the conclusion of. I didn’t like it because it was aiming to lead the story into a specific direction, to turn it into kind of a conspiracy narrative, and since I’ve appreciated the chaotic aimlessness of the story so far, that was obviously a problem for me.