2014, 12 episodes:
AniDB; also
known as The Kawai Complex Guide to Manners and Hostel Behavior.
Romantic comedy; high school boy lives in boarding-house with a
variety of Characters, one of whom is a cute female bookworm.
So the plot's nothing original, but the characters manage to
support the comedy; they're broadly drawn, but real enough that one
still cares about what happens to them. The protagonist is fairly
generic, the same sort of audience-substitution figure that one sees
in many romantic comedies, but everyone else is both quirky and
interesting.
It's more comedy than romance, and by all accounts comedy in one of
the Japanese styles: not so much slapstick, embarrassment, or setting
people up to look silly, which I generally detest, but quick-fire
silly responses to slightly ambiguous situations. Development is
slower than I'd really like, but there is progress in the overall
plot. That said, it can feel slow-moving at times, and not a great
deal actually happens; that's not what the show is about.
The artwork is excellent, a high-detail style with lots of gorgeous
sunsets and high colour saturation. Character designs are mostly
realistic by anime standards, though young children are a bit
caricatured.
Probably the show I enjoyed most from the spring 2014 season.
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