First off, I am very upset that this anime has been incorrectly tagged as seinen. The nature of the Final Approach anime does not justify such a tag, while it does touch on subjects like privacy, arranged marriage and political marriage. From first impresssions, it seems to be a run-of-the-mill ecchi harem anime. Once again, those are my least favourite genres. I will do my best to give this a proper review as every anime deserves, whether good or bad. It doesn't seem to be a harem, more of a love triangle, for most of it. Off the mark, I can tell this anime has no plot for most of it and it has the trope harem ending too. This probably isn't worth your time.
Animation/Sound
Animation is a bit bad for a 2004 anime, even if it tries to have a unique comedic style by adding chibi moments. When I first saw this anime, I thought it was made in the 90s. Such is the disappointment of the animation quality. The anime itself, appears to have some ecchi/fanservice. Especially since 15 year old girls have unrealistic proportions and theres a hotsprings episode where people freeze naked in a blizzard. At least it isn't as bad as other ecchi. Music was barely noticeable, except for the opening theme. A bad mark in my book, since it usually means the music doesn't stand out. However towards the end when things started to get emotional I started to notice the music and it was well suited to the scenes. With both animation and sound it appears dreadfully cheesy.
Characters
As for the characters I'm a bit divided actually. The main character, Ryo Mizuhara is your typical highschool student protagonist (filling in the harem protagonist trope) without parents. For the first time in any anime, this guy spoke sense in episode 1. An approximate quote "Doesn't matter what she looks like, personality is what's important." True words and I commend the writers for coming up with it. It also appears that the guy tries to act by it. They give the impression that he isn't giving Shizuka a chance to show her personality. He also believes that marriage shouldn't be arranged/political and probably believes it should be for love. Someone give this guy a medal. A surprisingly decent character, if only for his rather mature and thoughtful philosophies. On the other hand, he really doesn't give her a chance and he's is still a typical harem protagonist for the most part.
Ryo's fiance is Shizuka Masuda, a rich, powerful girl who absolutely adores Ryo, despite him hating her. She is very annoying and agressive for her love. She even drugs the guy, so that he can't complain about her staying over. Constantly abusing her power to do crazy things like move into Ryo's school and class, despite being years below. She even sets up a torturous trap at a hotspring during a blizzard, just for her own fun. If she wants the guy to like her, then she'd stop doing things to piss him off. However, you find out that there is more to this character than is apparent in the first 9 episodes.
The other character's aren't worth mentioning, though Ryo has a younger sister, who he cares about too much and he seems to like Emiho Mutsu. They seem to imply romance between the two siblings, with it wrong as all hell. Emiho has a political arranged marriage of her own, organised by her brother to his friend. I don't need to explain how much worse that one is. It doesn't help that the dude, she's to get married to is a massive dumb jerk, who instead falls for Shizuka. Oh... I should have said SPOILER.
Story
Story is the typical harem ecchi no-plot-progression until episode 9. There is the arranged marriage of course. Things take a turn for the better (in terms of how good it is) and things actually happen in the last few episodes. The 13th episode seems to revive the terribleness with a cheesy and disappointing bait-and-switch. I was absolutely right about that ending, it gets worse and is a typical harem-ecchi ending. Maybe it might have a few points to make on arranged/political/forced marriages and love itself. It seems to suggest that love isn't something simple that you can feel at the flick of a switch. It's more complicated.
Conclusion
I'm really tired of this genre. This sounded like it would be OK, but it turned out worse than I expected, since the bulk of the series was pointless. Usually when a dude is engaged/married they end up living happily ever after. Despite this being half-length episodes, don't waste your time on this and just watch episodes 1, 9-12. Episode 13 takes the heartfelt ending of 12 and throws it out of the window so to hell with it.
Family-friendliness Rating: 3.5/5 Just a bit less than the usual harem ecchi (lower is better)
Overall Rating: 3.5/10