THE STAFF - Animated by Nomad, a minor studio which has never produced something great. Its most famous shows are the unimpressive Rozen Maiden and Chocotto Sister. - Directed by Matsuo Kou, who also never produced anything great but is still a bit famous for his work in Kurenai and Natsuyuki Rendezvous. - Based on the manga of a nobody who never adapted anything else. Yozakura Quartet is an exercice in mediocrity from the get-go. The very first episode introduces you to a generic world full of generic people and expects you to like the cheese. Well no, it’s not that easy ; it takes effort to actually manage to create something interesting and this anime is showing you nothing but the middle finger. Snore!The world of the series is a city where humans and youkai coexist. Youkai can roughly be described in mythology as spirits that take forms of objects, animals, and even other people, in order to trick and harm humans. The series however treats them as nothing but humans with cat-ears which makes them look generic and boring. Youkai in mythology also possess various supernatural powers but the show is again treating them like humans who may or may not have such powers. As for normal people… they too can use supernatural stuff so once again the importance of having these creatures is canceled out. It is more than obviously a superficial way to have a theme around racism. Instead of having blacks vs whites the show went for fan catering and just had people without cat-ears vs people with cat-ears. And that’s pretty much all the difference you will find between them. Snore!The heroes of the show are your average protectors, who fight renegade youkai and protect the civilians with various powers. The action focuses mostly on the lead character who is your average boring shonen lead with broken powers and vanilla personality as he saves chicks and battles big bad beasts. The battles hardly have choreography and stuff appear and disappear with magic at the animators’ whim. The complete lack of strategy along with the totally generic characters leave you completely indifferent with what is going on with the story and the world in general. Snore!So in case you care, the story is about villains trying to take advantage of the hatred various people in the city have in order to get rich, powerful, or plain have fun while spreading havoc. They are otherwise cardboards as well, with nothing to bother remembering about. As for the so-called city where these two races coexist, all there is to make you be aware of that is these big pillars that are supposed to protect the city. Big help they did; it’s full of villains. As for the plot, when it does not involve fighting some beast in totally boring ways, it has to do with fooling around in… yes, totally boring ways. The characters will be cooking, playing sports, go shopping and generally do everyday stuff that mean very little since they are generic with zero depth in them. There is no romance or internal conflicts in the team and everything is one big boredrome. Snore! Of course, the animators tried to mask all that with as much fan catering as possible. The opening theme alone is completely preparing you to see some sort of fantasy slice-of-life romance and not some superheroes protecting a city from supervillains. That shows how much they cared about the story. Although the show is pantsu-free, they still made everybody to look like they popped out from a date-sim. All the characters are bijins, with otaku-oriented uniforms and clothes that are meant to make the viewer go all moe on them. It may work for a few episodes before the total lack of excitement or progress eventually make even that feeling to fade away. Snore!Production values are ok, albeit they never look awesome for any given reason. Voice acting is ok but it doesn’t feel like you should be paying attention to what they are saying. The OST is just silly tunes that repeat too often to the point of saturation and never manage to be memorable. The backgrounds have a nice color palette and are rather detailed but they are otherwise generic in appearance. If it weren’t for those pillars, you would consider the setting to be a generic city. There is a high amount of stills used and even the animation during battles looks crummy, while the numerous special effects used there look like simplistic filters or just generic rays. At times they make snow flakes and sakura blossoms fall all over the place to further fool you to think there is context somewhere in this mess but they just don’t hold a candle next to your average date-sim adaptation. Snore!This anime is a fine example of the industry funding uninspired works that mean nothing other than making them for the sake of making them, instead of looking around for something better to animate. Or at least trying to make something good out of all this mess instead of going for bijins and fan catering clothes. Not recommended at all. ZZZ…And now for some excused scorings.
ART SECTION: 6/10 Analysis: General Artwork 1/2, Character Figures 1/2, Backgrounds 2/2, Animation 1/2, Visual Effects 1/2 SOUND SECTION: 6/10 Analysis: Voice Acting 2/3, Music Themes 2/4, Sound Effects 2/3 STORY SECTION: 3/10 Analysis: Premise 1/2, Pacing 0/2, Complexity 1/2, Plausibility 0/2, Conclusion 1/2 CHARACTER SECTION: 3/10 Analysis: Presence 1/2, Personality 1/2, Backdrop 1/2, Development 0/2, Catharsis 0/2 VALUE SECTION: 1/10 Analysis: Historical Value 0/3, Rewatchability 0/3, Memorability 1/4 ENJOYMENT SECTION: 1/10 Analysis: Art 0/1, Sound 0/2, Story 1/3, Characters 0/4 VERDICT: 3.5/10
Screenshots
Add to list