Saekano: How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend

This looks like it can go either way.......characters from the PV seem to almost mirror those of Grisia no Kajitsu..........For now, I'll pick this one up.

Still have like 3 or 4 things to catch up from the last season so just this and the 3 obligatory sequels........
 
The first episode was a lot better than I thought it would be. It kind of bounced back and forth between being clever and being shameless. I did get some laughs though, And I really liked Chiruchiru --er I mean Eriri. Interested to see what way this ends up going, but not a bad start.
 
episode 1.... wow this is very meta. i like where this is going.

.......... and then i didn't and it got epically cliche.

oh, they're gonna solve this beating around the bush harem thing right away, interesting.

............ and then they didn't showing that they are just gonna string us along as normal, fantastic.

only because i have faith in noitaminA will i give this series 3 episodes.
 
Typical Harem where guy doesn't know how good he has it................I like the interactions though.

edit, the special is marked as sequel to the anime, not sure if thats the case........but yeah.....
 
Yeah, episode 0 or whatever started off like it was going to be full of metahumor and fourth wall breaks kind of like a less subtle version of Fruit of Grisiasa's early episodes, but then after about five minutes that all went flying out the window and it became a standard harem episode.

I didn't find the metahumor especially clever when it was present. I mean having a character speak in blatant exposition and then pointing that fact out isn't all that funny, especially when it is done several times in a row. However, even the weak attempts at metahumor were preferable to the rest of the episode which was exactly the generic stuff the first part of the episode was trying to poke fun at. I'm not sure why it gave up on the humor so fast, but it's kind of sad that the end of the episode does the exact kind of exposition that the start of the episode was mocking and was apparently serious about it.

Not a good first impression. The art was pretty enough I guess, but other than that this episode was bland.
 
This show has an unfortunate abbreviated title. You can't look for it without mostly finding stuff about a certain ultimate weapon girl instead.
 
^ When I googled it, I got nothing but this show come up and "did you mean Saikano" which I also looked at and seemed to be some kind of romance manga?

Unless of course there's some other abbreviation...
 
Saikano is what I meant. Full title being Saishuuheki Kanojo aka Ultimate Weapon Girl if I remember right.

And yes, the title is no trick. I'm still disappointed that show was so dull.


After looking it up in Google it does give you plenty of results for Saekano. I had tried to search the opening in YouTube earlier and all I got were Saikano vids. Guess not much has been uploaded yet.
 
ep0 - Gave this a quick look when I got tired of waiting for other shows to load through a certain flawed provider ...
Seems to me ZK nailed it -
They gave up on the meta approach much too quickly.
So all that's left is to revel in the description of "people who are ruining anime by judging a show based solely on the animation quality" ... and, one might add, the shamelessness of the fanservice.
It is easy on the eyes, though.
We'll see whether there's anything else to recommend it.

PS - A couple of days after seeing this, it occurs to me I might have missed the point ...
The Ep0 preview is stuffed with fan-service and each of the three main girls is all over our MC ... who is shown trying to ignore them so he can finish writing a script for a dating sim game.
My respect for this show would go way up if it turns out that all the action shown in ep0 is MC's fantasy, and when ep1 starts none of the girls in the club thinks of him as anything but an odious little creep ... which he would then have a whole season to overcome.
Now that would show a touch of originality ... is it too much to hope for?
 
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Episode 1

''Meh''

That expresses my feelings..

The secondary girls are the idols of the school, because that's not painfully generic.
The male lead is just loud and the type that used to be not as popular but lately...
The sappy hints at backstory just makes me shake my head, but I could bare with it....
The main girl shows up again with little presence and that would have been interesting...
if not for episode 00 and the name of the anime didn't ruin the surprise to begin with....
The exposition in this anime was absolutely painful and blunt, say what you say about a certain anime...
but introducing the world this way is too unnatural and very very off-putting.
The premise isn't terrible but this episode had many elements that do not agree with me.

Also: Don't look at the figurines too closely Taekwondoin, It has a Vividred operation character.
 
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ep1 - damn, that came out much closer to my PS comment on ep0 than I expected ...
But the major difference is that instead of all the girls being in love with MC only in his mind, at least 2 of them do have a secret crush going back years. Makes it too easy for him ... I'd rather that he had to work really hard to get them even interested.

Yeah, making those two the acknowledged school idols/princesses is very cliche and strangely reminiscent of Testament, which is not a good sign.

Not sure what MC would have to say to the 3D object of his imagination ... I mean, she seems nice, but is he really going to change his whole outlook (reminiscent of TWGOK) for her?

Wonder how long they'll wait in the AV room ...

Worth a little more time but not sold on this yet.
 
Ep 1

It was better than 00

I imagine that ep 00 was there to introduce the cast, so it was just random and bluntly let you know what the anime was about...... set 6 months after ep 1 there still seems to be one girl missing in ep 00. the ending sequence shows a character that hasn't been introduced.

I like the presentation this episode (1). But I fear if ep 00 is any indication, once the cast grows, the quality will slip deeper into Harem cram pile where they try to give 5 female characters their moments every episode....

For the sake of wanting to enjoy the show I will disregard ep 00 as something that happened and hope it never gets to be a trend episode for this series.

ep 1 gave me a sort of Monogatari series feeling, as the anime in large consisted of 3 semi deep 1 on 1 conversations with some filler here and there, as apposed to two super deep conversations with little to no fillers. The setting felt the same but the word count and pace of the dialogue was different. So Monogatari remains the only series I have to frequently pause.

But thats okay, Monogatari's text are often pointless follow up statements that could be up to 5 sentences saying the same thing before they move it along.

SO basically what I enjoyed was the controlled feeling. This episode did not feel like a harem because of how it flowed, ep 00 was harem all the way.

I don't know what I think of the male lead at this point, he's an otaku but he isn't the typical hopeless extremely horny virgin types that plague the harem genre. So I'd for now have to at least give him bonus points for going against the grain.

When it comes to characters I pretty much like all 3 female characters introduced to this point, the heroine I like more from ep 00 were her moment outshines all the rest in my opinion despite the show trying to portray her as the boring one.

Oh and lastly at the end were they got stood up, I found that to be pretty darn funny, maybe I can like the male lead for not giving a shit. Especially after her dramatically parted from both of them with his invitation to the AV room.
 
Episode 2

Slowly this anime is gaining it's own ''face'', but while more unique than the prior episodes and ridiculing the whole concept of the schools number 1 beauties being his friends it still doesn't wipe away the pain that was the first episode to watch. Episode 2 doesn't flow particularly well either and wasn't amazing in any way to be honest but at least this anime has gained something to set it apart somewhat. Still the whole setup in the prior episode is hard to forgive and episode 0 wasn't better in that regard.
 
So I didn't comment on the first episode because I found it to be very dull and generic. I had pretty low expectations going into the second episode, but I ended up enjoying the episode. The setup, characters and plot are pretty generic, but the anime is well aware of this and plays around with the tropes in the dialogue. The second episode really had some nice banter going between the characters and it makes them more interesting. While I still found the two idol girls to be pretty dry even with the enhanced dialogue, both Aki and Kato were able to shine. It's probably because their interactions took up most of the screen time, but I thought they had a very nice flow going this episode. Their dialogue was able to deconstruct some of the typical anime/VN cliches and poke fun at them effectively. The characters themselves don't do much to invert or play with the tropes though so while the dialogue is nice and cut above what I expect from this genre, I kind of wish it would inform the characters a bit more.

Overall though I could mildly enjoy the show if the dialogue can remain this interesting. I think if they could integrate the characters some more and actually develop them beyond their roles then this show could even turn into some genuinely good. For now though, I'll just keep my expectations modest and hope for some more witty dialogue.
 
The style in episode 1 has stuck here. the show is continuing the monogatari feel in that it focuses on dialogue .

It helps that the main two are interesting..........The male lead is like an energetic version of keima the God of games.

And Kato his great, she's dry and witty. The expression she keeps while delivering her lines adds more zest, no situation seems to be able to break her, it's almost stoic but at the same time it's not.

Enjoying it more and more by the episode.
 
Yeah, this episode did remind me a bit of The World Only God Knows with the way games were dissected and talked about.

Speaking of the anime's style. It does like to do some interesting framing like having Kato out of frame a lot during the diner scene to denote her lack of presence. Both episodes also do a lot of switching the colors around for various still shots. I did think this new episode might have went a little too heavy on the still shots though. It's a nice looking anime but I doubt it has much of a budget behind it. Not that it needs to have great animation anyway, but after the OVA and the first episode the increase in still frames, stylized or not was quite noticeable to me. Putting Kato out of frame several times when she spoke did have some meaning but I'm sure the animators were also just as happy not having to animate her lip flap.
 
Episode 3:

It was a mildly enjoyable episode once again.
There wasn't much going on until the very end, but he spends a little time talking to each girl with some decent dialogue and banter. I still think Sawamura and Utaha are a bit flat as characters though. While the dialogue was good, it didn't really flesh out either character other than to show that they care about Aki. Megumi remains the best of the girls because she is more than just her character archetype. She was especially good when she showed up to play out the script Utaha wrote and the dialogue there was the best in the episode. I think the show shines when Megumi and Aki are talking without the other two girls around. Megumi is his muse. I also like how it is showing the creative process that goes into making a dating sim like this. A lot of the dialogue of course has a double meaning as all the girls have a secret crush on him, but he's dense so he just takes everything at face value. I think making the game will give him the opportunity to grow as a person.

The end of the episode gets the plot started for real. He finishes his proposal and even though the two of them criticize it we all know they are going to get involved. He worked hard on it but he's so inexperienced.
 
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