Mother of the Goddess' Dormitory - Reviews

Mother of the Goddess' Dormitory has one of those concepts that we've seen in plenty of other animes. A guy ends up in a female-only apartment. Most of the girls don't consider a guy living among them a problem, but then there is always that 1 girl who thinks that it's a horrible idea, but ends up being the girl that falls for the main protagonist. Normally there is another layer to the story, but this show is well aware that its viewers aren't watching this show for that reason. 

The plot may be weak, and the characters may feel extremely awkward, silly and obnoxious at times, but if there is anything that makes this show somewhat of a success than it would have to be the animation quality. The animation quality was better than most of the other shows that were released during the same season. 

The cast consists of a 'smart' green haired girl who likes to run around in her panties and a lab coat, a girl who likes to dress everybody up in cosplay gear, a silver haired hoarder who believes she has supernatural powers, a pink haired girl who gets nosebleeds when dudes get near her, a brown haired tsundere girl who can't handle 'warm' (body) temperatures and the red haired tomboy who doesn't know how to control herself when she's wrestling with the main protagonist... and all are fascinated with this young kid that moved into their apartment because he's got nowhere else to stay due to his house having burned down.

If any of that sounds interesting than I really hope you enjoy the show... Story and character wise, it simply wasn't my cup of tea.

When junior high student Koshi is forced to live on his own after his deadbeat left when the house caught on fire, he finds himself as the dormitory mother for girls.

Mother of the Goddess' Dormitory is serviceable. As can be expected in these kinds of harems, there is a lot of fanservice even when there are moments it leans heavily on willing suspicion of disbelief. Aside from this, the show is pretty bland and repetitive.

The characters are fine. Kosi starts off trying to be the responsible caretaker of the women's dorm and getting easily flustered by the girls' lewdness. He does express empathy and we do get him feeling conflicted due to his fears of losing his new home if he were to act on his feelings for the girls, Atena in particular, but he is kind of boring as the main lead. It got to the point where I would forget his name so I'd have to resort to looking it up.

Atena is also pretty mediocre. She is established as the most normal out of the gang of girls beside her fear of men causing her to have excessive nosebleeds. The more she interacts and gets to know Koshi, much like him, she began to have conflicting thoughts primarily whether she'd view him as a brother or something else entirely. Their chemistry is fine for what it is. Though that is largely coming off them having a sibling-like relationship; keep in mind that Koshi is 12-years-old whereas Atena is around 19 years old a seven-year difference. No thank you.

As for the other girls, they are mostly one-note: Kiriya is a tomboyish martial artist who was raised in a dojo. She has the habit of punching stuff whenever she read romantic shonen manga.

Mineru is the stereotypical mad scientist who experiments around often resulting in an explosion or any other unsanitary conditions. She is flirty and lacks common decency.

Frey or Fley is obsessed with cosplaying and designing outfits to the point of forcibly dressing people up without their approval. She does have a meaningful moment with Koshi where she helped him get an understanding of his feelings.

By far my favorite is Serene, an odd young woman who asserts that she is an alien who gets her powers from the moon. Her first appearance has her asking Koshi to become her servant in return for using her lunar technology to clean up a mess Kiriya caused. She had an interesting little side story where she expressed hesitation with going to the beach with Koshi and the girls. Considering that she had apparently lived in the dormitory longer than the others, maybe there is a good reason why the show is called Mother of the Goddess' Dormitory.

Animation, once again, is serviceable. Given its adherence to fan service, the animation is top-notch in that regard meaning that, relatively speaking, it is drawn well, but there seems to be something horribly wrong in how it is conveyed. It's lackluster: the girls do sexy stuff, but there is no real appeal there namely due to the rest of the anime being boring and the characters being too flat and underwhelming. But, taking out that aspect, the show is pretty forgettable and doesn't have a strong draw to it. But it isn't bad, just mediocre.

A classic Harem-esque show, but with a twist of questionable legality. Looking past the MC's appearance, there's a somewhat endearing show here that's a fair sight better than a lot of other Harem/Ecchi out there.

Story: It's a Harem show. There's not much to explain here. The MC suffers a classic Anime-Protagonist-Backstory where he loses his family and basically everything he ever had so that the story can start without any baggage, whereupon he is taken in by a small all-girls dorm and given the opportunity to work as their "Dorm Mother" which, for the purposes of this show, is just a live-in Janitor and Chef. After that, we basically see the show writers check off the Themed-Harem-Episode Tropes in sequence until the show ends with the MC having clearly established his personal Best Girl. It's nothing terrible, and nothing to really complain about, but there's barely anything new in this narrative structure beyond using a MC that's pushing the limits of legal-age laws. Tangentially related; I feel like the show was planned for a Fall season release rather than a Summer release given that the show starts at the beginning of a school year and runs through to New Years' celebration. 4/10; Not displeasing, but certainly not exciting.

Animation: Pretty standard fare for a Harem show, maybe a tad above average. Nothing in particular to call out here, really, except that I was a bit disappointed by how few ecchi scenes we ended up getting. I mean, that's literally the pull for this kind of show, and only maybe every third episode actually had anything to speak of. 6/10; Acceptable

Sound: A bit meh, if I'm being honest. The OP is cute and vaguely catchy, and the Voice work is decent enough, but there's nothing really all that special here. 5/10; I want to hear more of Mineru saying things in her mischevous tone

Characters: Surprisingly the best part about this show. Normally Harem shows have pretty lackluster characters that match the low-effort writing of the story they come attached to, but this one sits pretty well above average. The MC's chosen Best Girl actually shows genuine development over the course of the show, and the supporting cast of Harem Girls feel more fleshed out than the typical Trope-cutouts you see. That said, they're still only good in comparison to other Harem shows of this caliber... they're not winning any awards for character writing here. 7/10; More Harem shows need to allow the MC to pick a Best Girl like this

Overall: Definitely a case where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Every individual piece of this is middling at best when you actually stop to evaluate the show, but in the moment while watching it, I was always entertained and never felt upset by the way the show was developing, and that's really all I ask out of these kinds of shows. 7/10; Above average for its genre

This anime is both wholesome and inappropriate.

Studio Asread’s eye-watering ecchi-feast sinks to new lows in managing to obscure a half-decent story in layers of unnecessary female nudity & lewdness. The Goddess’ Dormitory of the title is the notorious shared lodgings for five over-sexed female university students. They only lack one thing – a caretaker. So, for reasons we never understand, one of them (Mineru Wachi), picks up a homeless 12-year-old boy Koshi Nagumo for the purpose. Koshi has been down on his luck since his home burnt down and his father ran away – so he could do with a break. However, sharing a dorm with a bunch of highly-sexualised women, eight years his senior, may not quite be the sort of ‘saving’ he would prefer. Yet he is prepared to knuckle-down and make the best of the opportunity. Needless to say, living in the dorm is quite the adventure for the kid. Several of the girls throw themselves at him, one is terrified of him and the rest seem to have a problem in that their cloths fall off for no apparent reason. Whenever the kid gets naked there is a naked girl. Whenever possible, said naked girl and naked boy fall over and on top the other. If anyone goes into the bath then to opposite gender will be there too and equally naked. These occurrences are not just once or twice during the 10-episode season, it is every ten minutes. Over and over again. It isn’t funny the first time, or the second time. By the time you have lost count it has already become unimaginative and cringeworthy. Behind this nonsense is a study of Nagumi’s growing relationship with the girls. Some are a bit confused about how they should  feel about him emotionally & romantically. (Clearly they need to be mixing more with adult males their own age we think!) Quite why any woman in her twenties should be so attracted so lewdly to a boy barely through puberty makes no sense but it is that kind of show. It is all so hugely inappropriate and mostly unfunny that one wonders just how large are the relevant cultural divides between the West and Japan. The senseless plot is hiding a few noteworthy points one of which is the nature of the character Serene Hozumi who appears to be either a space alien or some kind of mystical creature – we aren’t sure which. Yet nothing much is made of this plot element. What could have been a fun slice-of-life, “Mother of the Goddess’ Dormitory” is just decimated by mindless ecchi content. It’s a dumpster fire of a show.