Krozam

Oh. My. Fucking. God. What an ending. I hoped for a good, emotionally fulfilling ending that'd make me cry, because I knew all along that this romance had the potential for it. But that ending... totally surpassed my highest hopes. I replayed the two beautiful scenes at the end many times, crying ceaselessly for, like, 15 minutes. Until now, I have only cried like this for a story three times in my life: when I finished Love Hina manga for the first time, Maison Ikkoku manga for the first time, and the Ah My Goddess movie. It's not just the ending scene: the four last episodes, the final arc, are much better than the average level of the anime. It's been a while since I've seen such effort put into a romance ending, even the animators did their best. This might be the first time I've seen a set of finishing episodes so good that it'd raise my score for the anime this much.

From the start this anime was rather succesful with the romance development. Both main characters are very likeable, the romance development is well paced and there are cute scenes scattered throughout the story just suitably, so it's neither too sweet not lacking in feeling. In that sense, this story surpasses everything I've seen in anime so far. In fact, it's a good rival to my two favourite romances, Maison Ikkoku and Love Hina (both as manga).

As for the rest of the story, I can't give that much praise. Dialogue, comedy and characters are all fine, Meimi's dad especially is among my favourite supporting characters ever, but the story is completely episodic and rather repetitive all the way to the end, there's little in terms of character development for most characters, and our phantom thief's adventures are rather lacking in intelligence: she relies on magic way too much. Apparently that magic is supposed to be magician's tricks, but it goes totally overboard and breaks various laws of nature all the time. What's more, Meimi's novice nun friend has an amazing information gathering ability, far surpassing that of the police, and it's never quite explained. This could have been a very high class anime if there was true intelligence displayed in the duel between the thief and the detective. Also, the transformation scenes in each episode can start getting on your nerves very quickly (I just skipped them after the first time).

Nevertheless, I had much fun with this series, even the less romantic episodes. Someone less fond of an episodic structure and simple, almost childish plots might have dropped this quickly, but I was hooked in three episodes. I got attached to the characters very quickly and I was drawn in by the budding romance between the main characters. Their interaction is enjoyable throughout the story, not least because of the female lead's double identity. Oh, and the ending song is very beautiful and fitting.

In short, this anime is repetitive and simple, but it's cute, it's got good romance development, and it's got a god-tier ending. 9/10, two whole points for the last four episodes.