Warpuppy

If you are looking for an anime that is a far cry from anything you have ever seen before, this just might be the one for you.  Hidden somewhere deep within a world where cute girls are struggling to survive a deadly invasion of adorable bears, there is a heartwarming story of friendship and a strong message to never give up on love.

Story - The main story going on is a girl named Ginko fell in love with a girl named Kureha. Ginko wished to become a girl so they could experience true love together. A celestial court that exists between the realm of bears and humans approved her transformation, but it came at a cost. Kureha lost her memories of Ginko and she had to try to gain her friendship once again.

While I generally like the premice of all this, I feel like the execution could have been much better. The main issue I had was that this anime had so many flashbacks that it was often hard to tell if what you are watching is past or present. On top of that, a lot of critical information about the past is kept hidden until you get close to the end.  While all of the set ups did eventually build up to a few good Ah Ha moments and a somewhat comprehensive story overall, the middle episodes constantly had me wondering what the various characters motivations were and sometimes what was even going on.

Animation - For a story about a deadly invasion, there certainly could have been a few well choreographed battle scenes, but for the most part the animation was much more simplistic. Its worth mentioning though that quite often in the background of whatever was going on was beautiful scenery drawn with both style and attention to detail.

Sound - When it comes to sound, what immediately stands out in this anime was the voice acting. For the most part the human characters all did a good job speaking their lines. The bear characters constantly saying "Growl Growl" at the end of each sentence started out as being cringe worthy, but eventually it started to grow on me and I thought it was cute. Also when it comes to sound, this OP is probably one of my favorite OP songs. I really haven't heard anything quite like it in anime before. It kind of gave me Trans Siberian Orchestra vibes.  The ED song was pretty catchy as well, and the dancing bear made me want to watch it almost every time.

Characters - I thought Kureha's character did a great job trying to balance her sociatial expectations of her, namely to hate bears while also making an effort to follow her heart's true feelings. Similarly, Ginko's character tried to find a balance betwen her feral desire, namely eating humans, and following her heart's desire for love with Kureha. Lulu was everything I could have reasonably hoped for as Ginko's faithful sidekick. Other then the three main characters, not a lot of character development happened at least as far as I could tell. I'm actually okay with that though, the story was confusing enough without a heavy focus on its minor characters.

Overall - This anime felt like it had the potential to be something great, if the story was drastically rearranged in order to flow better and everything else was polished around the edges, this could have easily been an 8 and maybe even a 9.  As it is now though, its a 7/10 for me and I can understand why a lot of people rated it lower. Especially people who didn't make it all the way to the end.