GIRLFRIEND (KARI)

DESCRIPTION

CAST

ONA MusicGirlfriend (♪)
TV SHORT MusicMiss Monochrome - The Animation

REVIEWS

• 

  zombiepegasus

  30/100
  This is a cute girl anime that fails in the areas that cute girl anime are meant to excel.

  I like to consider myself an expert in the field of cute girls doing cute things and I can honestly say that this is the worst one I've ever seen. Even Glasslip doesn't compare with how bad this is.

  Story wise this doesn't have anything. It's supposed to be about school broadcasts and interviews, but it spends very little time on these and doesn't even give any real insight into them. Rather than using it as a foundation to build its characters and comedy off of like Gochuumon wa Usagi Desu ka? uses the cafe setting and K-On! uses the light music club this anime instead treats it as if "activity" was just one of the slots it has to fill and chose interviews. Anime can be fine without a story, but without some kind of obvious direction it just feels pointless. Not only did they not give it a story they also didn't do anything in place of a story.

  The animation is very bland, which is to be expected from anime like this, but the imaginary in this is particularly uninteresting. The facial expressions don't say much and nothing in the design gives it anything to separate it from other anime. The characters are cute, but in a really standard way that only really works for anime that are either trying to parody cute anime or are just shorts trying to get people's attention. Akari Amari had a somewhat interesting design and Chloe Lemaire's design worked well with her voice and character of being a French girl, but neither were given enough personality for these designs to be put to good use of any kind. This does have a fairly large cast for such a short anime which can explain why the characters look and act similar, but I still don't accept this as an excuse.

  The background music is unmemorable and the theme songs were generic. They did have some good voice actors, but some of them have such similar voices it can be hard to tell them apart when they're speaking off screen or when you're just not paying attention. For an anime that is supposed to be about audio they did very poorly in that department, although not exactly any worse than they did on anything else. They also had some stuff about idols which had understandably generic music.

  The characters all severely lack in personality. This is my biggest problem with the series. Most slice of life anime rely on good characters with good chemistry simply hanging out and allowing their interactions to be enjoyable, but since all of them either just had a small personality trait allotted to them or weren't given enough screen time to warrant giving them any personality at all even this doesn't work for them. As the one thing that's supposed to be good in these anime it's disappointing to see them fail at even doing a good job with the characters. I understand that trying to characterize 71 characters in a span of 12 episodes isn't an easy task, but it's not like they even tried. When bad things happen to the characters it's hard to even feel bad for them see who they are exactly still isn't clear. After spending five hours with the cast they still all feel like strangers.

  Enjoyment comes from many places and this failed to excel in any of them. Most anime will choose a couple elements to focus on, some will be strong in many different areas, and some will attempt to be good in every way but end up not doing as well as they expected. Not only does this not feel like there's any one thing it's focusing it doesn't do anything better than average at all. It's mundane in every way. All of the problems I pointed out wouldn't be enjoyment killing on their own, but since there isn't a single thing this anime even does moderately well there isn't much of anything to find enjoyable. You could make the argument that it's relaxing, but there are anime that do that job better while also doing well in other areas. This anime even gave me an acute sense of "what am I doing with my life?" after I finished it which is certainly a negative experience. There is no reason I could ever imagine recommending this anime to someone for. It is a complete throwaway show in every aspect of its existence. The animation isn't bad enough to laugh at and the personalities aren't insulting either, it's all just extremely mundane and boring.

  Continue on AniList

SIMILAR ANIMES YOU MAY LIKE

• ANIME

  FantasyLapis Re:LiGHTs