Jan 6 2012 03:32 AM So....I'm surprised to see 9 pages for this thread...The first half of the show started off in a really interesting way and was rather thorough in its development. To start with, we immediately find out some shota action occurred during Naoya's childhood, resulting in him having a 10 year old daughter when he's effectively a high school student. Putting the weirdness aside, we got decent development on Lotte's character and why she is the way she is...as well as some conflict between Naoya and Lotte. I did wish, however, that Lotte's and Naoya's little fight would drag out a little longer since most of what happened after was really crap.
Episodes 7 (second half) through 10 really did not add much more to the show. It was mainly Lotte's and Naoya's relationship developing at snail pace as both constantly refused to admit that they love each other. Episodes 11 and 12 were a bit more touching and followed with a decent closure, but lacked a proper bridge between episodes. Everything literally all happened at once but little development was involved. While I'm not sure how close this is with the original source material, the ending really prevented the show from proceeding any further but I guess that's what happens when you try to adapt a manga that only has a few volumes available.
Animation wise by Diomedea is actually a bit lower than I had anticipated. Rather blurry for the most part even in the blu-ray and weak character designs with cheap movements. The one thing that was good though was really the background art and scenery, but that's really about it. Lighting definitely needed to be worked on.
Music was okay at best. Seiyuu was also okay at best. Kugimiya voicing the typical loli, flat-chest tsundere did not really strike me this time around. I will say, however, that Yukari Tamura and Rie Kugimiya teaming up to voice 2 lolis is basically overkill, not to mention as leads.
Enjoyment? Like I said, first half caught my interest if only a little bit but after that I felt we were bombarded with filler that I basically lost any hope I had for this series...not to mention put it off for quite some time.
Overall, the fact that Naoya was a weak lead really hurt this series a lot. His modesty along with his indecisive and feminine character prevented the series from advancing in plot. While I could see being "traumatized" during his childhood as a possibility, the show lacks any sort of evidence indicating that such an issue would result in his current character. The plot is really where the show nosedived off a cliff. Not necessarily sharply, but the show had a lot more potential behind it and didn't fully utilize it. Of course, I'm also factoring out any sort of loli biases here as certain recent shows like Ro-Kyu-Bu! managed to at least pull off a respectable premise at the end of the day.
Preliminary Score: 6/10
Final Score: 5/10 
