May 20 2012 08:53 PM Papa no Iu Koto o Kikinasai! (or PapaKiki for short) is based off an ongoing light novel. The show follows three girls, Sora Miu, and Hina Takanashi who are 14, 10, and 3 years old respectively. Yuuta Segawa becomes the three girls guardian due to an accident that befell the girls parents. Yuuta is nothing more than the average college student with part-time jobs and by taking the girls in to his own care, he decides to take on more jobs, attend university less frequently, and put the girls happiness as his highest priority. The show was available via simulcast on CrunchyRoll and has been acquired by Sentai Filmworks for US distribution. Please support the industry if you enjoyed the show by buying the DVDs/BDs when they are available.
In terms of story, the series does a great job with keeping events somewhat realistic. Yuuta is sane for the most part though taking on that many part-time jobs and making enough money to pay for four people seems a bit of a stretch. I would have been more impressed to see how they would handle a situation where Yuuta is completely broke while taking care of the three considering he kept saying that budget was going to be tight. Another one would be if Yuuta had fallen ill one day due to stress, sleep deprivation, and/or being overworked. The eviction notice, however, was nicely done as thats definitely something big when living in apartments and Im glad that event was at least there even though it ended up being forgiven. Drama wise wasnt impressive. If you had seen the PV trailer or read the basic summary of the light novel, it was no surprise that there was going to be a tragic accident. To be honest, the so called tragedy didnt really pan out the way I had hoped. For an event thats suppose to be a hook for the show, it wasnt as emotional as say Cross Game, nor was it really all that surprising. Character wise, they were all believable to a degree and least reasonable for a comedy drama title. However, the lack of development was a killer in the negative sense. Lots of repetition that Yuuta was raised by his deceased sister out of pure motivation and love and that he plans to do the same for the three girls, but no significant development on how he got to who he was today. Similarly, we are aware that Sora, Miu, and Hina all had different mothers, yet the show refused to dive into this at all aside from using it as a base of the threes dislike of being separated.
Animation wise is rather decent for feel. I felt Kiss x Sis was better by them, but this is certainly a step up from Yosuga no Sora, which aired two years ago. Art wise was not that impressive. Backgrounds were generic and the scenery wasnt eye catching either. Hinas and Raikas designs aside the other character designs were relatively generic. Its a bit unbelievable though for a 3 year old like Hina to have that long hair though. If you consider how old Kiss x Sis is at this point, its a bit disappointing to see feel not improve all that much after a few years.
OP/ED theme were both catchy that fit the series for its happy-go-lucky characters despite all the somber tones along the way. The background music wasnt always memorable but there were a few average tunes in the mix. Sound effects had no real problems and the seiyuu cast was quite respectable for this show. Hiromi Igarashi is quite amazing for being able to accurately portray the character of a 3 year old.
Enjoyment? Well the series was slightly more entertaining than I had expected and far less in fanservice than I had anticipated, especially given feels track record of shows. However, that didnt make the show all that much better. It didnt really stand out all that much in what was a weak Winter 2012 season and even when it did, certain shows completely prevented it from being entertaining, including Nisemonogatari, Aquarion EVOL, Bakuman 2, Chihayafuru, and even Smile Precure!.
Overall, the show lacked appeal. Its certainly an underrated title but I felt it could have done more in 12 episodes, yet at the same time, I felt there was no filler in the show. The conclusion of the show didnt leave me with quite the sour note that many fans and viewers seemed to have problems with and it did leave opportunities for continuation. However, it also lacked any sort of appeal to drag people back in if a sequel were to be produced. Character development is definitely the weakest aspect of this show and could have probably replaced a number of episodes throughout the show that felt like one-shots. While there were definitely character episodes they didnt really add significant substance to what the audience already knew.
Preliminary Score: 6/10
Final Score: 6/10 
