At first, I totally fell for the "shelf character" they played off of to create Kippei: playboy without any real goals in life. So i thought this was going to be a story just about taking the shallow parts of the guy out, and adding a few lessons of maturity to make a typical slice-of-life story.
I can't say I was completely wrong; but I can't say that was all there was to it. This series really went deep into each character development phase, and did not glance over them -- this series has no filler episodes folks.
Although the drawings weren't excellent, they were fairly decent. The drawings of Yuzuyu (the little girl) were very cute and smoothly done. I think, since Yuzuyu could be argued to be the "most main" of the main characters, the artists decided to focus on her more. Still, there were times when I wondered if there was a bit of a hair-loss problem. Sometimes Yuzuyu would appear to have a big head with little hair to cover it with xD.
All other characters were okay. What I think the artists had the most trouble with facial expression - Kippei, for example, can't seem to furrow his brows too well when he's upset or shouting etc.
This wasn't really a story written with the typical bell curve style in mind. Rather, it was more like a slice-of-life story that focused on each character's individual strengths and weaknesses.
Although Kippei's character was supposed to emphasize "playboyness" and "easygoing carelessness," I think they failed that in the big picture - they spent far more time developing Yuzuyu than Kippei's original character.
Yuzuyu didn't seem like the typical child, but I think they made a good decision to do make her that way. The way she communicated in any way except verbally was hard to do - and done very well. She came across as a child who had a painful understanding of abstract ideas, especially with her mother gone (her mother rarely appears visually in the series). I guess the roughest category to fit this into is that it's a "sob story." But it's usually the sob stories that speak out the most.
For my own part though - being my pessimistic self - I found the very last episode to be a little too bright and happy xD.
The Pros
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The Cons
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