My collection of short anime reviews

The main protagonist may have a harem filled with beautiful girls, but deep inside his heart he actually swings the other way.

My review of Princess Lover! today would be my 10th review for this month alone, and I should be able to squeeze another couple of titles before this month is over. Princess Lover! is the newest 2009 anime I have watched, therefore it will have its chance to scare Wolf and Spice 2 off the ‘Anime of the Year 2009’ throne before the wolf-girl trashes its ass and dumped the carcass on the loser heap that also contained the remains of Koukaku no Regios, Tears to Tiara, K-On and Saki.

The backgrounds are nice, but would have been better if they are animated.

Story:-
Our main protagonist loses his parents in an ‘accident’, therefore he has to live with his rich grandfather. His grandfather then made him his successor, and then ships the protagonist into an elite school for the rich and famous. At that school, he then amassed some beautiful girls for his harem, before the story nose-dived in the second half of the anime.

Just like K-On, the story in this anime is crap. Just like K-On, this anime actually started well before tanking in the second half. In fact, the deterioration of the storyline quality in this anime is even worse than K-On; the last three episodes of this anime is painful to watch because the ending is so awful. Of course, just like K-On, this anime has good story development and pacing despite the crap storyline. Actually I want to slap the romance genre tag on this anime but I am truly a very kind man to not do that. You will see why when you reach the conclusion of this review. There are numerous fan service in this anime, but they are too one-dimensional unlike the ones you can see in Saki.

Unlike K-On, this anime doesn’t have a great character like Hirasawa Yui. With this fact, you may have realized that this anime will score less than K-On has. Unlike K-On, this anime has far worse character development strategies. This really applies to that social club president and also the main protagonist personal maid. I was surprised when the former declared that she has fallen in love with the main protagonist, because I haven’t seen any events that can be described as the turning point for her character to change from hate to love. Which one is it? Is it the scene where the two has dinner and the main  protagonist allows her to sell merchandise in his department store? Is it the scene before that dinner where they were interviewed? Is it the hot spring vacation? Or maybe all the above? IMO, even if all three events I have mentioned combined to become the catalyst for her character development, I don’t think they (those events) has enough impact that will justify the character change. For example, those three events combined doesn’t even have half the impact that the scene where the main protagonist saves the princess from the gangsters has.

As for the personal maid, it seems that she has already fallen in love with him by the time the hot spring vacation episode was aired. The number of any discernable turning point events (or positive flags as they called it in dating simulation games – which where this anime is adapted from) that will explain that development is zero. It is possible that the maid likes him from the start due to her position. But if that was true, it is safe to say that her character development is virtually stagnating (just like the main protagonist of Tears to Tiara).

Quoted For Truth.

Character Design:-
Just as you expect from an adaptation of a dating simulation, the characters in this anime basically has hairs that is anything but black (except the main protagonist and the maid), big boobs, long legs and impossible body shapes. This is not a bad thing actually.

Voice Acting:-
The voice acting in this anime is average and not very impressive, just like K-On. But unlike K-On, there are no outstanding characters in this anime that has good voice acting performance.

Music:-
This anime has good OST and ED theme, but not so for the OP theme.

The director tends to use camera angles that depicts people in horizontal position, for reasons inexplicable to me.

Animation and Direction:-
The animation quality in this anime is largely great, even in fast-paced scenes. In some scenes, the animation is not as fluid as it can be though. I’ve noticed that this anime tends to use very high quality backgrounds, kind of like what Makoto Shinkai does in his movies. It would have been nice though if the animation studio also animate those backgrounds, because seeing the main protagonist walking with his woman in a forest where the tree’s leafs are static (as if there are no winds) is very creepy. This anime also has some CGI animations, which are fluid and actually integrates seamlessly with the 2D animation. The directing is just average in general, for all the reasons outlined in the story section, plus usage of some inconvenient camera angles as shown in the screenshot above.

Conclusion:-
4 out of 10. The worst anime I have watched for quite some time. Still better than Macross 7 though.

A parody of an Apple computer, using carrot picture. The one in Doujin Work uses banana picture instead.

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