Introduction

It's usually pretty easy to score anime once I've finished them. Most shows are consistent enough that their quality stays at the same level from beginning to end, allowing a viewer to decide exactly where that quality fell on their range of standards.

Every once in a while, however, a show comes around that has such extreme jumps in quality that rating it becomes an exercise in averaging the good with the bad. This always ends up feeling wrong to me, like giving it a good score is ignoring obvious mistakes, but giving it a bad score is forgetting its greatest moments.

This is exactly how I feel about The Pet Girl of Sakurasou, all the way from its title down to the essence of its characters and plot. My opinion on this can only be summed up as "conflicted," and I hope I can extrapolate on those thoughts a little bit here.

As always, I love hearing your opinions, so please feel free to visit my profile with any thoughts you may have afterwards.

Synopsis

Pet Girl is a romcom, at least at the beginning and end parts. It follows Kanda Sorata, a resident of Sakura-sou, a sort of asylum for the misunderstood geniuses of Sui High. He is initially the only normal one there, joined by world-renowned artists, writers, and programmers that simply lacked the social grace to interact with their peers in a typical high school dorm environment.

Joining Sakura-sou at the beginning of the series is Mashiro Shiina, a prodigy artist formerly involved in painting that now wants to experiment in manga. She is even more dysfunctional than the others, lacking the ability or presence of mind to even get dressed and eat in the mornings. Kanda takes it upon himself to educate her on normalcy, and shenanigans ensue.

Strengths

The series takes an unexpected and welcome turn in the middle-most episodes where it highlights the incomprehensible difference in talent between the genius kids and Kanda and his friends. Kanda works himself to the bone night and day, emulating the insane work ethic of his dormmates, only to fail repeatedly to produce any kind of successful product.

The inherent unfairness of matching effort only to see opposite results is a point of conflict for the characters. Kanda and friends are burned by the excessive and relatively easy success of artists like Mashiro, while the talented students simply want to connect with the normal ones on their own intellectual terms.

The impossibility of this desire cause rifts between them that seemingly can never be repaired. Each of the normal characters play a narrative foil to one of the genius students, as well as demonstrating various methods of escapism from the harsh reality of difference in ability.

Jin Mitaka is an aspiring screenplay writer for world-famous animator Misaki Kamiigusa, and the two have had a mutual crush on each other since childhood. Jin realizes that he Misaki's true passion is for anime, and that her love for him in allowing him to write her scripts is keeping her from reaching the pinnacle of her artistry.

To rectify this, Jin takes the route of self-sacrifice, and adapts a womanizing persona to dissuade Misaki from pursuing him. When this doesn't work, he physically distances himself from her and even plans to attend a college far away to get himself out of her thoughts.

Kanda himself projects his dissatisfaction onto others. Mashiro, intending to help his latest project succeed, submits supplemental artwork for Kanda. His project ends up rejected while Mashiro's artwork inadvertently captured the attention of the judges much more.

Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, Nanami Aoyama left her home and family to pursue her dream of becoming a seiyuu. She became completely self-sufficient, working multiple jobs and attending school to pay for voice acting lessons. After two arduous years of nonstop labor, she simply... fails. Hanging her head, Nanami returns home in defeat, ready to accept whatever fate her family plans for her.

The residents of Sakura-sou, while appearing to outsiders to be a group of close-knit friends, actually suffer from intense cases of envy at each other's set of skills. Each character copes with it in varying ways, creating fantastic analogies to the romantic relationships between them and giving the romcom aspect of Pet Girl an unprecedented amount of depth.

Weaknesses

The part that I'm so conflicted about is that all this buildup simply disappears in the last three episodes. The wrenching rivalries between former friends, relationship angst that accompanies unequal success, and utter feeling of loss that accompany a character's latest failure in life all are shelved for the last hour of runtime.

The ending of episode 21 made me change my score up, and the last 3 made me move it back down. Right of the heels of the introduction of the best conflict in the series yet, it is quickly scrapped and thrown under the table so that the characters can make up in time for the graduation arc.

I am not sure if this is a light novel or adaptation pacing issue, but it killed any momentum that Kanda's struggle might have had. It is such a jarring tonal shift from a broken-hearted, cynical main character to a joyous reminisce filled with songs and joyous tears in only half an hour. This, specifically, is what I mean when I say this show has serious quality consistency issues.

Conclusion

Pet Girl is a really interesting study, in my opinion, on the destructive nature of jealousy. The plot and characters embody this perfectly in their readiness to abandon each other for the sake of comparing their success to their peers. And, although this is pure speculation, it feels an awful lot like the show writers tried to do the same.

This series had a truly unique appeal going with the disjointedness of prodigies living alongside normal people, only to back out at the climax of its plot in favor of a more traditional romcom finale in which characters mostly get what they want with minimal consequence. It is really a shame to spend so much time building up this tension only to follow it with a flashback to only the happiest moments of the story.

I suspect that this is Pet Girl's way of trying to emulate the success of similar romcoms. Perhaps this conflict was too much of a risky venture, detracting from the more lighthearted drama that fans have come to expect. Maybe it was too realistic, hitting close to home for viewers who wanted something more superficial or funny than thought-provoking.

A short note about the title: I honestly think the "Pet Girl" part is misleading, and, at best, unnecessary. The focus on Mashiro fades significantly after the first arc concludes, and I would argue this is more of an ensemble cast than anything, with a half-dozen residents sharing equal screen time and exposition.

The Pet Girl of Sakurasou seems to me to have succumbed to the same envy that (albeit briefly) tore its characters apart. Chasing mainstream success in an unwillingness to forgo a happy ending caused its potentially impactful message to lose all credibility by the end.

The show provides a satisfactory experience for fans of romcom drama, and has some interesting ideas to share. Just don't expect anything more than a surface-level look into the consequences of its characters' actions.