#####This review is spoiler free.

Tsuredure Children proves that simplicity isn’t a bad thing. Over twelve twelve minute episodes, Tsuredure Children presents a collection of short romance stories that all take place at the same school. With a total runtime of 144 minutes (or 132 minutes, if you exclude the intro), Tsuredure Children tackles a lot in what seems like a pretty short period of time. Covering four to five different relationships an episode with a total of nine told over the whole series, Tsuredure Children captures the romance in brief encounters.

Despite having a comparable runtime to that of a movie, the twelve minute episodes have the effect of making the whole show feel very quick. By breaking it up, it become a series of snacks. It’s easy to find yourself eating an entire packet of biscuits, despite the fact that you’d never eat the same amount if it was an enormous piece of cake. Each episode is not quite enough to satiate your hunger, which works well as it is more than feasible to watch the entire series in one sitting.

The show could just have easily been a two hour movie (with a bit of the fat chopped off here and there), yet the very short episodes work to the show’s benefit. This short series of short episodes evokes the feeling of the manga which, in a similar way, tells one story per few page chapter.

With such a constraint in mind, Tsuredure Children has to be economical in how it tells its stories. No scene can be undramatic, because there isn’t time to waste. Every moment of every story feels important, and it wastes very little time with flashbacks that would otherwise be used to orientate the viewer. In this, I found myself a little confused at moments while I tried to remember who was who. However I think erring on the side of caution with not repeating things was the correct choice to make. After a few seconds I would remember anyway and the dominate feeling ended up being more of an “oh yay, it’s this couple again!” and not a “who were these people though?”.

That all said, I think there was a noticeable variance in how strong some of the stories were. A compelling argument could be made to cut three to four of the nine relationships, particularly the astronomy club or the nerds and the girl on the bus. With the lightning fast pacing the show has to maintain, a bit more breathing room would have allowed for five or six stories to really shine.

Despite this, the pacing works very well. The big moments felt justified and important, and none of the relationships felt rushed nor did problems appear to have out of place solutions. The show knew when to wrap up stories, so it avoided the mad dash at the end to neatly tie up too many concussions. Some stories reach their conclusion by episode seven or eight. And every conclusion is different, meaning that each is uniquely satisfying. I don’t expect every love story to wrap-up neatly with a kiss, and I’m glad they don’t here. Some of the more minor stories had equally small bookends, because that’s all they needed. The more prominent stories got big dramatic finishes in the final episode, and that’s what they deserved.

All in all, Tsuredure Children is a fantastic collection of cute little stories. Rather than showing complex characters and complex relationships, it shows a rainbow a simple ones. The series is an easy and delightful watch and while it won’t blow you away or change your life, it is well worth your time.