When I first heard of Otonari no Tenshi-sama ni Itsunomanika Dame Ningen ni Saretita Ken, it was from people that I knew who read the light novels from this series saying that it was a pretty wholesome romcom and very good, and I know I like to watch romcoms so I decided to give it a shot, but after seeing it was going to made by Project No.9 and that it sounded extremely generic to its core I started to lose confidence, and it’s good to know that my total lack of confidence in this thing didn’t disappoint because not only it looks ugly, but it is in fact generic to its core, and I’m not saying generic as an actually bad thing but in how it is implemented.

Amane is the same protagonist as always, he is a sadboi who has one single friend, just that Amane has even less personality than your usual MC. He moved from his previous school due to some people that didn’t consider him a friend and used him just to pay stuff and that’s why he barely has any friends now, that’s basically him, that’s all there is to his character for easier self-insertion. But suddenly one day he finds Mahiru, the so-called angel of the school, not only she has perfect grades but she is also apparently the most beautiful girl, stupidly popular among her peers, and other things you already saw from other perfect heroines. So, as he sees her alone and sad and the rain starts falling, he gives her his umbrella and he gets sick due to being exposed to rain, and after all the help she received, Mahiru goes to his apartment since she feels guilty for him giving her the umbrella. Now, they conveniently live in the same building floor, I have seen other series with that so I’ll let it slide, but as soon as she puts a foot in Amane’s apartment, she says that she has to start cleaning the whole room and that he looks pale, so she also starts cooking for him every single day to the point that they eventually decide that she can cook on his kitchen. So, I can confidently say, Mahiru is not Amane’s love interest, she is his actual mother, she works as his mother better than his own mother.

Mahiru constantly mentions all the help Amane gives to her, and I hear those dialogues and just wonder, WHAT HELP IS HE GIVING YOU?! I think she didn’t perceive the series in the same way I did, since I just saw her helping him every single time, besides the little stuff from the rain and when she was a little hurt on episode one, so I guess she says it due to the stuff he buys her, but I wouldn’t consider it as helping her. But then there was this scene that gave us insight of Mahiru’s past, she wasn’t loved by her parents so that’s why she put effort to be perfectly perfect in every single way, but they didn’t love her back and even want nothing to do with her once she finishes high school, not only this isn’t a flaw to Mahiru because she is still perfect, it’s their parents who are heartless, but after she tells Amane all of this and he comforts her she finally falls in love with him. And I’m sure telling your tragic backstory and working as the mother of a guy won’t make yourself fall in love with him, but hey, this series has been this way since the beginning.

There was this scene in episode 9, where Amane and Mahiru went to shop, and Amane was waiting for Mahiru to look for some stuff and then suddenly two girls appear in front of him and ask Amane if he wanted to hang out, but he is grabbed by the arm by Mahiru and the two go away from those girls. At that moment I had to pause the episode and I started laughing hard, I think so-called “comedy” anime don’t make me laugh at something this easily, but I’m not laughing because it was made to be a funny scene, I laughed at how blatantly stupid it was, I was laughing at it not with it, especially because this series doesn’t have written jokes or jokes at all, I think it cannot be possibly categorized as a comedy, I already thought it was dumb enough for the most beautiful girl in the school to suddenly become the mom- sorry, the love interest of the MC was unrealistic enough, but this was even beyond that. And this is the usual quality of the scenes in this series, they go on and on being stupid, without taking into account the million dialogues about “we are not dating” “I don’t feel anything for her” despite the fact they basically live together, she cooks for him, she cleanses her house for him, they hold hands and shit like that, I mean, this series even went and made Amane have a wet dream about Mahiro, talk about not being attracted to her.

If I had a dollar for every single off-model frame in this anime, even I could fund a better show, because this show looks horrible, the animation is super stiff, there are so many off-model frames that my eyes hurt watching at the screen, there’s one like every couple of minutes, I’m not actually surprised since a studio as mediocre as Project No.9 is the one handling the series, but even then, what about everything else? This series has as many settings as a 4 camera sitcom, there is the school, the park, the house with the couch, and they spend tons of times in the couch, I feel like the producers read the novel and said “these idiots spent most of the time sitting on a couch, it looks very cheap to animate” and they went with it, but even if it looked cheap to animate since there aren’t many movements, you could at least try to make the characters look on-model.

So up to a point, ever since I stated watching this series I thought that Otonari no Tenshi-sama ni Itsunomanika Dame Ningen ni Saretita Ken is just Kawaii Dake ja nai Shikimori-san if it wasn’t even trying, and that show barely tried anything at all. You heard that right, it’s basically the same premise but Shikimori-san goes with some logic as to why the girl is so infatuated with him since the beginning, like the girl is actually the MC’s girlfriend since the start, think what you want about their relationship as being bland, but not even them who were categorized as having more of a mother and son relationship go as hard as these two on that Oedipus angle, Mahiru acts much more like a mother than Shikimori can ever hope to and the two guys are incapable of doing anything without them, it’s just that this series looks ugly as sin and the other is a Doga Kobo show, so it looked pretty basically the whole time even if the series itself wasn’t that good. And I mean, look at the novel illustrations of Otonari no Tenshi-sama and now compare them to the anime, they are clearly butchered in designs.

And I don’t mean harm to people who like this series and can get behind all of this ugly off-model fluff of a series, but I can’t help but wonder why I choose to watch this one to aside from Nagatoro-san, as the other “remarkable” romcoms this season were stuff like Tomo-chan wa Onnanoko whose whole gimmick is the girl is a tomboy and Kubo-san wa Mob wo Yurusanai that aside from being delayed it seems to be almost the same as this one, so I probably didn’t make the wrong call in which romcom to watch, but I should probably have gone for Tomo-chan or downright not watch this one, as it’s just bad.

Thank you for reading.