So...Skip and Loafer. I heard about it through Amazon recommending the manga to me quite a bit, and I skipped out on the anime version when it came out because I was busy watching other things. Then some of my online friends were praising it up the wazoo. One day, I was bored and decided to sit down and watch it. I will say, while I do like the anime, and it even does a lot of things I wish more romance anime would do...I feel like it could have done more. The premise goes as follows: 15-year-old Mitsumi Iwakura is moving to Tokyo from her rural home in Ishikawa Prefecture so she can go to the elite high school Tsubame West Academy. She dreams of becoming a politician so she can make her hometown more prosperous, but for all her studying and ambitions, she is woefully unprepared for city life. Luckily, after a rough start, she manages to make some friends, with one of them being popular student Sousuke Shima, and manages to make the most of her school days with confidence.

I've mentioned multiple times before that I'm not really a fan of the romance genre, mainly because a lot of the stories feel like they've been copy-pasted from each other, and I especially hate stories that rely way too much on contrived misunderstandings to move the plot forward rather than just having the characters talk to each other like human beings. Thankfully, Skip and Loafer doesn't do that, and whatever problems that do come up between Mitsumi and Sousuke is because they're from entirely different backgrounds. Plus, Mitsumi, for all her confidence and occasional ditziness, is a lot smarter and more emotionally perceptive than most shoujo heroines, and has a lot more depth than most of her caliber. The characters in general are the best thing about Skip and Loafer, because even though they may start off as one-dimensional archetypes at first, their personalities can't simply be summed up in just one sentence. Even the characters who might seem like your typical alpha bitches in a teen romance are given much more nuanced motivations and and a lot more self-awareness than most can even boast.

And yet...I feel like Skip and Loafer's plot leaves a lot to be desired. It's not trying to break any new ground, as it's mainly just "country girl moves to big city, makes friends, has romantic tension with a cute boy, some other drama, etc." and while I don't mind series that are light on plot, Skip and Loafer's premise doesn't seem like it can really carry the series. Even as some drama involving Sousuke and his backstory comes up near the end, which I think is the better part of the series, it's still very subdued and feels like it just...drifts off without really making an impact. You're probably wondering "Hey, wait! You like other shows that are slow-paced and are light on plot such as Insomniacs After School, Summer Ghost, and Do It Yourself! What do they have that you think Skip and Loader doesn't?!" But here's the thing: All three of the anime I mentioned, while they're also about characters in high school, have a bit more meat to their plot than just high school antics. Insomniacs had its characters take part in astrophotography as a way to deal with their insomnia. Summer Ghost was all about unraveling the mystery behind a girl's untimely death, and Do It Yourself was all about exploring the benefits of building things by hand, whether it be a treehouse or small things like a wooden shelf. All three of them have a backbone to their narrative that makes them stand out from other shows of their ilk, with their execution reflecting that. Skip and Loafer, while it does do a lot of things right, doesn't have that backbone, and its overall premise is so thin and by-the-numbers that it borders on being predictable.

Even the animation seems to reflect that. For as much as PA Works gets praised for their animation, there isn't a whole lot of it here. It's faithful to the manga's art style, which is definitely a point in its favor, and it does save more kinetic movement for scenes where it matters, but a lot of the time the animation itself consists of still images and shoujo sparkles. I did find the soundtrack to be pretty unmemorable. I mean, I liked it, but I couldn't tell you the first thing about it. But please, don't think all this to mean that I hate Skip and Loafer, because I don't. I like it, but I feel like it needed some extra pizazz, that's all. I think a part of it is because the manga only covers up to a certain volume, and I'm sure the later parts of the manga build on what was covered in the anime. Maybe I might have liked this better if this had come out when I was younger. I'm not sure. But Skip and Loafer, while fairly light on plot, is perfect for people who want a sweet, saccharine romance series that avoids a lot of the genre's more annoying cliches and pitfalls.