I have always been a fan of the weird subgenre that denpa is for a really long time, ever since I started reading VNs, with one of my first ones being Chaos;Head, moving on afterwards to others with denpa elements (Higurashi, Saya no Uta, Lain) to more strictly denpa such as Totono, C;C and obviously SubaHibi. Afterwards I sort of lost interest and ran out of media related to the genre itself.

Now, revisiting all of Shaft's anime just for the sake of it, I found this. A denpa anime? By Shaft? Sounds like the fucking perfect combination for the genre and the premise felt like something different from other denpa works I have read so I gave it a shot.

Was immediately disappointed from the first episodes since it was extremely easy to notice it's source material was a LN. Lonely bland teenager protagonist who moves with her lonely horny hot aunt and her autistic daughter who happens to be constantly naked that constantly spilled delusional denpa related stuff. Trying to be positive, I went in with the mindset of "Oh well, their misadventures are probably gonna be fun at least, it's shaft after all".

But then I was surprised, Erio's backstory and plotline's was shown and resolved rather quickly, and the series started moving in a direction I wasn't expecting at all, trying to cover a shit ton of really cool concepts; the complications of reintegrating into society, society pushing people into taking moral decisions they don't wish to take, compensating lack of personality, hiding trauma, nostalgia, nerves, happiness, depression, sadness, any emotion really through the belief of aliens and quirkiness. I was not expecting at all for this anime that started silly to delve into the depression of a woman entering late adulthood full of inner conflict: her failures as a mother, her selfishness in her past decisions, her lack of regret on those same decisions, the knowledge that the few family she has left is lethargic and soon to be gone, all of it hidden and presented fantastically with the recurring theme that this anime has of everyone coping with their issues through the recurring facade of happiness, quirkiness and aliens that the anime pulls constantly with (depending on the case) plenty of success.

The characters themselves are all over the place, Niwa's as a character just felt okay, he did his job moving the plot forward as a way of moving along the story, Erio's story is great although it felt rushed in the anime, honestly many of the character's developments are just very rushed but the ideas and ways of doing them for each was good nonetheless. Meme's chapters were fantastic and the highlight of the anime, Ryuuko was good but annoying, Maekawa's felt lacking but I liked her too.
The show's latest and the what felt like the curve ball of the show was Yashiro, which introduced the idea of magical realism into the story itself which honestly just fits fucking fantastically within Denpa, making the protagonist and yourself doubt almost anything that had happened before. Were all the facades actually real? Were all the decisions taken with the belief of aliens not being real correct? Do psychic powers really exist? I'm not a lit major and this is more of a ramble than a review really, but the wonder of magical realism from the little I have read is that juxtaposition of reality and magic. Was it really magic? Does it even matter? All that's left behind the introduction of the concept itself is the character's reaction and experiences after the events.

Getting back on topic of it being an actual review: Story and writing were good, the characters were all very likable, I don't know whether the adaptation was loyal since I haven't read the LN (yet), the music fit very well, the OP is fantastic.
It really shows that Shaft always had it in them to do this kind of stuff which would eventually be noticed in their future (current) shows.
I'm sad that this didn't get a s2 and apparently the LN was cancelled, it wasn't perfect but it was a nice little surprise.