Moved a bit slow for my tastes, and I like slow-moving stories that build with a payoff. There's no real payoff here for one of our couples. While the opening of the series leads you to believe there will be many characters and couples, there's really only four main characters/two couples. One couple's romance is fun to watch and the other's is a bit slow without being intriguing. I don't mind a slow burn, but it felt really aimless until halfway through the series when things start actually moving in a direction for both couples.
The supporting characters get a few minutes of airtime, but their storylines are opened up without any real end. Several of their storylines left me wondering what was going to happen with them; it felt like sloppy storytelling. And for a series titled 'Konbini Kareshi' I kept wondering why the school was more of a focal point than the convenience store. Far more scenes take place at the school than at the convenience store, which makes me wonder why the title is so misleading.
I was really surprised at how cruddy the animation was in this; I guess I shouldn't be surprised, Studio Pierrot takes shortcuts (look at Naruto's action scenes), but it's like they put all their junior animators on this and didn't review anything. There's a scene where Misaki's legs/pants are drawn so poorly in episode 12 that it looks like someone forgot to actually do the outline properly, it looks like a sketch. You can't tell if she's wearing hot pants, her legs are malformed or she has on pants. (She has on pants.) Every character's motion is odd too, there was nothing smooth about it and every time someone would run, or play a sport, it was jarring.
I also didn't care for the character design. I found the eyes on the boys odd, the design was fine for the women, but for the male characters, each close-up of their face just reminded me how much I disliked the character designs. The color palettes in each and every frame are pleasing, but backgrounds and scenery lack life and detail.
The 'fun' couple are the only saving grace of this series. The poorly paced story combined with the subpar animation really spoiled it for me, I'll be avoiding Studio Pierrot from now on unless they manage to get their shit together and/or animate a manga or story I really love.
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