Alma-chan Wants to Be a Family is a wholesome comedy/romance anime about two scientists developing an AI powered robot with insane capabilities that takes the form of a young child. We follow Alma as she does normal kid stuff like go to school and make friends all the while being in the body of a robot. This naturally creates a divide between her and her school-mates as Alma doesn’t always understand them which paves way for some funny shenanigans to ensue. Additionally, Alma is designed and raised by her father Kamisato Enji and her mother Yobane Suzume to be helpful to society. It’s Alma’s altruism and good-nature that get her into funny situations that the humor builds itself around. Finally, interactions with side characters (who I’ll get into later) and her parents and their relationship is another key focus of the humor in the anime. If I compared it to another anime, I’d say that Alma’s family resembles Anya’s family in Spy x Family (hey they even have similar names). Both have cute daughter characters inside of a fake family that slowly takes shape into feeling natural (hell Suzume even looks like Yor if you squint hard enough). And like in Spy x Family, there’s a lot of humor surrounding a potential romance between the fake father and fake mother.
The characters are all basic and reused archetypes. For example Enji’s sister Toki is the caring sister, Makina is the competitive little sister, Tokoyo is the senpai obsessed kouhai, and there are many more. If you know me personally, you know I’m a big sucker for good character writing so usually these archetype characters would lower my score, however, I’m generally very permissive when it comes to character depth in a comedy since the focus is more so on the jokes and character interactions rather than actual depth of character. That’s why despite all the characters being basically rehashed characters from other anime I still hold high esteem for this anime. Alma and her parents hold slightly more depth with us actually knowing about their dreams to be accepted as scientists and because of the romantic tension going on between them. Now that I think about it, Makina does slightly change, maybe a tiny bit. I won’t spoil that though.
I’m not a huge connoisseur of either animation or music so my opinions on them might be skewed. First and foremost, the art style is very cute and fitting for a comedy anime. I don’t notice any animation errors in it either, so for me it checks all boxes. The music is pretty chill I guess. It’s somewhat forgettable since I’m squinting my brain and the only thing coming out is the OP and ED, which speaking of them, they were bangers. The ED gives me this feeling of belonging that warms my heart up.
Overall, I really liked the premise, I found it very interesting. The characters weren’t super fleshed out or really that unique but it worked for a comedy anime and I enjoyed them regardless of their lack of depth. The humor is pretty funny, Alma’s helpful nature gets her involved in a lot of situations and with a lot of people she otherwise wouldn’t interact with. This is a good thing because it broadens the world the anime is in and we aren’t confined to just Alma’s family which would get boring eventually. I really liked this one 10 Makina heads out of 10.
Welp, this is my first review I’m posting. I really hope I did it right and I hope you enjoyed reading it too. Thanks for stopping by :D