March comes in like a lion

So, I watched up to episode 17 of season 1 of March Comes in Like a Lion and... I hated it. As far as positives go, I like the art style (mostly), the animation is nice and fluid and whenever they do those black and white scenes that look like inked manga panels, it's beautiful and a marvel to look at. As far as stories and characters go, I've never been more bored or disinterested in an anime like that. The characters feel so one-dimensional despite all their efforts of trying to insert depth through their "unique" and tragic struggles.

Firstly, the main character... his issue is that he doesn't really take care of himself and focused intensely on Shogi, a game he was never really interested in but was very good at from an early age and continued to get better to satisfy his foster dad and later to have funds to live off of. He's an orphan, no family of his own, taken in by a family who's dad is really intent on shogi and that's about it so far. While I don't think this backstory is necessarily bad or stupid, it just felt really dull. This main character felt like he had no personality to me besides being anxious, insecure and somewhat arrogant. That does not create a full character. He was a bore to watch.

As for the family he usually visits, they're all just the "cute girl" stereotypes from the hard working one, to trying too hard and anxious, to the child. They were also very boring as they were just cut and paste stereotypes who were similarly orphaned. It feels as if the show is trying to just place a need for sympathy or pity upon the characters based purely on their pasts and not their characters. Another bad taste in my mouth.

Then there's the best friend character... this guy was really annoying to me. As far as character goes, he's another generic stereotype. The passionate, enthusiastic guy who wants to build people up. He was just so insistent on being a part of the main character's life and of course, outside of the stereotype, has no real character and once again they gave him the problem of having a chronic illness, forcing sympathy upon the audience, instead of it being earned from us liking the characters and being invested in their stories.

As for the foster family he had growing up, I wasn't particularly interested in that storyline but I did find the sister character to be extremely interesting and once she came back into the main character's life again, I was excited and their short interactions only disapointed me because they were short. Nothing else to really say about them.

The writing of the show is bad. Now, this is obviously my opinion but it really feels like they took every anime with an introspective character, took stock dialogue, and put it into the show including all the characters who have differing opinions from the introspective characters, people who challenge them, people who provoke them, people who help them, etc. The dialogue is some of the most boring, generic, cut and paste stuff in the show and it was just unbarable to me especially since I love the idea of writing, what can be pulled off with writing and writers. As I said earlier, the sister character really stood out from everything else. She had an interesting character, interesting dialogue and an interesting story behind her with her abusive boyfriend. Outside of that, the writing wasn't doing anything for me.

Just as an aside, the mouths are weird. This detail is more of a nitpick than a critique; it just bothered me while watching it because the mouths always looked like they were slightly open and cut at the sides which was just very distracting.

Now, I don't want to give a verdict saying it's a bad show since I haven't seen everything yet but as of now, it's not looking promising and I'm very reluctant to continue watching. With that, it's solidly below average for me but not far below average since I did enjoy the sister character as well as the art. Hope you can enjoy the show more than I did, form your own opinion and maybe even justify some of the things I dislike.

Thanks for reading!