Blend S

Spoiler-free review incoming. To note: Blend S is an anime adaptation of a manga series by the same name. The following review is based off the merits of the show as an anime, and the existence of the source material will be ignored. The Premise: Blend S is a wonderful show that follows the adventures of Maika, a girl who has a naturally scary face due to her eyes, and her friends and co-workers at the themed cafe, Stile. The cafe is themed so that every waitress has a "character" to play to entertain the guests. The Story: Blend S is structured so that each episode has its own littlestory or two to tell. As such, there's not really a large overarching plot. There is, however, and overarching theme that is present throughout the show, and that is purely a story of friendship and relationships. As the show progresses, we see more of how the characters interact with one another, and how their involvement with each other might have caused them to change over time. The individual stories we see in each episode, however, are not to be ignored. They're all quirky and downright enjoyable. Truly a comedic slice of life with some substance. The Characters: In Blend S, each character has their own personality that is unique to them, as well as the "character" they have to play for work at the cafe. Maika is a sweet and innocent girl who plays a "sadistic" role as a waitress, with varying levels of difficulty, of course. Due to her normally sweet disposition, she often has trouble being sadistic when she puts effort into it, but funnily enough has no trouble at all being sadistic by accident. Her friend Kaho is another girl Maika's age who is really into playing video games and plays a "tsundere" character for the cafe. Serious college student Mafuyu plays an"imouto" character in a complete 180 from her usual disposition. Miu is a teenaged adult manga artist who ends up playing a...questionable "onee-san" character. And Hideri shows up to play a very energetic "idol" character. Along with Akizuki the chef and Dino the Manager who are both otakus, we have a wonderfully quirky cast to follow. The characters don't necessarily receive large amounts of development all throughout the show, but they all have a few episodes where they really get to shine. We get to learn more about these characters, and they often times learn lessons, leading to some amount of development as time goes on. The Art: The art of Blend S is right up A-1 Pictures' alley. All of the characters are distinct and have a very typical A-1 style. If you generally like their art, you'll probably like the art in this show. The colors are bright and vibrant. The animation is nothing mind blowing, but you generally don't see any mind blowing animation in slice of life shows, anyway. It's overall very solid in that regard. The Sound: To start with the voice acting, I have not seen the English dub of the show, so I can't speak on that front. As for the Japanese VAs, I feel that they all were able to solidly nail the personalities of the characters they voiced, even more so because some of them had essentially two characters to voice depending on the cafe character associated with their main role. The background soundtrack was nice and nothing was overbearing. Of special note, of course, is the show's opening, Bon Appétit, which was catchy and entertaining enough to spawn the "S Stands For..." meme that overtook the internet for a short bit. The Conclusion: Blend S was fantastically quirky and enjoyable. The cute characters always managed to find themselves in entertaining situations, and the "characters" they had to play always gave a reason to laugh. Admittedly, I would have liked to see more of the actual cafe work so we could see more of those "characters," but I still enjoyed what we got. The individual stories were all fun, and I really like the show overall. I would certainly give this delightful show a watch if you're wanting a nice slice of life comedy. As a side note, however, if you're not a fan of fanservice, you might want to evaluate whether or not this is something out of the realm of possibility. This show does have some fanservice in there. But as someone who doesn't find needless fanservice appealing, I didn't mind anything so much in Blend S. I feel in the instances where it existed it served a purpose, and nothing was over the top or anything like that. And now a recommendation for your alternate viewing pleasure. If you just so happened to enjoy Blend S, I would send you to take a look at Wagnaria, also known as working. It's another show placed in the setting of a restaurant, but it has more of an overarching story and the characters are just as quirky. Really enjoyable show. Thanks for reading. o/

Oh boi - Blend S - the mighty overmemed and all around fuckfest of an anime, filled with everything you could ask for - smiles, sweetness, sisters, sadistics and a literal trap. Sounds like a perfect utopia to me, but what do I know. The anime in general has a fresh touch of all of them combined. All of them well mixed to the story, brought out with the art, sound and characters for the maximum enjoyment. (Friendly reminder - the following is purely based on my opinion). • Long story short, the story is great. It's like a revamped version of all our loved andstale anime series. It had the story that you'd expect from an anime that looks like this, but it has extra spice. Spice that just makes it perfect, in a way that you know you shouldn't like it, but you still do. In summary, it has everything that you could ask for, plus more - it's a perfect dealio. There were moments where it was getting a bit repetitive, but it was overlapped by new and surprising (semi-)funny skits and scenes, which made it exxxtra enjoyable. I rate the story 8/10 • The art is amazing - it brought out the characters and their specialties really well. From their cute looks to sadistic eyesights - it managed to show the emotions in every situation. Different scenes had different feels to it, thanks to it being animated with different and variating styles. Also I have to mention that the background imagery was veri gud, having it's own style of "sketched"/unfinished characters on the background. One would argue that it's laziness, but it honestly fits and only I rate the art 9/10. • There isn't too much to say about sounds. It was good as expected. It had quality voice acting and music to back it up - Pretty gud overall. I rate the sounds 8/10. • I personally absolutely loved the characters and the design of them. It had something for every taste - big titties for normies, cute looks for weebs, a loli for perverts and last but not least, a trap for dem geis. Every single one of them looked according to their role and had their "special personality" (which really was the main point of the anime). The way that they all had different personalities and the play on differencing 'real' and 'staged', really made the anime, what it is - a semi-masterpiece. Really loved the characters - I rate them 10/10. • Enjoyment - I absolutely loved its fun way to bring out different styles and personalities. Honestly surprised how this overmemed and simple looking anime about a cafe could bring me this much enjoyment. Personally, I really enjoyed watching it - I rate the enjoyment 9/10. Overall - Blend S is overall lovely. There really shouldn't be much more to say - it's a semi-masterpiece and I really enjoyed it. This is why I rate it 9/10, would meme again. Thanks for wasting your time on dis~ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

WARNING: This review contains some spoilers. Blend S, where many types of anime personalities are thrown into to get a surprising and funny blend of pure entertainment and romantic fanservice provided by the cast. -Story: The story is pretty simple, Maika Sakuranomiya is a cosmopolitan Japanese girl who wants to get a part-time job in order to travel the world, but can’t get any job or gets fired easily due to his “sadistic” face. Then finally gets a job in a café called “Stile” where an Italian guy called Dino is the Manager and has gotten quite attached to Japanese culture, who gets infatuated with Maika forhis Japanese outlook. This anime is presented in an episodic way and has a great continuum along the 12 episodes, and while the premise of the show is simplistic, it doesn’t disappoint and gives a lot of entertainment and good romance and implicit dirty talking along the way. Blend S often presents progressive attitudes well related to our current culture, such as Dino getting arrested for presumably having misconducts with the girls to the point of even kidnapping, and Akizuki groping Kaho just because he was upset for the jungle theme. Also mention Hideri’s desire to be a girl idol while being a boy. And while this may alienate many conservatives just by hearing these things, it won’t, quite the contrary I say, because the virtue is that Blend S pulls off these situations in a subtle and funny way, it’s not forced like most of the Western shows. (8/10) -Art: The art is a really strong point, because all of the characters are pretty distinguishable from each other and matches very well to their personality, Maika’s Japanese heritage is clearly represented with the straight black hair and her schoolgirl attire. The backgrounds are good, but not memorable, especially in the outdoors. And the animation is extremely great with all the expressions flowing all around our eyes, and never seeming out of place at any moment, well crafted and very consistent along the full 12 episodes. (9/10) -Sound: The sound is pretty subtle and mostly goes with the scenes of the shows, but it doesn’t stand out and can be easily forgotten. The opening has the catchiest intro that I've heard in several years, such famous that it has already became a meme with the Sweet, Smile, Sister, Sadistic, Surprise and similar comparisons with the S letter, but it’s also worth mentioning that the ending is pretty plain, even considering the good ending scenes. I have no complaints with the seiyuu cast, most of them are close to the character that are voice acting and express most of what it’s said. But it’d be better if Dino could have a more “accento straniero” to give him more distinction to his already crazy personality, and more importantly, show that he’s an Italian, of course his seiyuu personified really well Dino’s eternal struggles with himself. While Japanese and Italian are pretty simple languages to speak, Italian is spoken more softly and more romantic, thing that Dino doesn’t have. (6/10) -Characters: Here’s where the show is at its strongest, all 7 main characters have marked personalities and never seem to put off the others by any mean. The 5 waitress attend the customers with a specific personality in order to maintain the customers happy. It’s no coincidence that Maika is assigned the sadistic personality, much to her reluctance and will to present herself as a charming and smiling waitress. Kaho Hinata, while being a massive sweetheart and the most popular waitress of Stile, behaves like a tsundere when treating the customers. Mafuyu Hoshikawa, the most mature and the most closed minded of the cast delivers a little sis behaviour in excellent form due to her small stature. Miu Amano, a +18 doujinshi artist who has a penchant to ship everybody in the café gets the big sister status, never letting a brainstorm going to waste. And Hideri Kanzaki is literally the surprise of the waiters cast. Hideri is without doubt the best character and the perfect bridge between the girls and the boys, often helping someone to understand better the other ones. Such is the case when he constantly helps Dino with his quest to conquer Maika’s heart, often involving real, and sometimes, crazy advices to his cause, but always in good nature; same with Kouyou Akizuki with his several misunderstandings and mixed feelings with Kaho. Dino is the Manager and has a massive obsession with anime, which tires him out on the nights, often lazing around when working and trying to flirt every single girl close to her, sometimes getting over the limit and then getting arrested. Kouyou Akizuki is the responsible chef and Dino’s ground cable to reality, in spite of this, he has a massive problem to interact with girls in most situations, clearly expressed in his bluntness when talking to Kaho and still hiding his feelings to her. (10/10) -Enjoyment: A slice-of-life that doesn’t have enjoyment is not a good slice-of-life is my motto. Blend S provides several moments of enjoyment with the daily interaction between the cast, the more intricate and funny intimate scenes, the working habits of the main cast, some exceptional situations like the mandatory beach and snow episodes, and specially the overall light heart approach of the show. All in all, if you’re very well versed on the slice of life genre, you won’t be disappointed at all, no second is lost by watching this anime, it’s pretty simple and conventional, but remarks clearly why this genre will never die. (8/10)

"Cute girls" anime is rooted in pedophilia and I will die on this hill. I've seen more disturbing attempts at whatever this is, so I could at least enjoy the decent parts of the series. The main girl is so goddamn boring she gets overshadowed by Kaho completely. Honestly the Akizuki and Kaho sublot was far more interesting than Dino and Maika. Speaking of Dino and Maika - they had absolutely no problem just casually dropping the fact they have a 10 year age gap. Whenever I see Dino I get pissed off. And whenever I see Maika I get pissed off as well cause of howboring she is. But Dino has to take the cake here - 26 year old man hitting on a high school girl. And it's being sold off as comedy. Even worse - romance. I have to laugh. The supporting cast's charms (except the loli) were able to save this anime somehow. But it's still subpar for what it is. There's better SOL romcoms out there. That aren't borderline pedophilia. Weak 7/10. It passes the time.

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