Minami-ke Tadaima

Hmm, this is...hmm. Just finished this one, so this review will be my freshest of the seasons of Minami-ke. Prepare for disappointment. But, before you get the wrong idea, well this IS because the studio changed again, this review is not centered on its art style alone, but it will play a major role on how this review goes. This season did something that I was heavily afraid of: they embraced cliché again, something that has not been done since the second season. And by embrace, I mean EMBRACE. Right off the bat, it appears that they are repeating old elements from prior seasons, recyclingold ideas to be specific; and they did not do a good job with it at all. Before I go on, I HAVE to say the positives now. From the looks of it, all the voice actors returned yet again and the writers were still capable of writing humor that made me laugh a lot in a few areas. They finally had a moment where Fujioka almost confessed to Minami, which was all I needed. Given it is a comedy, I knew it was not gonna happen, but it was amazing to almost see. Lastly, the charm of the anime is still there, but now it has mixed with Okawari and Okaeri from the looks of it, as far as delivery and art style go; and just throw in things from season one, too. But, not in the way that you might think. With all that being said, though, it is still Minami-ke at the core and DID bring back the voice actors, alongside the soundtrack once more, so you might still enjoy it in that regard. Now, with that being said...wow, this is a handful. Um, as I said before, they DID embrace generic anime cliché again, but they took it to a new level. They brought up the infamous Ninomiya-kun show again, alongside the mysterious loincloth people showing up at festivals, and they were trying to recycle a lot of old running gags from the first season. This would be fine, but they delivered them quite badly. On top of that, they had actual cringe-worthy moments quite a bit, but made up for it by returning one of my favorite elements of Okaeri: the background talk. In some scenes, two sets of characters will be talking to each other and whenever the main conversation is not humoring enough, the other one usually is and it is quite enjoyable to watch their reactions throughout it all. The background alone is almost more enticing than what they WANT you to pay attention to. Oh, and the worst of it? Hosaka. Now, they just decided that he would be a mental case instead of having him confess to Haruka, though they brought up the whole reason why he was doing this to begin with: the volleyball club! ANOTHER season one reference, and one that I actually forgot myself, but he actually WASN'T in love with her! I completely forgot about that, so that was a surprising reminder. Right, the mental case part you're curious about. Well, apparently, he didn't talk to her for so long that he fell in love with himself. To elaborate, the "Haruka within himself" of whom he saw in his thoughts. Apparently, nobody could find out why Haruka was "imperfect" and so Hosaka just believed her to be a goddess. The problem? He worshiped her like a fictional goddess; one that he would never actually meet because he never talked to her. But, the one thing that irks me is that he was actually about to and Hayami STOPPED him, ate his offering to her and basically turned him insane; making her my least favorite character of the entire anime after that. She basically took away his only chance of talking to her, and he was pretty casual about it, too. He had a lunch ready and was actually steps away from her, but thanks to Hayami, he never saw her for the remainder of the season and, well, as I said before, went insane basically. Also, he still sees her sisters as her daughters. Okay, let's see, what else. They introduced a new character, but she is purely filler at most; named Miyuki, she has a lifeless personality and was meant to be somewhat of a mix between Keiko and Kana at first, though she later went from recurring to minor quite rapidly as she only had one major appearance in a segment and, well, she was not as interesting as their newest addition, Riko, whom still brought up one of the more humorous love triangles I have ever seen. So, the question. Can I recommend this one? That, I can actually say ONLY if you're a die-hard fan of the anime series, because well it did retain most of the charm, it was not that enjoyable to me and I did not prioritize it as much as I did with Minami-ke (my default label for the first season) and Okaeri. Heck, Okawari would be better than this, personally because it had less cliché in it in comparison and was actually more enjoyable in a few areas. I won't be too harsh and say this season was pure trash, but it didn't appeal to me too much. The only major thing it did was give the anime the most detailed backgrounds I had ever seen, but they still didn't breath the same color into them as the first did. Regardless, they were still very well drawn and detailed. My score is about as honest as I can get here. And, normally, whenever I dislike an anime, I don't even put too much life into myself to write the review for it; hence, this one coming off as a bit cluttered and not as high on vocabulary as the first review was. But, I do have a few anime that I literally hate to death, so this one is not that bad. If you're a fan of Minami-ke, go for it. But, if you enjoyed seasons one and three, I might want to skip this one; keyword: might. If you enjoyed season two, you perhaps will like this one a lot as it brings more of that one's style here again with the cliché elements and all, but it is really up to your own personal preference on which seasons you enjoyed the most.

I'll be reviewing Minami-ke in it's entirety: the four seasons plus the OVA's. Honestly, Minami-ke is a pretty standard and simple slice of life/comedy story surrounding three sisters. While you might think it's a CGDCT type of show, it's not. While there are certainly slice of life elements, and it seems to be the focal point of the show, it still is more of a comedy than anything else. The reason why the show is good is due to the interactions of the many characters. I really like how characters interact with each other. They bring out their personalities in a bunch of different scenarios anddialogue. The fact that there are so many different things that these characters do in the limited setting is honestly pretty impressive. However, not all the characters are very good. I do think that Kana, Chiaki, Makoto, Touma, Uchida, and Maki (barley) are good. What I mean is that they go past their character archetypes and you see a lot of variety when it comes to how they act and interact with others. They always bring something unique to the table, and their interactions aren't just limited to a few token things that they are responsible for. On the other hand, the rest of the characters, especially Harkua and Hosaka, are pretty bland. Whenever they're involved in a scene, they usually don't contribute much to the discussion, if at all. They're more of just to make more numbers, and don't stray off their few token lines and personality traits at all. Truly a waste. I would totally understand if this was a 1 season show, but this was a 52 episode series. 52! That's more than enough to have 10 or so good characters. Instead, we see around half or more of the character cast waste away since there's not a lot of attention on them, or if there are, just repeat their same lines over and over again with not much development in their personalities. Haruka, probably one of the characters with the most screen time, also doesn't pass this hurdle. For such an essential character, you'd think that she'd be fun to watch, but she just fills the role of "responsible older sister that cooks," and barely has any personality outside of "being lazy sometimes." Hosaka also gets an absurdly large amount of screen time for his entire personality being "taking off his shirt, crushing on Haruka, and cooking." It's always the same exact routine when it comes to these two character, and that's not okay when they take up so much screen time. I also can't agree how the attention of the characters are so lopsided. It's clear that the story is surround the three Minami characters, yet, most of the time, it's Chiaki's friends that the viewers see the most. I think that a lot of characters with good potential, like Keiko, or even just Touma's family, were ruined because they just didn't have a lot of screen time. Kana and Haruka's circles of friends are obviously mentioned in the episodes, and they have an adequate amount of attention, but it's nothing compared to Chiaki's circle of friends. If there was a more balanced distribution of scenes involving different characters, I would think that there would be not only more variety, but better characters. Enough of characters, though, what about the setting? Honestly, Minami Ke suffers from a bland setting. Usually, or almost always, the setting is at the Minami Household or at school. This is still okay, since there are many shows that only use those settings, but Minami ke doesn't really interact with the setting very much. It's always the same type of scenarios, and there isn't a lot of creativity or variety when it comes to many scenes in the show. This can be seen even when they're not at their own house or at school. The fireworks, beach, pool, family restaurant, and festival scenes are really repetitive and don't actually involve any interaction with the environment, or if there are, they're extremely simple ones. If the show had more interesting scenarios where they did different things, it would be a lot less repetitive. I really have no idea why this is the case. I mean, even just going to another person's house could really spice things up, or even just going on recreational activities like bowling or skating could be nice too. there's really not a lot of variety when it comes to the setting, and as such, things get a bit repetitive. Lastly, I'll talk about art. For a series that started in 2008~, the art was really good. Season 1's artstyle was simple and minimalistic. There was not too many shadows, attention to detail, and everything was simple. That made it so that at least, the movement and animation of facial expressions were fluid and vivid. It's not like an anime like Minami ke really needs that much detail. Season 2, they probably wanted some more detail, and detail it got. The problem was that it was sloppily done. Movements were choppy, animations were always reused, and there was a lack of this fluidity and completeness that the previous animation had. Most importantly, though, the art style didn't fit the anime at all. Not only did season 2 feature the most boring character ever, Fuyuki, who really sucked out any fun at all in a scene, but the art was just horribly paired. Seasons 3 and 4 stuck to the old season 1 art style, and you can really tell how much that art style elevates the entire show. Season 4 especially, had attention to detail, and also still maintained that initial minimalistic approach which really elevated the show. Overall, I liked the show. Characters were cute and scenes were funny. There was a clear theme of repetitiveness when it came to settings/scenarios, like pool, beach, flower viewing, new years, valentine's day, etc etc, and there were some characters which were boring and lacked any depth, but it was still a good show overall.

Minami-Ke Tadaima is the fourth season of the series Minami-Ke. It’s a slice of life comedy with elements of high school romance sprinkled into the mix. To say that this show is unique and is a “must watch” would be stretching it. The slice of life genre has always been one of my favorites, but this show just didn't do it for me. The jokes are pretty stale and some of them lose their potential humor simply because of the way they’re set up. But let’s stop with the general impressions and get into the specifics, shall we? Story: Being a slice of life school comedy, Minami-KeTadaima respectively does not have a complicated plot. It follows the ordinary lives of three sisters: Kana, Chiaki, and Haruka Minami. Each episode is formatted linearly: An ordinary problem is presented, hijinx ensues, and a conclusion is met. It’s simple and should be effective. I say “should” because the sheer quality of most of the jokes and the reactions of the characters actually works against this linear format. That's not to say that the show never made me laugh. It got me a few times, but for a comedy, it was rare. Characters: Aside from Hosaka and Kana--huge shout-outs to their voice actors by the way--most of the cast is a bit uninteresting. Again, most of the show's failings are brought up from the lack of reactions and lack of exaggerated responses from the characters and some of the characters ended up as tropes. Take Makoto's character for instance. In order to hang out with Kana without drawing the suspicion of his classmates, Makoto takes on the form of Mako--a female version of himself. You would think that this could draw out a few laughs, but the setup for the jokes are really typical and not fun in all honesty. In truth, I think the whole show could be described as “really typical and not fun,” but I do think the music helps ease the boredom. Music: The music from the show is actually pretty good. The music used in the comedic scenes generated a silly, albeit cheesy, atmosphere. More specifically, the opening was always something I looked forward to listening to. It was really upbeat and I think it captured what the show really tried to be: a heavily emphasized comedy. The ending theme was less than addicting, but my ears didn't bleed because of it, so that's good. Art Style / Animation: Being a show from 2013, Minami-Ke Tadaima actually doesn't look great in comparison to some of the other shows that came out at the time. While the art style is a bit dated, the animation is serviceable enough and the character designs are unique and even a bit fun at times. While I wouldn’t consider the artistic direction of the show to be its strong suit, I can see how others might enjoy it for its simplicity. Overall Impressions: Minami-Ke Tadaima was a pretty below average experience for me. It just wasn't as much fun as I thought it'd be and I really like the slice of life genre, so I know that's not the problem. Aside from Hosaka's and Kana’s characters, the show was a bore to get through. With its lack of good characters, its repeated use of unfunny jokes, and without a solid reason to keep me coming back to the show, I had a really hard time getting through this one. Even some fans of the show found out that they didn’t love this season of Minami-Ke in particular. In the words of Chiaki herself, “Please do not expect much out of it.” I cannot and will not recommend this show, even to slice of life fans.

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