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I think I've seen enough of this anime to review it fairly. If my opinion changes at the end, I will rewrite.

If I had to sum up this anime in one sentence, it's "the ecchiest absolutely non-ecchi anime I've ever seen". There is not even one hint of ecchi in this anime, and yet they managed to shove at least three different kinks in, and in such a way that it's absolutely innocent. It's almost artful how they pulled that one off, and I'm rather amazed at how well they pulled it off. But, nonetheless, there it is.

This is kind of ... a CGDCT anime, but it's absolutely unique in the genre - I've never seen anything quite like it. It's pretty much exactly as described - an AI construct named "Alma" wants to be a family. So, she gets a family. It's patterned as a 3 story line per episode anime - think "Love is war". And it's kind of absurd. Some of the storylines are absolutely predictable, some are absolutely unpredictable, most are hilarious. Several times I saw something coming and was going to myself "Oh no. Oh no, I see what's coming.. OH NO." And... it was exactly as I thought. It was a combination of laughing because it was funny and a "did they REALLY go there? Well, I guess that's a thing that happened".

In short, I think this is what happens when someone who wants to write hentai ends up writing a family friendly anime. Because it is family friendly. Absolutely family friendly. And... well, you'll see.

So, do I think you'll like it? Well, yeah, probably. Is it cringe? Just a bit. Is it funny? Yeah. It's the only anime of the season it looks like I'm going to finish. So... Recommend from me. But don't say I didn't warn you.

I think... as with a few anime on here, this one is woefully underrated. Not to say it's perfect, but I'm led to understand that this is because it's based off of a web novel, and people like the web novel better. And, well, are pulling a Marshall Law on it (rating something unfairly and mobbing the score much lower than it should be based on not rating it on its own terms).

That's really not fair. It deserves to be judged on its own merits. I've never seen the web novel, so I'll not be taking that into account.

This anime is ... one of the few anime set in the US. Los Angeles, to be precise. And this isn't an anime that tries to take Japanese culture and overlay it on American scenery. This also isn't an anime that parodies American culture to the point where it's unrecognizable and, sometimes, frankly offensive. The locale isn't perfect, but it's far, far better than pretty much any similar anime I've seen so far. They even had one of the signs on a building in Spanish. That's a detail most Japanese people wouldn't pick up on.

So that's pretty impressive.

The story itself also isn't bad. It's not great, but it's not like 99 percent of the gaming anime that have annoying and absurd coincidences - this one is pretty well written. So far it's pretty engaging, the art is pleasant and not badly done at all, the soundtrack is... umm... meh, I'd say, but not awful. There are lots of anime I drop pretty quickly. I'll probably be seeing this one through.

Quite honestly, I never watch anime in dub (see my profile if you want to know why). This anime feels a lot more like the dub is Japanese rather than the other way around. I've seen one other anime that I also felt that way about (Anne Shirley, which I still need to finish) and it's rather a breath of fresh air when that happens.

And there were a few laugh out loud moments. Not many, but even more than zero is pretty cool.

A few things I really don't like though.

One is that while they take great pains to address American culture on its own terms, they don't entirely succeed. A few Japanese-inspired interpretations of American culture are obvious. For example, I'm not sure I would sit on a park bench in the middle of downtown LA (or even Santa Monica) eating my lunch (this is a common trope in Japan, though they at least didn't have her eating a bentou). That's just asking for trouble, especially as a young woman. (And don't take that the wrong way. It's just plain dangerous there). Another thing is, you never see her commuting to work. I think it just never occurred to the Japanese producer that she'd be driving. That's not a huge issue, except her boss drives her home, and it's a very long drive. (they did a really good job with the scenery, though... but still.) There are a few misunderstandings of American work culture, though they get it somewhat right - more than I'd expect.

These are, admittedly, little things. But the art and story are good enough that these little errors are enough to take you out of the story.

I also find the FMC kind of annoying. This is another anime where the FMC is socially anxious and at some points I was like "just spit it out, girl!". The MMC is not exactly a great specimen of manhood either, but I think we're about to find out why.

So, all told, this is an underrated (and underscored), well done anime that accomplishes what it wants to accomplish well, but not perfectly. I score it a 7, which is my default score, and much closer to what I think it deserves to be ranked than the frankly unfair score it currently has.

Recommended... but who knows what the future holds.

There is a certain class of videos on YouTube, taken from Reddit forums called Petty Revenge, Pro Revenge, etc. These are tales of people (Usually named Karen for some historical reason I won't go into here) that do awful things and then are smacked down, often brutally. The level of brutality depends on the subreddit.

This is basically a ProRevenge anime. Revenge porn. Nothing more than that.

And yet, I can see exactly why it's so popular - it's for exactly the same reason these subreddits (and associated videos) are popular. You just love to see a jerk get a smackdown. ... And this delivers. This anime is about a girl that likes to punch. And in her kingdom, there are lots of punchable characters, and they all get a punch. As I watch this, someone else is cruising for a punch, and I'm betting there will be lots of punching next episode.

Needless to say, this is a violent (if somewhat cartoonishly so) anime.

Do I enjoy it? I guess I could call it a guilty pleasure. I shouldn't enjoy it. It's not very nice. There's nothing particularly amazing about it, I'm not a huge fan of violence, and... I'm still here for it.

But, know that this is exactly what you're getting. Nothing more. No real plot, no real drama so far, no real anything other than punching. Just a girl finding things to punch and a prince egging her on.

8 from me and recommended, but it's right on the line of "mixed feelings".

This is so far not an awful anime. I really like the OP (it's got a kinda South American bossa-nova feel to it) and the plot itself is nice enough, I guess.

But... okay, let's talk about the elephant in the room.

Bocchi the Rock was a very popular anime a couple of years ago, and it featured a socially anxious girl who... joined a band and came into her own. Which is fine - I liked that anime and this isn't a review of it. But ever since that anime, we've had a spate of awkward/socially anxious characters. Like Monica in ... "Silent Witch", and, well.. this.

My Tiny Senpai was a very popular anime a couple of years ago and featured a rather buxom young woman who was senpai to someone and eventually they fell in love and all that, in a workplace, and... which is fine - I tolerated that anime and this isn't a review of it. But ever since that anime, we've had a spate of office senpai/kouhai romances. Like "Servant x Service", etc.

(I could be getting the order wrong, if I am just switch it, reverse it. My point still stands).

Well, mix those two anime tropes together, not all that well, and you get this.

This is about a socially awkward woman (senpai) and her kouhai, and this anime seems to only exist to capitalize on these two tropes. I'd be a little less critical if it had anything interesting to offer rather than being a rather opportunistic mashup of two overdone tropes, but here we are. You have the awkward senpai, who is outwardly scary bit inwardly a mess, and the kouhai, who is way, way too tolerant of workplace shenanigans, but weak-willed male characters seem to be the norm in Japanese media.

Setting all that aside, it's not terrible. Art is okay, the plot is okay, there's nothing at all *wrong* with it. It's shaping up to be a pretty bog-standard awkward-girl office romance, and for what it is, you could do worse. If you like these two tropes and are okay with not getting anything original but with a kinda comforting sameness to it, then you'll probably really like this anime. But if you (so far anyway) want something inspiring, or unusual... look elsewhere. This is really just a money grab by some Japanese accountant somewhere who saw how popular those two tropes are and went at it with a cake mixer.

Rated 7 so far, which is my default. I reserve the right to change it and/or rewrite this review at any point,.

So, three episodes in, and I don't really know what to think of this anime.

It's about a girl/woman who likes to cook monster meat, when monster meat is a taboo, partly for cultural reasons, and partly because no one's figured out (until her) how to remove the "magic toxins". So there are good reasons for the taboo, but taboo it is nonetheless. The girl finds a man who also likes monster meat, and they grow closer.

It's a sweet anime/plot on the surface, right?

But there's a subtext here, and I can't be the only one that's noticed it.

If you replaced "monster meat" with pretty ... much any socially taboo fetish, you'd get pretty much the same anime, just with more hentai.

I know there are some people who are more conservative than I, and unlike some people, I really to try to take their feelings into account (because I'm not exactly a leftist, shall we say) - and this anime is truly about finding someone who shares your taboo proclivity and bonding over a shared taboo. And... it's not exactly subtle, either.

So, if this is your cup of tea, by all means. It's not a bad anime so far, the art is decent, and the story is even kinda sweet. But know what you're getting into with this, because it's going to smack you in the face with a barely hidden social message you may or may not like, and which you may or may not want your kids watching.

And that's my review. 6 from me so far (which is low by my standards) but I reserve the right to change it (up or down) as the anime progresses.

This is an interesting one to review, because it could go pretty much anywhere.

This is one of those very short anime - 3 minuites per episode. This means it doesn't have any time to explore anything with any depth whatsoever. But, this anime really doesn't need to - I think if it did the story would suffer. This isn't a "slice of life" anime where you take one or two characters and show moments from their life - this is a "slice of place" anime where you watch glimpses of peoples' lives while waiting for a railroad crossing.

And for what it is, ... it really isn't bad. "You get two girls who are trying to navigate youthful feelings they don't understand, an older man who has regrets from admiring a girl from afar in his youth, a boy who is filled with very, very lustful thoughts about a girl standing at the crossing... it's an interesting exploration of a sliver of humanity. Not human life, that's slice of life, but humanity.

But while it is an interesting and not-to-deep exploration, the biggest flaw it that it's, well, not too deep. There's no time to explore anything past the surface. So the very thing that makes it interesting is the very thing that makes it... not interesting. I don't know how they could have gotten themselves out of this. Perhaps the very idea itself is flawed from its inception. I don't know. I just don't think, as it is, it really worked or could have worked.

But... on the plus side, it's not awful and if you choose to watch it you're wasting, what, a half hour of your life? I can think of worse ways to spend it. Watching an episode of "Don't Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro", for example. At least this one has *some* depth.

There are yuri and ecchi *themes* in this anime, but it doesn't really get translated to the animation much. So if you don't like those kinds of things, consider yourself warned, but you're not gonna get smacked in the face by it. There's also a strong hint of an older man with a high schooler. That's.... up to your morals, I suppose.

Anyway... watch it if you want. It's got at least some depth, doesn't take too long, and, well... I've seen worse. Lots worse. But I've also seen better. Lots better.

Mixed feelings from me.

(I'm replacing this review. After some thought. I don't think the previous one was fair.)

Cute Girls Doing Boring Things with Fish.

That's how I'd describe this anime.

Ok, I'll level with you. I watched this anime for one reason and one reason only. I saw that it had a cameo of "Bocchi the Rock". And it does. For ten episodes, I was thinking "I wonder how big the cameo is. I wonder if they'll play anything". It was about one second of a still picture. I am disappoint. But I don't think I should let that affect my ranking or review, so let's just get ... that out of the way and move on.

This is a Cute Girls Doing Cute Things (which is mostly just fishing) slice of life anime. About half the anime is spent doing one of two things: teaching you how to fish, or teaching you how to cook fish. I was completely uninterested in both of these. The rest of the anime was cute girls interacting with each other,, and a little exploration of grief because the two FMCs each lost a parent. There are a few tears, and a lot of fish.

This small amount of plot does set it apart from some other anime that don't even bother with that. So, I guess there's that. It wasn't really enough to save it.

At the end of the day, I ended up skipping through the fishing parts because they were just so interminably boring.

You might like this anime. I didn't. I thought it was just boring. I can't recommend it, but that's the thing about these types of anime - they're for a person with very specific interests, and that's just not me.

Just like I always try to find something to criticize about anime I love, though, I'll try to find something good about this anime. Let's see... art wasn't awful. In fact, in some cases, it was pretty, as you'd expect from an anime that highlights nature. The character design of the girls *was* cute, and they managed to keep ecchi almost entirely out of it (which I always appreciate, particularly in an anime about high school aged girls). The emotional moments were pretty well done - if infrequent and a little muted. And sometimes, the fish recipes did look delicious. In these kinds of anime, they always take particular care with the food art, for what should be obvious reasons.

Anyway, it's on me for watching this to the end. I should have dropped it in episode 2 and spent my time doing something else. *Anything* else.

Rated 5 because as much as I thought it was boring and interminable, it wasn't awful. Painfully average might be a good way to describe it. It's just not for me.

Not Recommended.

This is what I call an "atmospheric anime". There's no action to speak of, no ecchi, no drama, no real plot. This is just a plain slice of life.

But it's beautiful.

This maybe isn't the most beautiful anime I've ever seen, but it's in the running. The art is fantastic. The main character is drawn beautifully, as a beautiful woman who is beautiful without having massive... female artillery (I got that from "Cultural exchange with a game center girl" and I'm keeping it). She's tall, thin, understatedly lovely, and not any single part of her is designed to cater to ... the ecchi crowd. (and the faces are drawn and animated like real faces instead of cat-girls with flat faces and a flappy mouth that doesn't actually move the rest of the face properly, especially in side profile). This might, honestly, be the first anime woman I've seen other than maybe the female MC on ReLife that's actually my type.

And I absolutely love that.

A lot of slice of life anime have a common deficiency. The characters tend to be one dimensional. You get the cute, moe main character, the cute, moe glasses girl, the cute, moe gyaru, the cute, moe ditz. None of the characters in this anime are like that. They are so well written it's almost like they're real people. The voice acting is very understated - which is perfect for this anime.

The "hook" to this anime is a small "dog" (which is actually a tanuki but the ones who pick up on it ain't telling), and the story is basically about the main character Fuji finding the tanuki in a rainstorm and spending the rest of the anime living a quiet and peaceful life with her tanuki. That's all it is. I can't really spoil anything because there's really nothing to spoil. But the best part about this anime is that it's perfectly fine being what it is. It's not trying to be anything it isn't, and for what it is, it's amazingly well done.

As much as I love this, and as highly as I rated it, though, I'm going to call it mixed feelings. Not because I have mixed feelings about it, because I really don't. But more because I can see a particular group of people HATING this anime. If pure slice of life annoys you, if you hate slow paced anime, if you hate a lack of story or drama, if the reason you watch anime is jiggly, floppy flesh that bounces around hyper-realistically attached to high school girls who blush way too much, this anime is not going to be for you. But if you're the type of person who just likes a beautiful anime that really doesn't have, or need, a point beyond a woman and her "dog" interacting in a beautiful way, then you'll love this.

Mixed feelings, but only because you're either gonna love it or hate it. I'm not sure there's a middle ground with this one. It's the former, for me.

Oh, I have much to say about this one, and I think I've seen enough to review it well. This anime is to rocks what Yuru Camp is to camping, Sweetness and Lightning is to food, Do it Yourself is to DIY, and Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid is to hypersexualized immense breasted dragon people.

I have truly mixed feelings about this anime, so... we'll start with what I like about it.

This anime is clearly made by someone who loves mineralogy and is very knowledgeable about it. It's an educational anime about mineralogy. I'm not a mineralogist, but I've watched Dan Hurd on YouTube, ... and I got Dan Hurd vibes. A lot of the stuff they do and talk about in anime you'll find there as well. So if you want to learn about mineralogy, this is your anime.

And truly, there's nothing wrong with that. It is what it is, and for what it is, it's very good. I could see how some could find it boring, but I mostly didn't. It's about a teenage girl named Ruri who wants to find pretty stones. That's all it's about, but as she learns about stones with her graduate researcher friends Imari and Nagi, she learns far more about, well, pretty stones.

The art is very good... even spectacular in some places. The education is accurate. There is a small amount of entertainment and humor. And that's what you get. (and the OP end ED are beautiful and relaxing)

But now let's get into the reasons why my feelings are mixed.

This anime has the same deficiencies as all of the other educational anime. You don't get to know anything about any character except when they're collecting stones. Ruri is bright and bubbly and cheerful, which is fine, but she's mostly just an annoying barnacle on the life of the extremely patient Nagi and Imari. She ends up coming into her own, but even towards the end she's still just looking for pretty stones. What even is she going to *do* with those pretty stones? Maybe we'll find out. Somehow I doubt it. There are more mines to explore.

Nagi (and to a smaller degree Imari) unsettled me a little. It's their body design. Nagi has large breasts with clothing designed to accentuate them. They're like big, round torpedoes. There's something about the way they drew her that made me think they wanted to add a little ecchi but couldn't figure out how, so they just settled for giving most (but not all) of the female characters large breasts. Don't get me wrong, the design is attractive, but it's... excessive. Especially for a Japanese woman, who are not known for... that. They also somehow figured out how to add cosplay into it, which is kind of an amazing accomplishment when you consider that this anime is laser focused on finding rocks. The fact that they somehow shoved Nagi into a maid uniform just underscored that - they're trying to force a little ecchi where it just doesn't fit.

To their credit, though, such as it is, Ruri is a pretty normally sized teenage girl and there are zero of those moments with her or similarly aged friends. Even when they were wearing swimsuits, they were just ordinary swimsuits. That's okay. I'm not complaining about that, just the obvious fact that they were shoving ecchi in where it didn't belong - even if tame ecchi.

Also... and here's the thing I didn't like the most. What those girls/women are doing is *dangerous*. They could have gotten seriously hurt. In fact, in a few places, they almost did. At one point they were walking along abandoned railroad tracks. There's nothing wrong with what they did per se, but what I didn't like is that the anime made zero attempt to actually show "this is DANGEROUS". No disclaimers, no signs, nothing at all that I could see. Not even a "don't try this at home". I understand that Japanese society tends to be a little more independent that way, but still. There's normal, everyday walk-to-the-konbini dangerous, and there's fall-off-a-cliff or have-rocks-fall-on-you dangerous, and this was very much the latter. I wonder how many Japanese people (or even non-Japanese people) will try to do what these girls do, and end up hurt, or worse, disappointed. Because they had pretty much unnatural success. Fields of opals? Fields of sapphires? A huge nugget of placer gold? You have any idea how many videos Dan Hurd has to make before he finds a piece of gold even one tenth that size?

It's the same problem most of these anime have. They lead to warped expectations in favor of promoting whatever it is they're trying to promote. And I really don't think they even quite understand what they're doing. To them, it's just making good anime. Maybe it is. But someone's gonna get hurt.

So, for that reason, it's mixed feelings. Is it a nice anime? Yes. Is it beautiful? Yes. Does Nagi have big, bodacious breasts and a full bottom? Yes. Is Ruri a cute, bubbly girl who makes everyone's day brighter? Yes. Is someone going to get hurt someday because of this anime? Probably. So... that's my opinion. Watch it, enjoy it if you want, you might find it boring or you might not, but before you get a hammer and chisel and start going out into the wilderness to break rocks and fall of cliffs, please, for the love of all that's good and holy, FIND SOMEONE WHO KNOWS WHAT THEY'RE DOING.

Okay, that's all. Mixed feelings from me. I'll rewrite if my opinion changes over the last two episodes. I don't think it will.

I think I've seen enough to give this a fair review. If it changes in the next three episodes, I'll rewrite. I doubt it will.

There are a lot of things I like about this anime, and a few things I don't.

We'll start with the things I like.

This is a very lighthearted "cute girls doing cute things" slice of life anime. The main character is a British girl named Lily Baker. And she is very cute. She has an ever growing circle of friends. And they are also very cute. And a fairly one-sided romantic interest that is five ... years her senior (She's in middle school, so somewhere between twelve and fourteen). This could go south in so many different ways, but it doesn't. This is not even remotely an ecchi anime. It's a cute anime. That's all it is. Cute and wholesome.

Color palette wise, it's bright and colorful - reminds me of Onimai a lot. I really like it.

Also, this is one of the few anime I've ever seen (maybe even the only one, or at least very close) to get English right. Lily's accent isn't entirely accurate to UK - but you can tell that they got, if not a native speaker, at the least a very competent English speaker, to voice her. Her accent is very tolerable and, if not UK, then close enough that I didn't mind all that much. In the ninth episode, an Australian speaker shows up, and while that's not quite perfect, you can tell she's Australian. I give the English accent about 8.5/10. And for a Japanese anime, that's *really* good. (Lily does seem to speak mostly competent Japanese, but only sometimes, and when it suits her. I still haven't quite figured that out, but I'm just chalking it up to laziness on the script writer's part and moving on).

Put another way, this anime has "cultural exchange" in the name, and this is literally the first anime I've ever seen to take that seriously. They even pay attention to UK customs, and treat them accurately and with respect. There are so many Japanese anime that treat western cultures like they're looking into a zoo enclosure and all us westerners are there for their inaccurate entertainment, and this anime does not do that. And I love them for it. They don't get it perfect but it's a far better effort than I've seen in nearly all of the anime I've seen. (A couple come close.)

When animating the characters, they pay a great deal of attention to facial expressions (think Onimai) and it's actually pretty funny. I'm mostly enjoying this anime.

Now for the things I don't really like.

The animation is okay, but it's not good. There are a lot of places where there are people in the background, and they don't move. They take some care with the important stuff, but kind of phone it in on other stuff. There's a lot of CGI too, and you can tell it's CGI. I don't mind that too much, but it's also not the greatest thing.

Some of the characters are just plain annoying. Most of the middle school girl characters are somewhat one dimensional. You have the annoying but good-hearted younger sister type (with the requisite and admittedly cute fang), you have the tomboy, you have the studious glasses-girl (though I don't remember if she wears glasses)... and they rarely actually break out of their mold (though there is some character growth, it's not awful). And Lily's father... I can't tell if he's over the top for comedy or if they just want you to hate him. One thing about "cute girls doing cute things" is that there are very rarely male characters. This anime kinda doesn't do that, but every male character that's not Renji is just flat out annoying.

I do like how Lily keeps her father in line though. That's kinda hilarious, even though cartoon violence isn't really my thing, even if played for laughs.

The OP, ED, and soundtrack are uninspired and forgettable.

So, ummm.... this is a cute, wholesome anime with so little ecchi that if there is some it went right over my head, going for cute instead, and that they do very well. It's an enjoyable anime that has vibes of "onimai" (without the ecchi) and if you just want to see some cute girls doing cute things with a slight young-girl-romance (meaning innocent and so far one-sided) plot, you'll like it. If technical excellence is important to you, or you're one of those X losers who takes offence at anything, you'll probably hate it. I like it. I'll recommend it, but if you don't like slice-of-life CGDCT, then you should probably skip it, that's what you're getting.

I think it's rated too low, honestly. 7 from me.