[Recette]

Animation Quality: 8
In comparison to a lot of other anime, it's pretty well-made. There's a lot more movement in comparison to most other shows, and they exaggerate and stylize very tastefully. Well, S2, that is. Unfortunately, the style and animation otherwise isn't too special, and they wuss out when it comes to instrument playing, which is a bit of a pity, but it's a pretty difficult thing to animate, and even shows like BECK and Nodame skirt around a good deal in regards to showing the playing hands.

Voice Actors: 9
I don't really know the nuances of the language, so I can't really say much in this regard. Sounded okay to me, and they gave all the characters pretty distinct voices and personalities that meshed together well, especially in S2, where they got a bit more spotlight.

Script: 8
I'll be a bit blunt and say I did not like S1's script very much. Way too much exaggeration of pretty much everything, jokes that were too in-your-face, and an intense overuse of gags. I don't know what happened with S2, it's like the series had an epiphany and decided, "Hey, we should clean up our act." Things were toned down for S2, and it definitely had a better atmosphere and a stronger slice-of-life "presence" if you know what I mean. It's not anything particularly special in the grand scheme of things, but for a slice-of-life show, S2's script does its job well, especially in comparison to S1. In general, the characters in S2 seemed a bit more realistic than in S2, notable Sawako, Mio and Ritsu, who seemed to have personalities too heavily exaggerated in S1, but leveled out significantly in S2. Especially Ritsu. Especially.

Soundtrack: 7
Hope you like reading.

I might be a bit lonely in this regard. I understand that the series isn't primarily about the act of making music itself. But even then, they could have expanded a good deal more into the characters' personalities and such through music.

There's simple stuff like "Ritsu plays drums because she dislike working on intricate and fast movements." But what of Mio and Azusa liking jazz? It rarely rears itself in the series, which is a bit odd, because a lot of the songs themselves have sections that were clearly jazz-influenced but never made the cut. Mio and Ritsu presumably learned to play bass and drums together, which is pretty much a combination made in heaven, so why don't they ever end up jamming together? YuiAzu seems a bit... underwhelming compared to the possibilities that they had. Mugi won competitions and likes classical music? You sure wouldn't know that. In fact, Ritsu is the only character that plainly states her musical influences. Maybe this is more of a criticism of script or emotional involvement rather than soundtrack?

But still, most of that is just what I'd like to have seen regarding music in the series, it's understandable that stuff like that isn't the main focus, and they might not want to stray too far from the manga.

When it comes to the vocalized songs, I think they're okay. That's pretty much it, some of the instrumentation is really interesting to listen to, but for the most part, I'm not much of a fan for the horribly saccharine lyrics, and the singing itself ranges anywhere from "not my taste at all" to "mp3-player worthy". But really, personal preferences shouldn't affect the score much, if at all.

As for how the vocalized songs were used in the series, I think they worked out nice for the most part, they all fit fairly well in the atmosphere of the series, although some seemed a bit single-use, like Pure Pure Heart. Didn't really like the Fuwa Fuwa overload, which you heard the last three seconds of every once in a while, but I suppose it was pretty much supposed to be HTT's theme or something.

As for background music, I think the songs at their best are "pretty good" and at their worst "fits the situation". Most were pretty forgettable to me, and I didn't feel like there were really much BGM tracks that were incredibly closely defined to emotions and events.

Editing: N/A
I don't completely understand what this category entails.

Enjoyment: 8
S1 wasn't very enjoyable to me for previously mentioned reasons. Felt nice watching S2 though. Slice-of-life doing its miracle work. Full of "Oh, I've done that!" moments to smile to. Not really an emotion-pumping series, but it's a peaceful thing to watch.

Emotional Involvement: 7
I didn't want anything horrifically bad to happen to the characters in the series, but it's probably because something like that would be like throwing a rock in a perfectly still pond of water. There isn't really a whole lot happening when you look at it, but it's a slice-of-life show. Having no A/C in the summer is pretty much the slice-of-life equivalent to having the family of the main character die in any other show.

Otherwise, the main emotional connection with the characters was chill out and smile if the girls were chilling out, which was 80% of the time, main exceptions being the last few episodes. It could possibly also be said that nostalgia is a driving emotional force in the series.