[mukansa monkey]

I agree with Vexx on this one, although for slightly different reasons. Not only is the ED not supposed to be a real song, it's actually part of the show. Thus it would be wrong if Hirano sang as well as she can, and it'd be even worse if she sang like some operatic goddess. IMHO it's *supposed* to be bad, it's a regular girl overenergetically trying to karaoke cheesy old songs. It takes more skill to do that as a VA than merely singing something cleanly and properly.

I love how the ED and OP both poke fun at conventions of generic OP/ED sequences. The ED basically says screw it, let's have the characters trying to sing instead of actual singing. And the OP, well where to start. First we're given weirdly inappropriate suggestiveness, but isntead of the usual gratuitously pseudo-romantic goo, we're slapped upside the head with it like the sorry loli-loving fanboys we are. Then there's the character intros, where they rap with lines that make sense to the chars, while kinda sorta dancing to backgrounds of their real neighborhood. Instead of dancing to goofy backgrounds with lyrics that are totally irrelevant, like most OPs. Cheerleading is done really well (I've been making animated GIF's of parts of that, and it averages 18 unique frames a second which is kind of high). And quite frankly, you want bad singing? The last "darling darling please" at the end of the song is hair-raising. Yet it makes sense, because it's actually the characters singing. I just got done reading a bunch of people complaining that the jpop OP to Seirei no Moribito is a really lousy way to start an otherwise excellent show. KyoAni didn't make that mistake here.