^Is the new Haruhi really that bad?
*Rhetorical question, no need to answer; I'm avoiding all hype and buzz and rants and raves and fuming mouths and burning effigies until it finishes, just like I did with, well, K-On!*
~~~
Well, personally I find this show a pleasant ride. Unfortunately, it also stops at simply pleasant. There's nothing groundbreaking and I did not laugh myself until my stomach could take no more like, say, Fumoffu! or Minami-ke, but this is not a show that offends; unless you're offended at all things moe of course. Most of the moe jokes didn't really do it for me, but I wasn't facepalming. The music wasn't that spectacular either, but at least there's an excuse that they're still beginners, and they're doing practically bubblegum pop (courtesy of Mio XD).
However, the characters are nice, nobody makes me hate them -- unlike how I despised Tomo and Yukari-sensei in AzuDai -- as even the lazy characters have redeeming points. Mio nicely surprised me most of all since all the avatars floating around make her out as some kind of moeblob -- which turns out to be only half of her.
What's nicest though is that when it's actually in the "slice of life" mood rather than the "gag" one, it works wonderfully. Episode 13 with its subdued, winter mood gave me a sweet flashback to a very similar episode in Haruhi, which I believe is intentional on the part of KyoAni. There weren't too many attempted moe jokes or sitcom plots and it made the characters felt warm and real compared to their usual roles as standard all-girl cast characters, and also revealed that I did at some point connect to these characters to an extent.
TL; DR: this is not a
or
or
kind of anime for me, but it is at least a nice warm
.