(12 episodes)
What’s it about ?
Adaptation of a visual novel about highschool students producing a visual novel.
Characters
Buntarou, our male lead, is your usual “helps out everyone” aimless high-school student, but at least he’s got good banter with his friends. Since this is a VN adaptation, it takes the slow approach of making us spend a lot of time with him just going about his day before the plot finally gets introduced. We do learn that he has some decent writing talent, but moreover he’s good at taking charges during crisis and making everyone work together while assuaging egos. All skills that should be invaluable later on.
His close friends include Yuuka, his tomboy childhood friend with a talent for acting, and Atomu, the third wheel who’s doomed to fade into the background.
Kuroda is a weird girl who keeps checking him out. After a tense not-date, she eventually reveals she’s been scouting him for her VN-making circle. She’s very driven about it, viewing it as her future career rather than just something to keep busy during high school. That, er, may be a bit over-optimistic, but hey, this is a wish-fulfilment fantasy.
Production Values
Perfectly okay.
Overall Impression
It’s your average “school club” series, basically. Its origin means that it’s more interested in setting up the long game than rushing through particularly noteworthy sequences ; as a result, it lacks some punch to really catch the audience’s attention.
I’m willing to give it a second episode to see whether it picks up a bit, but as a Thursday show it’s facing fierce competition for my time.