General Impressions: Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo

For every dark or serious series you need a lighthearted counterpart. What's even better is a lighthearted counterpart with its own potential for being more than just pure fun.

Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo has one of the worst premises I've ever come across. A boy meets a completely inept girl and has to take care of her? That rarely sounds like a good start for any series, especially not one that seems to be little more than a harem at first glance. To be honest, this is the type of anime premise I normally stay away from, but when J.C.Staff is involved, I can't help but want to try it out. J.C.Staff isn't an amazing studio, but they have a knack for doing good adaptations out of material that normally wouldn't be much fun for me to watch. Nearly every J.C.Staff anime I've had the pleasure of seeing has been fun, interesting, and while hardly mold-breaking, they've been endearing and memorable experiences.

Despite the bad first impression, Sakurasou has so far proven to be just such a series. It is highly bipolar, in a mostly good way. In the same episode, it can be absurd, ecchi, hilarious, thoughtful, sad, annoying, romantic, etc; we get the usual harem antics, with a cast of busty and eccentric girls and the occasional nude or underwear shot, and on the opposite end of the spectrum we have a reflective and occasionally depressing look at the differences between natural talent and hard work. For you see, Sakurasou is a dorm for the "special" problem kids at an art school, and by "special," I mean geniuses who are completely socially inept.

Sorata Kanda (Yoshitsugu Matsuoka) is the only "normal" and unambitious resident in the hall, who, forced to live there after taking in a plethora of stray cats, finds that he has to take care of one more, a ditzy artist by the name of Mashiro Shiina (Ai Kayano) who can't even dress herself in the morning without his assistance. Yet when Sorata discovers that even this utterly useless girl is a famous artist of rare ability, and that she's given up painting in order to become a mangaka (and one with a serialization on her first try) he spirals into an understandable depression; how is it possible for such talent to exist when the rest of us are so normal and unlucky in comparison?

This quickly becomes the running commentary in the series, and it's a very real issue for aspiring artists, musicians, game designers, and anything else that requires hard work to achieve. Sakurasou handles the problem fairly well; although it occasionally brushes it aside in a conventional way, other times it faces it head on and refuses to let it fade away. It's an interesting duality that I'm unsure originates from the author of the light novels or the anime director, but so far it has been an interesting ride.

One thing I absolutely love about the series is the atmosphere, and for once I mean the visual kind. A warm light suffuses most of the scenes and creates a calming effect, and there are some beautifully drawn backgrounds which include great color combinations. The series is also wonderfully funny, and even tried comedic formula manages to make me laugh here where it otherwise fails. While it's hardly a perfect series and can often get too close to the pure harem/romantic comedy level that I normally avoid, I really enjoy this series and I hope it grows into something just as memorable as Toradora has been for me.

Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo Episode 1 Screencaps: "Cat, White, Mashiro"