A disappointment with few redeeming factors

Before I started watching Kanamemo I knew it was either going to be very good, or extremely underwhelming, nothing in-between. Unfortunately, the anime was extremely underwhelming, even though it stayed quite true to the manga's story.

Looking back on the manga now, I remember I read it and enjoyed it, but I wouldn't have hesitated to drop it if I knew I would enjoy something else just as much. And the anime went beyond that, watching the last 7 episodes just felt like a chore, something that had to be done so I could put it to rest.

Initially, this review was going to go out a few days ago, on Saturday, as I had watched the first 6 episodes last Wed-Fri, and had the idea of finishing it over the weekend. But I just had so much better things to do, like stare at a screen waiting for someone to reply to a message with no real need to keep a conversation going. But I did this, and other tasks, because I had no drive to watch Kanamemo, and watching anime is how I spend most of my time over the weekend (if I haven't got the energy to code). I don't like starting a new anime if I am in the middle of one I am able to finish, hence why the Prisma Illya review came out as I was half way through it.

English Name:

Kanamemo

Japanese Name:

かăȘめも

Studio:

feel.

Episodes Watched:

13/13

Posted on:

16/Oct/2018 at 19:41

Honestly, the entire anime was kind of sucky, so a breakdown isn't necessary

If you are watching Kanamemo as it a shoujo ai anime, which was the reason I picked up the manga in the first place, then you may find a little bit of enjoyment in it. Yume and Yuuki make for an interesting deredere/pseudo-yandere couple, with Mika making for a very stereotypical tsundere, and Haruka being an overly obnoxious lolicon. But as a whole, the interactions between the characters, on a romantic level, is done in a pretty good way; not making a fuss about it, nor having much focus on it, whilst still having it play a big role in the plot. 
And honestly, this is the only reason that the character score didn't drop below 5.

Now, to talk about the blandness which truly is Kanamemo

The artwork and sound is very generic, with nothing standout about it. You could take parts of it, stick it into other anime of the same genre, and it would not look/sound out of place in the slightest. The same goes for the characters, sure they have their unique characteristics, but they are still quite bland, and no real development happens to any of them, outside Kana. Hell, Hinata doesn't even get elaborated on at all, pretty much, in the manga there's a chapter where her and Kana go to pick weeds to make dinner with, as it would save money, but apart from a clip of her picking weeds during the OP, there's no mention of it.

I honestly don't know what happened when they were developing the Kanamemo anime. I understand that the source material wasn't the best, but they didn't really do it any justice, nor did they take the artistic license and try and make a unique story-arc for the anime. All in all, it ended up a steaming pile of boring, with a slightly tasty looking yuri cherry on top.


And so we come to an end of another slightly disappointing review for an anime that came from a manga which I liked better. I'm not too sure what I'll be watching next, but I don't think it'll be one which I have read the manga for, as the last few I have read haven't had an anime adaptation unfortunately. So we'll just have to wait and see what that is... but until then, matte ne!