Let me enjoy a little break before I head to battle (battle being my English exam, quite a one-sided battle isn’t it?)
Kotoura-san is a story about a girl named Kotoura, who can actually read minds. Because of this ability she’s always had a hard time making and keeping friends. She hopes that everything will change now she changed schools. Except obviously, nothing ever happens as planned.
This isn’t exactly the kind of anime I usually jump on and watch without question from start to finish. First death flag, the character designs scream fanservice (for some reasons), second death flag, it’s a school setting, and third death flag, the main character is a rich school girl with psychic powers. It usually ends up in at best a mess, at worse, a boring and annoying anime.
Now I was a bit surprised. Kotoura-san ended up being a mess, but it wasn’t as boring as I first imagined. (While it did have all the fanservice I imagined it would have and more.)
A small note on the fanservice before I get into the actual topic: as much as I usually despise any obvious attempts at putting panties in every scene just for the sake of it, the plot of Kotoura-san was actually well used. I mean, it did make sense for Manabe’s character to think that way and for Kotoura to “see” it. So I didn’t mind that much. (Even if in her place Manabe would already have died from an unfortunate turn of events ^^)
Now, as far as the “plot” is concerned, there’s none. I mean, it’s basically about Kotoura getting into the ESP society and making friends, nothing more, nothing less. In a way, it’s very straight forward, in another way it’s also nothing really interesting. It’s not completely boring per se but it sure wasn’t too exciting. And it was above all an easy excuse to put all kinds of clichés in the series, which I usually aren’t exactly a fan of.
The characters were slightly a bit more interesting. Kotoura isn’t the deepest human being on the planet (in fact, she’s even quite easy to understand and I’d go as far as to call her a bit dumb), but in a way, her naïveté was a bit refreshing, at the very least at the beginning; Then it got on my nerves. Manabe actually reminded me of a puppy, incredibly loyal to his friends and his beloved but also not very smart and relying a lot on his instincts. Again, pretty fun to watch at the beginning, got old really quickly. The two sidekicks were a bit more interesting but only slightly. If you ask me I’d say that the best character in this series was Kotoura’s mother, because she’s also the one who’s gotten the most character development despite getting nearly no screen time.
I’ll go over the romance quickly: obvious from the start, annoying love triangle because we all know how it ends. They honestly should have forgotten the romance and focused more on character development or on plot, because honestly that detective arc was a bit of a mess.
In short, don’t watch Kotoura-san. You’ll probably be disappointed. Or bored. Or both.
