Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo

Just watched Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo.

Length: 24 episodes

Rating: 8/10

Genre: Slice of Life, Romantic Comedy

Due to the low rent and a penchant for taking in stray cats, Sorata moves into the Sakurasou dorm near his high school.  The tenants at Sakurasou are well known throughout the school for their eccentricities and Sorata quickly begins to question his decision to move in.  Wishing for a normal school life, he vows that after he finds homes for all of his cats, he'll move back into the regular school dorms.  However, there's a new tenant on the way to Sakurasou: a girl named Shiina Mashiro, who is very beautiful and an extremely talented artist.  However, everyone at the dorm quickly realizes that Shiina is completely incapable of taking care of herself.  The concepts of being on time, clothing herself, and taking baths are totally alien to her.  Like another of his stray cats, Sorata adopts Shiina and becomes her caretaker.  Shiina's amazing artistic abilities both inspire and devour nearly everyone she comes into contact with, including her new friends at Sakurasou.

I will say it up front that I fell in love with this anime.  Despite being a slice of life romcom, Pet na Kanojo has a fair amount of depth to it.  The relationships between the helpless Shiina and everyone around her is complex.  At first everyone loves her and takes pity on her, but over time her extreme talent causes feelings of jealousy and encourages her peers to alienate her.  This anime deals heavily with such themes, and is the major focus of the relationship between Sorata and Shiina, also is a factor in the relationship between Kamiigusa and Mitaka.  Accepting your limitations, loving yourself for who you are, pursuing your dreams, and discovering your own talents, are all very important themes of this anime.

In an anime like this, generally the main character is fawned on by every girl around him.  In Pet na Kanojo, there are no less than four major relationships developing, and all developing uniquely.  This helped keep me interested, and although the main focus of the anime is with Sorata, Shiina, and Aoyama, the others got their own plotlines, and it was wrapped up fairly well in the end.

The animation in Pet na Kanojo isn't really anything special, but I really loved how the coloring was done.  Everything has a very soft color that's quite appealing.  JC Staff has never been one of my favorite production studios, but they do this genre very well (see: Azumanga Daioh, Mahoraba: Heartful Days, Nodame Cantabile). 

I would recommend Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo to anyone.  I thought the interpersonal relationships between the characters were very interesting and kept me around until the final episode.  I also liked the message the anime put out, and the characters themselves were all great.  Also, it's physically impossible to watch the first OP without clapping.