Well, this was the most surprising anime for me, this spring. It impacted me the most in terms of emotions and inspired me the most as well.
At its core, this is a story about creators dealing with criticism and freeing their creativity. It's a story about expressing yourself. It's about being alienated in your life, being different from others. It's about gaining confidence from that difference. Personally, I'm always touched and inspired by stories like this. They hold a special place in my heart. And I love it when they have a creative staff at the helm, as if to prove that they stand by this theme. Because the direction for this anime is brilliant. It's different, innovative and it's able to deliver some gut-punching emotional sequences. Both the animation and soundtrack are pretty good too. I'm so happy for studio Doga Kobo. I've been following their works from before they got famous with Oshi No Ko.
What also made this show so great were the characters. All 4 main characters are well-realised. They all get their moments to shine. I was deeply impacted by each of their character stories. Given that these characters meet and bond with each other within 12 episodes, a common mistake made by shows is that I don't buy the bond between them as it was formed so quickly. But this anime did it pretty much perfectly. The bonds between these characters are formed very naturally and I cared about them.
I do think this show is imperfect at places though. I absolutely loved like 90% of the show. But there's like 10% of the show that I really didn't like. First and the most major of all - the fan service. It's just totally unnecessary and somewhat infuriating at times (yes episode 7, I'm talking about you). I don't understand why the anime doesn't respect the characters that it itself has written so well. Secondly I think there are a few ends that weren't explored that well (Kana and her mother's conclusion for instance). So the story could've been longer.
But overall, I thought this anime was brilliant and no other anime (except for Delicious In Dungeon) came close for me this season.
