March comes in like a lion spent an entire episode in its goofier, comedy-happy mode this week, which inevitably resulted in a weaker episode overall. I like these characters well enough that such episodes are still far from unpleasant, but the show has just not found graceful ways to integrate the comedy of the manga. The slice of life elements are clearly key to the structure of the whole, so hopefully the show eventually gets a better grasp on its own material!

You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below.

Time for Hina, the youngest daughter

Or the middle daughter? Not sure

Yep, middle daughter. In middle school. Making a special meal for a boy after his baseball game

Takahashi is the boy

The comedy isn’t sharp or hilarious, but it is warm enough, and not outright aggravating this time. It’s just fluff

More jokes that are dragged out. I can easily see how they’d be more effective in comic form

I like both the sisters getting petty at each other

The show’s animation is definitely stretching. The usual SHAFT trick of having compelling compositions make up for it

I really like how Rei can immediately acknowledge how cool this kid is

He has some strange memory with a woman

“I don’t understand women.” Love how his general difficulty parsing strong emotions is expressed in this way here

Their faces are a little too loosely drawn to be as expressive as they should

This conversation with his rival feels like an Araragi-Hachikuji exchange

Momo thinks he’s Bodoro, basically a mix between Doraemon and Totoro

He’s unsurprisingly great with kids, since he acts like one

Harunobu is rival’s name, right

Akari really likes soft and fluffy looking people as well

Akari is awesome

Overtelling the GPS gag. More bad jokes

So many of these super closeups are just not effective