Premise:
Kimi Ni Todoke: From Me to You is a TV-PG romantic comedy, about a girl named Sawako, who has a striking resemblance to a horror movie monster, so much so that it scares away her classmates and has made it near-impossible to make connections with those around her. That is until the school sweetheart, Shoto Kazeyaha, begins to befriend her. The show follows their relationship and the relationships of Sawako and those around her during the times that follow.
Animation:
Animated by J Film (Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva), Mook DLE (Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood), and Telecom Animation Film Company (Spirited Away), the animation for this show is probably the worst I've seen on a show distributed by an official television network. This show may have been used to train novice animators or may have simply been pushed to the side for more demanding projects, but all in all I found the animation to be seriously lacking-to the point where it distracted from the story.
The show takes as many shortcuts to cut out pencil mileage as possible, and unlike other tv shows in the same genre, is not good at being subtle about it. There is rarely a conversation that happens when most of the time their mouths are out of frame, people are turned into bubbly chibi-style versions of themselves, which most of the time I don't have an issue with, except that for this show it seems to be the standard.
Probably the most consistently frustrating moments of the animation are when one of the characters has a "beauty moment" and the art tries to outdo itself. Instead of a beautifully rendered digital or hand-drawn painting, the show provides a simple watercolor-esque picture of the character that has minimal changes from their original character design. Which may be part of the art-style, but it didn't carry the emotional weight that it seemed the illustrators were aiming for. Although the anime itself is cute and enjoyable, the animation is not.
Story Critiques and Other Thoughts:
The story of Kimi Ni Todoke is a very wholesome one, with no fanservice and one with themes of kindness, connection, and foregoing judgement, which are all important themes and fairly easy to get across in an anime such as this. The premise, as corny as it sounds is executed fairly well, with likeable characters, a charming soundtrack, and passable dialogue.
The biggest issue the story has is the stupidity of its characters. Not that the characters themselves are bad characters, but each main character in it has extremely low observational and critical thinking skills.
Now this is not usually a bad thing to have a character who is dense, unless they aren't set up to be dense, and only happen to be dense when it the author needs more drama to happen. The writers of this show have no issue with sacrificing their characters IQ for unrealistic misunderstandings to happen, which is not only frustrating to the characters, but degrading to the audience as well.
Instead of coming up with creative challenges that the characters must go through, this show relies upon the same already established problems that have already been solved once, going around and around like a broken record.
(As a side note, this is an issue that is not unique to Kimi Ni Todoke, most tv shows have a hard time with breaking from the mold that they themselves have created, especially if that mold happens to make money. For tv shows that are more episodic and don't have an overarching story, it works, but for dramas like Kimi Ni Todoke where the satisfaction comes from watching characters change, it can end up feeling either frustrating and/or a waste of time to watch. We can see this with tv shows like The Flash, Stranger Things, and many others.)Conclusion:
Kimi Ni Todoke is a charming and wholesome love story about breaking out of stereotypes. Through connection, friendship, and romance we see the socially awkward yet lovable Sawako grow and change. The story, unfortunately, has a hard time doing the same thing that its protagonist does, but for all its faults, its an enjoyable, if predictable, rom-com. If you enjoy simple romances with no fanservice, and drama built upon easily solved misunderstandings, then this show is for you.
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