Welcome, weebs, to Animated Observations
If AMVs on YouTube tell me anything, its that a surprising amount of people seem to like The Pet Girl of Sakurasou. Even before I knew what the name of the show was, I would see it in virtually any anime-related edit or really anything of that nature. All of this made me extremely curious, and so I decided to check the show out for myself.
To be honest, though, I actually do not know how much there is to say about this show. For starters, you have Sorata, the high school boy main protagonist, his friend Nanami, who looks to be a love interest of Sorata, Mashiro, who is the new girl in town, and everyone else in Sakura hall who all seem to be extremely socially inept. I say this not to leave out any description of their personality, but to point out that it feels like they do not have any personality.
As someone who has watched enough slice of life romances to know where this is going, I can’t help but feel like I am setting myself up to be disappointed. If Pet Girl of Sakaurasou is like those other romance shows, Sorata will spend a bunch of time with Mashiro, fall in love with her, and then the show will end without any actual progression.
However, maybe I am being a bit too cynical with my episode one analysis. After all, there have been other shows that did get to reach a romantic conclusion, like Toradora. Overall, though, my expectations are fairly low, but I am also opened to being surprised by this show. Maybe Pet Girl of Sakurasou will give me something I was not expecting.
If you can’t, or just don’t feel like it, no worries. Thank you all for reading, and goodbye, for now, friends!
Animated Observations 
Its good. PGS is a simplified High School art school version of Honey and Clover. Instead of a cute loli doll, she’s replaced by a less creepy autistic girl as the love interest genius artist. Both characters are similar famous art geniuses, and both are loved by less/un-talented guys who are in awe of their abilities and find themselves caretakers. PGS skips most of the side stories and characters of H&C, but some are retained. Iron Woman is replaced by genki girl, and Milf-con gigolo is replaced by pretty much the same character. They’re just deaged to high school instead of college. If you like this story, I encourage you to watch Honey and Clover someday. Yes, its over 10 years old, and the animation style is older, but its one of the best college-life anime ever made and is a classic for good reason. Golden Time is a copy of H&C.
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Thats interesting. I actually did have plans to watch Honey and Clover soon, so I guess I’ll try and fast track that a bit.
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I don’t think the romance aspect of this is the reason to watch it. This one broke my heart because it seems more about the attempt to follow your dream and still be disappointed time and again. The difficulty of watching someone succeed while you can’t. Of just trying to figure out what you actually want to do.
So yeah, the romance is pretty ordinary, but I still found this a fairly wrenching watch and it is one I haven’t tried to rewatch because I found it so emotionally exhausting.
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Yeah, I’ve gotten a bit farther into it now, and the romance is definitely the least interesting part of the show for sure. Also, its nice to watch a show like this where the main character has a personality beyond being the center of attetion for a bunch of random females.
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I’ll second Karandi’s comment.
I still rewatch the first half from time to time, because I enjoyed Mashiro and Misaki. I’ve known creative folks who were very much like them (to not to those characters’ extremes!). But the farther it got into the second half, the harder I found it to watch.
I also felt like Nanami was a terribly tragic character; I hate seeing characters like her go through rough times!
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