It made me happy. The nearest I have to a negative is that the show's "ten years later" final episode is too similar to the previous episodes.

AKANE NISHIMURA is a fifth grader (10-11 years old) who's being bullied by her entire class. All of them. She has no friends and tells lies about this to her concerned father. (Mum's dead.) Her problem is that she's dark and gloomy, so everyone calls her a shinigami (Grim Reaper) and she's almost come to believe them. Her self-esteem's been shattered and she thinks she's as bad as everyone says.

TAKADA TAIYOU is a new transfer student and one of the all-time great idiot protagonists. He believes everything. Akane's a shinigami? AWESOME!!! Talking to her will give you a curse? EVEN MORE AWESOME!!! He wishes he could get cursed and thinks Akane must therefore be the greatest. Modern anime protagonists are often socially inept, but Takada's the opposite of that. Bullies don't stand a chance. His confidence and unstoppable mouth make him indestructible. Nothing can puncture his enthusiasm. I adore the show's favourite gag of Takada misunderstanding mean-spirited abuse and reinterpreting the words as praise. He also has the superpower of being able to say what he's thinking. It doesn't matter how glowing or cringeworthy his thoughts might be, he'll just say them.

This regularly makes Nishimura blush as if radioactive while steam rises from the top of her head... but they're great together. They can be natural with each other. This is the story of a damaged person being healed, with the rest of the cast soon seeing their relationship in romantic terms. Nishimura and Takada themselves are too immature to understand, though, which itself can be funny.

The show concludes with a flashforward episode, several years later. This doesn't quite work, though, because Takada has the same brain. The show's ignoring how the characters might have grown in the intervening years. Takada was childish even at the age of 11, so leaving him unchanged in high school suggests some kind of mental handicap.

The art's simple, but the voice actors bring it alive. They're doing some heavy lifting.

This is a charming, happy series that always put a smile on my face, but it's not as simplistic as its art makes it look. Nishimura's pain is real. What Takada is doing for her is huge. Other characters get development too, with one of the bullies also developing feelings for Takada and learning to grow past her attitudes towards Nishimura. It's clearly one of the best shows of 2023.

"So... thank you, Takada-kun. Because of you, I was able to introduce my mum to a friend for the first time."

(You might remember that Mum's dead. They've visited her grave.)