I nearly ditched this show in horror in the first ten minutes... so, of course, this made me watch it all. It's cute and nice. It's a fluffy, harmless bit of nonsense where everyone's likeable.

Underneath that, though, the show's based on a deeply wrong fantasy and is probably propping up the self-validation of a handful of extremely disturbing people. Miyako Hoshino (university student) falls in love with a ten-year-old, Hana Shirosaki. She likes dressing up Hana in clothes she's made and over-excitedly taking photos of her. She has to be warned to stop taking them from a low angle. People who see her in Mad Photo Mode are liable to back away nervously.

Soon, though, it's settled down into a gentle slice-of-life show where everyone's being nice to each other and occasionally helping Miyako get over her social issues. Hana slowly thaws towards Miyako, who's not going to lay a finger on anyone. This is quietly the most worrying thing about the show, in fact, with the show portraying what in other contexts would look like slow-burning romantic progress.

Had Miyako been male, you'd have been phoning the police. As it stands, though, it's a show about a bumbling, timid dormouse who calms down a lot very quickly. She's far less creepy after ep.1. She's scared of meeting people and of leaving the house. The nearest thing she has to a social circle is her hyperactive little sister (Hinata) and the eccentric school friends Hinata keeps bringing home. On other words, this is mostly a primary school series. Half the cast are Hinata's age and most of the rest are their mothers. Episodes will be about things like food, festivals, goofy childhood games, embarrassing photo albums and so on. Miyako cooks them food and makes them clothes.

The characterisation isn't particularly deep, but it's amusing. I liked everyone's assumption in ep.6 that Miyako had been lying when she said she went to university, for instance, or the teleporting shop assistants in ep.8. The children's "Miyako Dice Game" in ep.3 was quite a cool idea and made me wonder about making comedy dice games about other fictional characters. Hinata worships her sister and tells everyone that Miyako's a genius athletic crime-fighting supermodel, etc. while at the same time often being innocently blunt about Miyako's failings as a human being. Hana is low-energy and basically can't be bothered with anything much, but would do anything for desserts. (She's also got weird taste and is pretty much useless at making stuff.) Noa starts out as an insecure, loud narcissist, although she improves. Then there's the double act of Koyori (desperately wants people to rely on her) and Kanon (actually is reliable).

There's also a great ending theme.

As for the NO NO NO NO stuff... well, the show's light-heartedly making jokes about it. Miyako even gets her own stalker, a classmate at university who's a million times worse than her. This is funny. (They become friends too.)

Weird thing: in ep.9, it took Noa ages to make sandwiches. Eh?

The show's based on a four-panel comedy manga, which makes sense. That said, though, it's charming and warm. It has some lovely moments, e.g. with the relationship between the two sisters. The occasional questionable moments are deliberate and for comedy. That said, though, there's still lots of room to be disturbed by the fact that the show's putting this fluffy warm surface over something that's fundamentally, deeply wrong.

Healthy people will watch this show and laugh. (Or, maybe, be repelled and never watch anime again.) Sick people will watch the show and take a bad message from it. But it is still quite nice.