IMHO. 'Honzuki no Gekokujou: Shisho ni Naru Tame ni wa Shudan o Erande Iraremasen' ~ The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

Fantasy stories are stories that contain a fantastic assumption - some fable that has to be accepted as-is, while every other element in the story maybe far from fantasy. 'Dracula' assumes there are vampires. 'Star trek' assumes there are spaceships with warp function. What does 'Honzuki' assume? That a college graduate from Japan founds herself in another world confined in a body of a 5-year-old girl? Nope. The fantastic assumption of  'Honzuki' is that right after she gets up from bed, she begins her attempts to produce books. No acclimatization, no after-death shock, no troubles with establishing relations with people around her. The only problem of the new world is the absence of books.

'Another world', an 'isekai', should be either extremely fascinating, impressing enough to make the viewers forget all their possible questions, or stop pretending to be serious. It's all very nice that Main makes commercial deals, but while everyone around calls her a weirdo who behaves as if she's much older, in fact the problem lies not in her, but in almost all children around her, and nobody seems to notice it. I'm sure children were helping parents from a very young age in Medieval Europe, but I'm also sure they were children, and that they didn't make any philosophic conclusions like chibi characters in 'Honzuki'. At the same time, Main behaves like a real child with no trace of her former 20-something-year-old self, despite the fact she remembers how to produce things.

So I've been watching anime for something close to 20 years. And my parents have had enough chances to have a look at what I watch. And 'Honzuki', I must tell you, is one of the few anime series that my mother asked 'Is this an anime for children?' about. She also praised voice acting. And what this means is simply this: that the voice actors speak in a manner easy to comprehend, so that even my mother, a foreigner with no knowledge of Japanese, can hear where one word ends and another starts, can guess the moods of characters based on their intonation, and can understand that the speech is clear. In other words... this IS an anime for children. I mean, it's not supposed to be, but it surely looks like one.

Only after my mother said this I realised what bothers me so much in 'Honzuki'. Despite getting a rating of PG-13 for some serious topics and some violence such as killing a pig, 'Honzuki' is a children's fairy-tale-cum-textbook. It's no wonder Shou Hayami with his low voice narrates the beginning of every chapter like a local Drosselmeyer. Every character explains their actions and Main herself comments on everything she does. Older characters constantly remind her what she needs to do being a daughter / a merchant / a noble. Sit down and write down, children, this is the role model for you.

Sometimes there comes in a person into the anime studio who exclaims 'But this is a drama!'. Then the staff rush to make it dramatic. They add touching moments of Main suddenly remembering that she hails from another world... Twice in 3 years, huh?

Soon season 3 will come out and it looks like it may be far from the last. But I'm sure the ending of this story is like this: they lived happily ever after. What a pity I don't give a damn about it. I only give it the 3 out of 10 it deserves for the few funny moments there were.

Now that I think of it... I didn't even make a single screenshot of this series. I guess, this is as much as there was to capture.

'Otome Youkai Zakuro' ~ justified risk

an anime based on an ongoing manga, created by Hoshino Lily who was specialising in BL, and directed by Chiaki Kon, who is famous for the same thing. the previous works influence my opinion very much and I was not particularly happy to know that two main people responsible for 'Zakuro' have worked on shounen-ai - that meant for me that 'Zakuro' would be overloaded with fanservice for girls

 especially when the original graphics has FOR_GIRLS written all over its 'face'

however, I was mistaken. 'Zakuro' turned out to be pretty decent, tolerable shoujo, even though it is not a masterpiece

story and characters

are typical, if not cliche. at first sight, we have nothing more than
a type widely considered to be tsundere

a shy but deeply feeling girl

and girls with a positive attitude towards everything and inspiring positive feelings into everyone

coupled with a self-confident ikemen

a cool guy

and a young but serious guy

the characters meet for the first time, devote themselves to common cause, get to know each other better, their feelings grow, they reveal some secrets of their past, constantly save each other, at some point the main Heroine turns out to be a greater existence than she seemed, is captured, the company starts off to rescue her, the Heroine obtains her true power and delivers the final blow to the enemy herself
a very, very boring skeleton it must seem. if there are things that can save a poor framework, than all of them were used in 'Zakuro' to compensate for that

first, the right use of the characters types. those types either become a platitude, or are made into believable characters. the latter happened in 'Zakuro', fortunately. we get to see different kinds of behaviour, different kinds of relationships, different kinds of interactions and reactions, and no one seems odd. moreover, 'Zakuro' offers such likeable characters that I could not follow my usual pattern 'choose one character and forget about the rest'. I used to call this feeling a 'respect', but I am not sure if it does not incline towards 'sympathy', or something else. I am trying to say, even if I was not personally a fan of this or that type of character, I 'could not take my eyes off of them'. the 'shoujo' level did not go overboard either
and humour - that last straw that can save anything. monsters who only want to scare but not to hurt

silly actions of characters who were supposed to act cool

'childish granddaddy' type of characters

and adorable, cute, almost useless characters like Mamezou

this balance is not something easily achieved, in my mind
天晴れ！

music

is the second thing which saves 'Zakuro' from being a mediocre 'watch-and-forget' anime. the BGM composer is said to be Sugimoto Masaru. however, if you have a look at the OST booklet, you will see another name - Nanase Hikaru. while Nanase is responsible for many beautiful and bewitching songs, Sugimoto is an unknown figure to me, but I am happy to get to know his works

OST is something I would call an OST masterpiece. everyone has his own principle on how to decide whether an OST is good or bad, but what I appreciate the most is when the composer(s) is/are able to create different kinds of music for different situations, and when the music presents some interest separately, not as a background. oh, and one more criterion - though I have a great respect towards experimental OSTs, I am not in favour of replacing analog instruments with a single synthesizer. 'Zakuro' OST uses classical instruments, and even violin is not violated as usual manages to create symphonic sound

OP theme was what I liked the least, though 'twas not bad. ED themes were much more interesting. I remembered 'Sakura Taisen', 'Ikoku' and some other anime where seiyuus sang theme songs
天晴れ！

voicing

seiyuus of 'Zakuro' are a group of the most popular, famous and demanded ones. just look at this list: Nakahara Mai, Sakurai Takahiro, Hanazawa Kana, Toyosaki Aki, Horie Yui, Hino Satoshi, Kaji Yuuki, Okamoto Nobuhiko, Kondou Takayuki, Komiya Kazue, Ishizumi Akihiko, Tamura Mutsumi, Iguchi Yuka, Tomatsu Haruka, Inoue Kikuko, Kotobuki Minako. I guess creating 'Zakuro' was pretty expensive due to such a list. however, they all coped with their roles so brilliantly that I was absolutely delighted. the main characters' seiyuus were predictably good, but Tomatsu-san  impressed me with an unexpected low voice. the 'old school' Oohara Sayaka and Inoue Kikuko were just as one would expect them to be. the only thing I could wish for is probably Nakahara putting more effort into training how to portray crying 

天晴れ！

graphics
probably some of the pictures were done in a lazy manner, but the extent of laziness was not critical. mostly I liked the bright vivid colours which, independently of whether you admit it or not, always liven up the atmosphere and cheer up the spectators
if only there were more pictures of the city itself... since Meiji, Taisho and Showa are my favourite periods in Japanese history (as well as 19-20 centuries in world history) I wanted to see more views creating the epoch, but I only saw the 'Ministry' itself, Kei's mansion and a few streets

unlike wider perspectives, facial expressions were done very well

which were sometimes contributing to the atmosphere of the moment so that my heart almost skipped a bit

天晴れ！

conclusion

there are anime series that have a strong basis which seems trustworthy from the very beginning. 'Zakuro' was the opposite. however, I have no regrets I risked. right after the start, due to likeable characters, overwhelming music and interesting plot I felt like I finally found the type of anime I was searching for - the one that made me feel like I felt in my early days, when my breath was easily taken away by what was happening on the screen. 13 episodes in one gulp!
天晴れ、天晴れ、天晴れな～！