aka God's Memo-pad, God's Notebook (my favourite translation), Notebook of God, Heaven's Memo Pad, It's the Only NEET Thing to Do (sub title)
Number of episodes: 12
What Wikipedia says: Not much so far as a plot summary goes. But Anime.net says "Narumi Fujishima is a plain high school boy, who has been isolated in class. His classmate, Ayaka Shinozaki, invites Narumi to the gardening club and introduces a hikikomori [not in employment, education or training aka NEET] detective named Alice to him.
Alice hires Narumi as an assistant to solve mysterious cases."
What tTPO says: I was not entirely sure what to expect when I started watching this and seeing a central character (Alice) so similar to Victorique from Gosick was not necessarily a good start. Alice is a young hacker and does most of her investigative work in her teddy bear filled bedroom living on a diet of Dokupe (Dr Pepper). But the ensemble cast soon took on a life of their own and everything fell into place. The series has a series of smaller plot arcs building on each other leading to the larger final drug-related story. The basic plots are detective mysteries (though the cases being investigated are not necessarily obvious) but within these there is usually focus on a few characters and their background stories. Narumi (the main protagonist) grows a lot with his involvement and for him more than most this is a coming-of-age / loss of innocence story. There is one particularly serious turn late in the serious that came as a shock to this viewer as well as the characters, which carries emotional weight and affects subsequent events. The more I watched this the more involving it got, and the pacing of the series I thought was near perfect, with no rushing or particularly slow moments. The animation too was easy on the eye and well done.
How about the music?: Aside from the episode 1 ED which was truly dreadful (only have a live version of it here), both the OP and ED were (while just a little prescriptive) were pretty good. The opening piano notes of the OP to me made me look forward to what was coming next. The ED has a bit more drama to it wondering what will happen next week. Good music = emotional response. Job done.
So how does it end? (Spoiler Free): Brilliantly. All major issues resolved with just a hint of what could come in the future. As I have said previously the ending can damn or lift the overall opinion of a series because it is the last thing you see. This ending had all the satisfaction that Mayo Chiki's did not.
Overall Grade: A- (Make time for this). This is not a high A, but it is an A nonetheless and a first for this blog. The perfect length, involving characters, willingness to make tough plot decisions and satisfying finish make this grade well deserved.
What Wikipedia says: Not much so far as a plot summary goes. But Anime.net says "Narumi Fujishima is a plain high school boy, who has been isolated in class. His classmate, Ayaka Shinozaki, invites Narumi to the gardening club and introduces a hikikomori [not in employment, education or training aka NEET] detective named Alice to him.
Alice hires Narumi as an assistant to solve mysterious cases."
What tTPO says: I was not entirely sure what to expect when I started watching this and seeing a central character (Alice) so similar to Victorique from Gosick was not necessarily a good start. Alice is a young hacker and does most of her investigative work in her teddy bear filled bedroom living on a diet of Dokupe (Dr Pepper). But the ensemble cast soon took on a life of their own and everything fell into place. The series has a series of smaller plot arcs building on each other leading to the larger final drug-related story. The basic plots are detective mysteries (though the cases being investigated are not necessarily obvious) but within these there is usually focus on a few characters and their background stories. Narumi (the main protagonist) grows a lot with his involvement and for him more than most this is a coming-of-age / loss of innocence story. There is one particularly serious turn late in the serious that came as a shock to this viewer as well as the characters, which carries emotional weight and affects subsequent events. The more I watched this the more involving it got, and the pacing of the series I thought was near perfect, with no rushing or particularly slow moments. The animation too was easy on the eye and well done.
How about the music?: Aside from the episode 1 ED which was truly dreadful (only have a live version of it here), both the OP and ED were (while just a little prescriptive) were pretty good. The opening piano notes of the OP to me made me look forward to what was coming next. The ED has a bit more drama to it wondering what will happen next week. Good music = emotional response. Job done.
So how does it end? (Spoiler Free): Brilliantly. All major issues resolved with just a hint of what could come in the future. As I have said previously the ending can damn or lift the overall opinion of a series because it is the last thing you see. This ending had all the satisfaction that Mayo Chiki's did not.
Overall Grade: A- (Make time for this). This is not a high A, but it is an A nonetheless and a first for this blog. The perfect length, involving characters, willingness to make tough plot decisions and satisfying finish make this grade well deserved.
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