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have you ever wanted to be bored? well boy do i have the anime for you! packed to the brim with empty air and dead space. you'll be thrilled by the amount of nothing that happens in each episode, and wow, the ending is something to forget!

the show starts with an admittedly interesting premise. the main character is getting help from someone who is the complete opposite of him in real life, while actually being his main competition online. she sets out tasks for him to get better at socializing and generally to just get him to be a good person to be around cause ... my god is he miserable at the start (this advice is honestly not that bad but it's so broad that it could be boiled down to "talk to people you otherwise wouldn't"). and to communicate these objectives to him, she uses game terms, because i guess tomozaki just wouldn't be able to comprehend all the "normie" stuff with his giga gamer brain.

this is where i should've stopped watching, honestly. the gamer speeches that aoi pulls off bring forth nothing but cringe and misery. all of her over the top gestures and "hexactly" being a regular occurrence in her vocabulary make her really difficult to like, and she's supposed to be the main side character. "experience" and "leveling up" and whatever else she comes up with to substitute normal speaking just further distances her from anyone over the age of 12.

past the premise, there's nothing but a void of wasted potential that the anime drags you through. each episode feels like you're a rat in a glue trap. you look to see how much time is left and it's guaranteed to be 5 minutes more than you expected.

tomozaki is a stubborn and unlikable gamer. aoi is a cheerful and top of the class high school girl, who's actually putting up an act! haha, bet you didn't see that coming! the "perfect person with a mask" has never been done before! and there are totally things that set her aside from similar characters that do the exact same thing! i can't even slander the other characters because i forgot their name and what they do. they just seem like filler. also, the fake awkwardness they injected into the interactions could kill a child.

there are two exceptions for the bad characters i can remember, though. i'm surprised that an anime like this has a sidecast that's memorable, but they somehow did it.

first is hinami. i never expected to like her, because she's the typical obnoxious popular girl who teases everyone in existence, however, the student council episodes were honestly great development for her character, and i actually started caring about her. the backstory she was given is heartbreaking yet relatable, leading to her motives in present day and her seemingly eternal struggle with winning. aaaaand then she returns back to being average. what's with this anime and never doing anything? her character was given such great exposition, yet that's all that they did to her. she doesn't return to this depressing persona one can resonate with, and she's never given a purpose for the rest of the anime. back to being a background character instead! in hindsight, the characters beforehand set the bar so low that i would take anything even slightly amusing, and that was her. but i truly did like her for the 2 or so episodes where she actually did something.

second is fuuka. i have less to say about her, because she's not too out there. but it's similar with hinami, where the rest of the cast was just so ass that someone who did something slightly different stood out, and that's fuuka. unlike hinami though, her personality is solid from the start to the end.

other than the brief rays of light through the thunderstorm clouds that were hinami and fuuka, it's the most insultingly average thing i've seen in a while. this is the kind of thing people think of when they see the word "anime". absolutely nothing stands out and it all blurs together in the end.

the animation is a huge nothingburger. i'm honestly saying that if you "watched" this anime with your eyes closed, then the audio alone would make for a better experience than whatever the visuals provide. it gives you nothing extra, except having to look at hideous tomozaki in the earlier episodes. the movements are stiff and the facial expressions nonexistent, with there being like 3 total that characters occasionally remember to switch between. their anatomy changes due to perspective so often that finally seeing them normally is like eye candy, when it really shouldn't be. the colors and environments are safe and boring and nothing interesting happens.

there's barely anything to watch this anime for. and it has a season 2?! how'd they manage that? safe to say, i'm more than content with what i saw and i don't want anything more.

for media of any kind to make me want to go outside and enjoy the beauty of nature is rare and highly appreciated. and this anime did just that! i had the constant urge to just go for a walk and take a good look around where i would've otherwise glanced over. but being outside the confines of my room as an anime fan is preposterous so here i am writing a review.

you can't talk about the anime without atleast mentioning the animation. the colors, the landscapes, the vegetation! i guess it's only natural for a show about rocks to be beautiful in everything related ... to geology, but it's still and outstanding aspect. the forests they walk through are lush and vivid. you can imagine the nasty mosquito bites you can get from staying in the shade for too long after haphazardly applying repellant spray to yourself. the waters they pan from is almost blinding from the reflection of the sun as it starts setting. the cold stream of water constantly brushing around your legs feel freezing at first, but the cold numbs your skin to a comfortable level after a bit. and as the sun hits quartz, the cacophony of lights emerges from the other side in arranged chaos.

the character development of ruri's attachment to pretty rocks is just so sweet and endearing. she starts out selfish, abrasive, almost mean even? but by the end, she's... mostly the same. however, her appreciation of the beauty of nature is wonderful. in that way, she grows with the average viewer regarding the subject, and i think that's nothing short of amazing.

the anime teaches you about geology as the episodes go by, don't worry. as i've mentioned, you grow with ruri, which means you get to know about the intricacies of earth at the same speed. she's just as clueless as you are, maybe even more so, and to theorize as to what new rock she found based on just your knowledge is surprisingly fun. to actually figure it out yourself is another thing, but not like there's a penalty for making up your own answers during that time! i don't know, i just think that this is a really cool concept in the show. the little diagrams and the chibis staring in awe are cute as well.

the expressions! my god the expressions. this mainly pertains to ruri (yet again), but the facial expressions they use are just perfect! it's so dynamic and from the soul, so authentic! i love ruri's range of emotions on her face, from surprise to joy to disappointment to adoration, it's just all so well made.

i've seen discussions about the fan service in the animation, but it's really not that bad. i guess nagi's ass takes up the entire frame a couple times, and there's a whole segment of her dressing up properly (in a maid costume, among other things), but i was more interested in the nice looking gems they were finding. to each their own? i personally didn't find it all that distracting, but considering others have dropped this for that sole reason, i assume it can be too prevalent for some.

it was hard for me to finish this anime. not for the normal reason someone would have, but simply because i really didn't want it to end. the last episode specifically took me several days to get around to. during that time, i let the rest of the 12 episodes marinate in my head (i'm hoping atleast some of that comes through in this review). it's so nice to just takes things slow, you know? i don't understand how people can watch stuff like this in a single weekend. that just seems wild to me. you don't even get to think!

i've been a journey recently regarding enjoying my surroundings more and more. to really stop and look at things. to enjoy the composition of a shelf in a store. to look at the ridges on a leaf. to watch an ant go to and fro, living its own life. to watch water rhythmically drop from a rock just after it rained. to see as the snow accumulates on the ground after a while. and then look up into the sky and just realize how nonexistent we all are. but in that same way, we are the small things to be appreciated. this anime helped me along this journey, so i guess my opinion on it is as subjective as one can be. but i still think that this is a must watch for anyone with even the slighest interest in the beauty of things surrounding us.

i'll go on that walk after this, i promise.

the perfect anime if you just want to watch cute girls cutely kissing, but there's not much more past that.

my biggest problem with the anime is that the honestly heartwarming scenes that it has seem like aren't taken seriously. as soon as it gets genuine, they immediately follow it up with boobs animated at 500 frames per second taking up your whole view, essentially softening the impact of anything meaningful that could possibly come through.

there's not much progression. other than the passage of time and the graduation of mitsuki's class, nothing changes. haruka and yuu kiss in the first episode and they're embarrassed. haruka and ... yuu kiss in the last episode and they're embarrassed. a year has passed between those two scenes, if you could believe it.

i enjoyed the pacing quite a bit. whereas other shows love dragging out scenes for comedy, sakura trick usually cuts them short. there are less drawn out overreactions than a typical anime, and that was a nice change of pace.

the characters are overall fine. none stand out particularly, but at the same time, none of them are bad or unlikeable, though i do wish there were more one-on-one interactions between them. the main 6 get into pairs in the first episode and nothing really happens to mix it up in any way.

the small interruptions of the characters depicted as different objects was cute, although it felt as though they used it more and more as the episodes went on, which was pretty distracting after a while. it felt like the animation was interrupting the actual interruption. odd sentence.

enjoyable, it's fine, but there are enough shortcomings to the point where i'm not sure how much i can recommend it. there are better stuff out there with basically the same everything that this anime offers.

this anime is a basic rom-com that checks all the boxes for clichés you can imagine for an anime like this, but i'm not sure i dislike them.

the animation can feel stiff and low quality, even for simpler walk cycles, but it's not necessary for a low action anime like this.

it's easy to dismiss this anime with how average it can feel. maybe it's the expectations i had while going in (not high) that made me tolerate the series, and would've otherwised dropped it.

clichés are popular for a reason. you may have seen it countless times before, but the spin that another anime's cast puts ... on the premise is what makes it interesting. how they interact with a basic activity and what the writers will do with what they have. some might've rolled their eyes the moment they saw the title card for episode 11, but it's really not that bad. it's always refreshing to see characters that are practically locked in their school for the majority of the runtime to be let outside.

the characters are overall fun. they bring even more clichés with them, but if you can look past that, they have interesting and memorable moments.

the comedy, specifically the jokes relating to kashiwada's emotions, are surprisingly good. i thought they'd get old, but seeing the characters misunderstand her "expression" is fun. i especially enjoyed the text that revealed what she was actually feeling.

nothing special, but worth a watch if a bunch of tropes are fine by you.