Komori-san Can't Decline!

Komori-san can't decline, but she may need to learn to start, judging by the people she lives around. Komori is a giant middle-schooler with huge breasts and a very adult figure. She's a modest girl with super-human strength, who likes to be helpful, but is usually taken advantage of by her peers. No matter where she goes, people are always asking her to do mundane chores for them, or lift heavy things for them. Adults, kids, you name it, Komori is getting asked by all. Not helping are Komori's two frenemies. Masako is tiny with long, Gothic-dark hair. She is cynical, and still looks like a little girl. Masako usually gains help (albeit embarrassingly so) by having Komori help her up places as if she was a child. She is a bit judgmental. Megumi is also very short for her age and also cynical. The blonde-pigtailed, blue-eyed girl usually talks smack behind Komori's back, but is quick to ask for help constantly. She has known Komori since they were small children, and is often jealous of the attention Komori gets because of her looks. A few episodes into the show, we meet Otani, a very small, thin boy at Komori's school, who wants people to rely on him as much as they do Komori. As of this writing, the two sort of have a mini-crush on each other, but do not fully realize their feelings just yet, making for a few cute scenes here and there. Komori and Otani are sweet kids, but the rest of the cast is very hard to like. There's a bit of humor sprinkled in this fast-paced show, but the writing goes by so quickly that it's hard to keep up sometimes. The fanservice is here, and so far to a tasteful limit, but it's hard to deny the creep factor of all the camera angles surrounding Komori's bewbs, which would be fine.... if Komori wasn't a middle-schooler. It's cute and lighthearted, but has about the same appeal as a stick of bubble gum. It just doesn't last. Still, it's an enjoyable way to start a Sunday morning.

Normally, I love these short shows. Over the last few years, they have provided interesting, quick ideas that were nice to watch, but not enough to sustain a full episode. The thing that all of the successful short shows have in common in that they are tightly produced. Characters are clean and crisp, animation is fluid, voice acting is solid, and the music helps the mood and the story. Komori-san Can't Decline! fails on almost every scale. Whether or not the character designs are in keeping with the manga does not matter if the animated product looks too sloppy without charm. You can be a mess, but the designs have to be inviting (see Teekyuu). Instead, we have three mismatched main characters who all appear to be in somewhat different styles, set against a cast that all looks the same. I use cast liberally here since all we hear from them is asking for Komori to help them. It looks cheap and unfinished. The animation is fine, when you pay attention to it, but it is saddled with uneven designs that make it seem a bit on the jumpy side. In the end, design and animation need to work together, and here, they are in conflict. The music is forgettable. No real memory of it aside from some treble clef piano without chords. Acting? There was acting in these two minute? Sadly, no. Yes, this is significantly shorter than most of the short series, but almost all the lines are delivered in the same tone and the joke that the episodes build towards falls flat because of that. If you are used to getting one to two good laughs or chuckles in these shows, expect to feel cheated by the two minutes you spent watching this. In the end, the only saving grace is that Komori-san Can't Decline! is only two minutes an episode. You can watch it each week to see if it improves, and it won't feel like a waste of time. Komori feels like a less interesting version of Sakaki from Azumanga Daioh, and the hallmark of a show that misses is when it reminds you of a better show you would rather be watching. Still, at only 120 seconds per episode, you don't risk much. Let's call this a "fans and curious viewers only" rating.

This anime is based on a 4-koma manga that is actually hilarious and enjoyable to read. As these episodes are only 2 minutes long, this is going to be hard to get most of the jokes. After watching this first episode I can see they are sticking well to the source, but it will do better as a 'along side' anime than a complete series by itself. Unless you wait until there is an hour of episodes to watch to get it to play out over the story, of which there is actually a really good plot for each of the main characters, and if it translates across to this 2 minute format, that will be great. TLDR : Read the manga, get the story, watch the anime as cute side extra, as the voices are cute, and the anime seems to be very well done.