I have returned today to do an overview of my thoughts about the most current Hayate no Gotoku anime, Cuties. This post will follow the same format as the overview post for Can't Take My Eyes Off You, going over my thoughts concerning story, artwork, and music. Since I did it in the first overview post, I will also try to sum up my thoughts in a single sentence. My opinion in general can be summed up as: I do not know if Cuties was an objectively "good" anime, but I enjoyed it and personally thought it was good.
The first topic to gauge Cuties by is it's story, to which I have to say "Story? What story?" This reaction is primarily caused by the fact that each episode focused on a different person and the largest possible connections that could have been made were references to earlier episodes. The lack of an overarching story really isn't a bad thing in my opinion as the first two seasons, being highly manga based, also didn't have an overarching story. In this way, CTMEOY is really the oddball in terms of how the seasons progressed, story wise. The one thing though that makes Cuties really different, in terms of story, is the fact that, excepting the last two episodes, each episode is stand alone and the episodes can really be seen in any order chosen. This opens up interesting possibilities for the viewer, but doesn't really effect the quality of the story. The more appropriate conversation about story derives from talking about how each episode flows, as I have done in some write-ups. Overall, most of the episodes have only about okay flow within the episode. They don't have particularly rough transitions between stories, but the transitions aren't exactly smooth. There are episodes with quite smooth transitions between stories (like the Hinagiku episode), but these really kind of highlight the un-smoothness in other episodes. Another thing that can be discussed concerning story is the material chosen for each episode. I was overall satisfied with the material that got chosen to be adapted, but I could see how one would be dissatisfied with some choices, particularly the choices made for the Chiharu/Kayura episode as they weren't really given that much focus in their own episode (not that Kayura has ever really been given focus except in her intro chapters.) The final thing that can be taken into consideration, regarding story, is the choice to use flashbacks to cover some material. I personally have no problems with the use of flashbacks (heck, an entire well-liked arc in the manga, End of the World, is a flashback), but I could see one not really liking the use of flashbacks, except when absolutely necessary (like Ayumu's Birthday).
The next topic to be addressed in Cuties is the artwork. The artwork is essentially the same as in CTMEOY except even smoother. The background art continues to be quite good, if not memorable. (The memorable thing isn't saying much as I find background art in general to be not memorable because I am looking at the characters. So, people who work on backgrounds, keep up the good work and sorry about not being able to remember your good work.) The character artwork is also quite good and of continual quality. About the biggest bumps in character artwork make me think "That looked a bit odd . . . Nah. It must have been in my head." So as of now I have to say that as long as Manglobe keeps up the quality of artwork to Cuties level at a minimum, I will be happy with any studio that has done work on Hayate no Gotoku doing a Golden Week season.
The final topic to be addressed is the use of music in the Cuties season. As I gushed in my first couple posts, the opening theme was excellent and definitely is in the running for my favorite opening from the anime seasons. The ending themes were different each time, so I can't really say that I remembered them particularly well, but they were overall of a good quality and at a minimum comparable to the CTMEOY standard ending. I think that some were better than the CTMEOY standard though, particularly Ayumu's. The background music in the first ten episodes wasn't memorable, if at all present, while I have to say the background music used in the last two episodes was pretty nice as it reminded me of Professor Layton at times for some reason.
In the end, Cuties isn't a world shattering anime, but I have to say that it was a fun anime that I enjoyed and thought was quite good. It wasn't a Golden Week season, but it did quite a few things to set one up in my opinion. It got much of the pre-Golden Week material out of the way as about the only things of importance left between the end of season two and End of the World and then Golden Week is the Mountain Hike and Segawa Household, which I have expressed as good places to start for a Golden Week season in an earlier post. So, as the last few sentences reveals, I haven't yet given up on the possibility of a Golden Week season.
I guess this marks the end of the Cuties project (which is kind of sad as I enjoyed it). So look forward to something in the future, I am not exactly sure what though (besides the obvious continuation of database entries).
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