Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata: Ai to Seishun no Service-kai

Before deciding whether or not you want to watch Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata, you need to realize that this episode is a parody. It isn't meant to be taken seriously. I mean the title of the episode is Fan Service of Youth and Love, there's no point in complaining about the excessive amount of fan service. You shouldn't believe that the series is going to be like this, the writers were very well aware of their actions. They wanted to make a parody and that's what they did. Do not factor in the fan service in your consideration of whether or not you want to ... watch the show. On the other hand, the plot, the sound, the art, and the characters are fair game.

Basically, Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata is a story about an otaku named Aki, Tomoya who managed to convince 4 girls to join his doujin circle and create a dating sim. It's not completely unique, but it has promise. If the ecchi tag does carry on to the series, then it will lose a lot of it's potential, but for now, I'll presume it's not going to be that excessive. The fan service of this episode wasn't utter trash though. Seeing as how that's what they were going for, the fan service was certainly pleasing to the eyes.

As a whole, it might not be as light-hearted as this prologue depicts it to be, which would definitely make it more interesting. I'm not saying it's light-hearted atmosphere is bad though. The comedy was indeed pleasant. I'm a sucker for parodies, so I found the characters' comments about the anime industry to be hilarious.

In short, the plot isn't crazy unique and interesting, but it's enough to hold my attention. As for the episode, I had a good time. I know they wanted as much fan service as possible, so I took it for what it was and enjoyed it rather than bashing on the abundance of it. Also it's self aware comedy was humorous and the romantic hints served as a nice way to show how big romance is going to be in the show.

The art has its moments where there's a drop in quality, but besides that, the art is stunning. The character designs are neat, the backgrounds are beautiful, and minor things such as laptops are detailed.

The opening and ending are good. I like the voices too. The only problem with the sound that I see people having, is the voice of the protagonist. It's minuscule, but I know many people are tired of hearing Kirito's voice. His voice is basically the same for most of his roles, so I could see people being rather annoyed. I doubt his voice would have a big effect on how you feel about the show though. I just felt the need to point it out.

The characters are a hit or miss. Personally, I didn't mind them, but you might. We have your typical harem protagonist, the cool beauty, the tsundere childhood friend, the tomboy, and the shy girl. As you can see, they're pretty standard. I think you'll either like them or feel indifferent. Yeah, they don't really offer anything new, but as of right now, I don't think any of them are annoying enough to make you not want to watch the rest of the series. Who knows? One of them just might become one of your favorite characters.

All in all, this was a good prologue. We know now the plot has its merits, both, the art and sound are good, and the characters don't entirely rub you in the wrong way. There was a ton of fan service, but the real series might just have little to no fan service and it was delightful considering that the episode is again, a parody. As for the self aware and parody aspect of the show, it's something I hope to see more of.

I'd just like to say one last time that please don't let the events of this episode take total control of your decision to watch to this show. I doubt the actual thing will be as ecchi as this. Just please think about the story, the art, the sound, & the characters, and disregard the fan service.

How you view episode 0 of Saekano can go either one of two ways. A lot of it has to do with whether:

A) You have read the manga and are familiar with most of the characters and their personalities. In which case, you probably made more sense of this episode than those who didn't. You probably thought it was a decent watch.

B) You haven't read the manga/light novel and don't really understand the context of this episode (I don't blame you). All you can see are fan-service filled scenes with no real plot or story introduced. Probably just another cookie cutter harem. That's totally fine ... because for what its worth, that's really what this whole episode was about. What you shouldn't do though, is think that the rest of this series will follow this trend. Here's why you should consider watching at least a couple more episodes:

Assuming that the anime follows the plot of the manga/light novel, I can safely assure you guys that this will probably be the last time that fanservice of this magnitude is shown. There's definitely a lot more to this series than tits. Whether you take that as a good or bad thing is up to you. In other words, DO NOT LET THIS EPISODE REFLECT WHETHER OR NOT YOU WATCH THE REST OF THE SERIES.

At this point, it really is impossible to give the series a fair score for story, it's only been one episode. It's obviously lacking in that department and probably not reflective of the main plot like I mentioned earlier. That aside, everything else seems to be decent. The art, while seemingly higher in quality when compared to other generic harems, hides its flaws better than most. Lots of consistency issues as well as a messload of still-frames (although they were nicely done) make it hard to fully enjoy the character art, which wasn't bad at all.

Sound was decent for the most part as well. VA performance was good overall bar Eriri's seiyuu, who didn't have a particularly strong showing this time around. Furthermore, there's the fucking king of harems Matsuoka voicing the MC, what more do you need? Not to mention the OP and ED are super fucking catchy.

Character-wise, there's not much to be said. They're nothing special. The only character that may have slightly deviated from your typical harem character archetypes was Katou. She literally gives 0 fucks about everything. The manga depicts these characters slightly differently compared to what we've seen thus far in the anime, so hopefully A1 can redeem themselves in the upcoming episodes.

I'm giving this review a 6 as an objective score for THIS EPISODE ONLY. This does NOT reflect how I feel towards the series as a whole. This is mostly because we don't know how the actual series will play out but also from what I have read in the manga, Saekano has a lot more to offer that hasn't been shown yet. If you're a fan of romcoms, I highly recommend staying tuned for at least the next 3 episodes.

Whatever about the actual series, this is entirely skippable unless you're big into fanservice. With the 4th wall broken immediately (concurrent with a bathing scene) it comes off as smug and self-aware in the worst way. It pretends to parody excessive fanservice and harem tropes as an excuse to regurgitate same for 20 minutes. I highly recommend you don't bother.