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Room Mate
12
TV
Finished Airing
Apr 12, 2017 to Jun 28, 2017
Another One Room series telling "another story" featuring male characters.
4.4/10
Average Review Score
20%
Recommend It
5
Reviews Worldwide
I'm a straight male who believes One Room and One Room Second Season are the epitome of great short anime (OK, slight exaggeration but I still love it so much). Seeing how they also made one where all the MCs are Guys, I decided to see what was on the other side. It is completely different from One Room. One season of One Room is divided into 3 non connected parts with characters getting 4 episodes each. With each episode, it is always the main character that interacts with the viewer. I thought it'd be the same with Room Mate but boy was I wrong. All thecharacters share a house and they get to interact with each other and not just the viewer. It's pretty entertaining seeing this interaction. I actually got a few chuckles from it. Diving in, I already knew who this anime is targetted towards, so I had to keep an open mind. Yes, it was cringey seeing the fanservice after each episode, but if I were a girl I'd totally be ecstatic. There isn't much of a story or development in Room Mate, but it doesn't need it. This anime isn't made to satiate your thirst for a good story, it's here mostly for a light laugh and some eye candy, and it does it well. But yeah, after enduring 48 minutes of Male fanservice, I'm just glad I survived it. Also, cheers for first review :3
Click an episode to read its synopsis.
How to describe this anime. It would best be said, that if you were really constipated, this is the anime to watch, because holy fuck is this anime shitty. There is zero plot, and I say zero because the only plot is the owner sends a letter with rules saying the boys can't date you. Surprise, they try to anyway. The characters are bland, the only remotely relatable character is the glasses guy and he's still terrible. One kids personality is just "climbing" and another one is clearly gay AND a bottom. What am I going to do with that? Nothing. There's one part in the first episodeat the end that shows climbing boy sweaty and moaning in his bed to tease the next episode. Did that get explained? No. Did it come up again? No. Was he sick? NO BECAUSE HE GETS SICK LIKE EPISODE FUCKING 8 FOR 2 MINUTES. The best part about the anime was the ending transitions because whoever was in charge of doing the ending really had fun you can tell and it was a meme in itself to just watch the transitions and wait to see if there will be dick or ass. But they ruined that in the last episode, the grand finale, the creme de la crop of transitions, the ending, you expected a fantastic transition, ground breaking, stunning, maybe you'll finally see a dick because the anime had NO action at all other than glasses guy being kinda rapey. But guess what? IT ENDS WITH THEM FULLY CLOTHED. Now, I dont give a shit about these characters, but I'm practically insulted, that you would have these boys shirtless in every ending, and the last ending, they're fully clothed? tl;dr this anime is the equivalent of a horrible ruined orgasm that a dirty hobo gives you in some bushes behind a gas station that you think about for the rest of your life and wonder, "why did I waste my time on that? really?" also my review is longer than the anime.
ļ In short : For people wanting to stare at good looking guys exclusively. Iām a straight woman. There, now that this is settled, I can delve in this review without people crying at me that Iām voting it down unfairly because Iām a straight man or something. First of all, Iād like to point out that I do wish for more equality in terms of fanservice, however, it isnāt at whatever the price. And this short Anime is a perfect example of that. Story :And actually I shouldnāt have this category to begin with. Becauseā¦.it actually fails at delivering the most elemental point of a fiction : a story. I know thatāll be confusing for most, since in the vulgar sense of the term, it is, but in the narratological sense there isnāt. Now, I wonāt make a narratology course, but letās just summaries by saying that thereās a need for a beginning, a middle and an end which are all tightly connected to each other. Connected being the key word of my sentence since the events presented in this show are random events following each other. Despite that overly catastrophic aspect, I can redeem itself on one aspect : thereās a regular complain lately toward otome games that they take too much time to get the juicy stuff started (in short, they are complaining about the presence of development), so if the producers of this short anime were aware of it, they might have answered those wishes. So while it can be praised for that, it wonāt change that the result is a storyless anime. That said, that āpraiseā itself could be questioned : those complainers clearly have no idea how writing works, is listening to them a good idea ? Sure, thereās a need to listen to your audience, however, it should be avoided to do it at all cost, thereās a need of balance, of making the difference between the pertinent complains and the others. Sadly enough, if they indeed did it with that in mind, they listened to the wrong people. Though, who knows ? Quality and success are two things, so maybe it did pay off in the end ? Characters : If there isnāt an actual story, there are, at least, characters. Well, they are stereotypes and never delve into anything else. Iād even call them a melting pot, or a 3-in-1, even if it isnāt accurate, why ? Oh I donāt know⦠ļ younger, middle , adult ļ blond, brown, black ļ cheerfully childishly cute, the main love interest that you know is going to end with the heroine, nice looking guy that actually is sadistic/arrogant ļ uncommon job, athletic, geek You got the pictureā¦they try to touch such a large set of tastes to that they becomeā¦well, pretty much nothing. Because you can buy all the colours available in a shop, randomly throwing them at the canvas wonāt magically turn it into a painting. You need to actually do something out of it. In its defence though, and this time it isnāt one I shall question : it is a very short show, and even if it had tried to do something decent, itād have been hard to achieve it. So I can see in a way why coming up with a set of broad tastes was more their focus. Art : When it could have been good at the very least on that aspect, becauseā¦truth be told, itās probably the bishies they only cared about in their production, it is inconsistent. When they are close, most of the time, thereās no issue, when they arenāt, the difference in details is striking to the point of looking amateurish at times. Well, at the very least, the frames are ok, I didnāt notice baffling misses. Canāt say the same regarding the colouring. More specifically, the rainbow + blur at the edges effect. I suppose its aim is to make it look āprettierā, but it just unnecessarily dirties the image and it isnāt without reminding me of the filter I put on my very first AMVs when I was twelve years old. Needless to say I realized the amateurishness of such a procedure. The image needs to remain clean and without unnecessary adds. And most importantly of all : this is a xViewer anime. The ācameraā is supposed to be āyouā. The ācameraā in this is the worst a xViewer show can have because...while it sets it as āyouā early on, itāll randomly move, zoom, jump cut, dezoom, float in the middle of thin air, etc. Oh, no, no, itās not you having superpowers or something, itās just that the camera switches from ādefaultā to āyouā at random. It can even totally forget āyouā (what happened in that bathroom ? did āIā faint ? did āIā leave ? finish your event properly, dammit ! D8< ), basically, it fails at sticking at its most basic element as well. Which begs the question : why choosing that approach when youāre failing at sticking to it for four minutes ? Sound : The only thing Iād say is that one must be ready of the awkward silences (no sound effect or music) as this is a xViewer anime, so I might encourage you to talk at your computer, even if just for mockery purposes. Thereās nothing worth mentioning aside from that. Overall : This is anything but a decent show, and I admit that if I hadnāt mocked the stereotypical dialogues Iād probably have dropped it soon as when I watched it normally I got bored after two minutes. (thatāsā¦quite an achievement I think ?)
Despite being a POV anime with a good chunk of fanservice at the end of each episode, Room Mate is an enjoyable anime that embraces the POV format. This one in particular reminded me of a visual novel with how it structured each episode. The story is simple and light, nothing to keep anyone up at night. The character art is unique and quite stunning which was my original pull towards the anime. The animation is also very well done though that might also be due to the short run time per episode. Sound is okay and there isn't much to say about it. Theending song is up-beat but nothing spectacular. Definitely something that could easily fade into the background. Character is what really drove this anime. As I said before, the art for the characters is top tier. Each character pretty much fills a troupe like from a visual novel, but each character has a good bit of depth to them. Or at least more depth than one can imagine from a four minute anime. Enjoyment was a lot. Even though POVs are notably cringey, I thought this one was good. I was surprised at how much I actually liked it because of how interesting the characters were. Their dynamic is unique and something I hadn't seen before in a POV anime. If you're curious or think you might get the tiniest bit of enjoyment out of this anime, please take 48 minutes to sit down and watch it. I promise you won't regret it.
Roommate was one of those guilty pleasure shows for me. Well okay, I donāt exactly like it but I donāt exactly hate it either! First we start with the story, āyouā are going to be living with 3 boys as the manager of the place they live. The story is all about how these characters interact with you and soon fall in love with you. With this anime being geared to a female audience that sounds about right. I see nothing wrong with the story and for 4 minutes per episode you really canāt expect anything more. Now let's talk about characters, each characterhas their own personality and hobbies. In character design and personality the characters follow the normal character tropes but they also added in character specific hobbies. Acting, climbing and gaming. These hobbies seemed out of nowhere because they couldnāt develop why the characters are so passionate about what they do. When they tried to explain Takumiās climbing hobby, he just says itās relaxing so it doesnāt really make sense as so why climbing (probably just used it as an excuse to show Takumi shirtless and sweating meh) Character design: you would think that these boys would be more attractive?? If I want an anime to put me in the shoes of a main character I want the guys that fall in love with me to be a super attractive bishi. Of course itās the inside that matters but itās an anime trying to fulfill girlās dreams of hot guys falling for them in a super romantic way! Takumi especially because he looks really good on the anime cover but terrible in the show. There is nudity in every ED of the show (with a really catchy song), which includes erasing clothes and all that stuff but itās always above waist. I donāt speak from research or anything but I am am a girl and at least for me I donāt think girls get as excited about nudity than males when seeing butts and boobs. Thatās just me but thatās what I expect most of the female population to feel because I donāt want to generalize. I donāt mind the nudity but I can go without it. Other stuff: I donāt know much about voice acting so I donāt really want to comment on that but It sounded pretty fine to me. Also, The show has a cute logo and title screen, I just really wanted to say that xD Overall: 5/10 I pointed out so many flaws with this show which kinda confuses me on why I donāt absolutely hate it. Despite all of itās flaws It is actually to some extent enjoyable and because of that I donāt see the flaws as something that I need to give a lower score for, but rather the anime could have really improved if they did these things. I wouldnāt go to the extent of calling it a bad show which is why I give it a 5 out of 10 (average)