Suki desu Suzuki-kun!!

This is basically a clip show of the best scenes from the manga, it even says as much at the beginning of the first episode. It doesn't even attempt to tell a complete story of its own. Having never read the manga, I had no idea what was going on, who any of the characters were or who was in love with who. I'm sure if you've read the manga, it's great, but as a standalone show it's useless. The second episode was better than the first, but that's not saying very much. The art and music were decent enough, but not amazing, and thevoice acting was unremarkable. Maybe I'll enjoy this more if I watch it again once I've read the manga, but if you haven't read the manga, don't waste your time watching this.

I've heard it said that anime is often just an advertisement for the media it's adapting, be that a manga, light novel, or visual novel. I don't agree with that take all that much, but Suki desu Suzuki-kun!! takes this phenomenon to the next level. While you can tell there's something there, at the very least a passable romance plot, the execution of this anime is simply just terrible. From what I can tell, the manga itself isn't bad at all, and even has somewhat of a beloved status among its fans, so it's not what's being adapted that's theproblem, it's the adaptation itself. It is choppy, confused, and generally feels very, very cheap. The only excuse I can see for this being played anywhere is at a store which is selling the manga, and even that might hurt sales. beginning with the story, the audience is presented with little snippets and vignettes in the first episode which establish the main cast, featuring a truly bizarre meta commentary by the characters on their own scenes before and after they play. The second episode is an even more bizarre vignette featuring a delusional premise and fight scene with the world's most embarrassing gang of high schoolers who accost our protagonists. It is all handled very poorly, and feels like a soulless advertisement for the manga. The art is broadly terrible, with awkward, stiff animation, atrocious CG, and even horrendous, low-quality scans of the manga itself. The only halfway redeeming aspect is the character design, but that credit should go to the manga, not this empty husk of an anime. The sound just barely meets all standards of quality, with sound effects and a soundtrack which feel corporate and artificial, though the OP in the second episode is pretty catchy. The characters are the strongest part of this anime, but once again, this credit should go to the manga. In the anime itself, they are weird, stiff caricatures of full characters, featuring bizarre dialogue and overreactions which don't often make much sense at all. At the very least their archetypes have been conveyed, which I suppose is the least you could ask from an ad. Of the cast, Hoshino and Shinobu are perhaps the least terrible. Overall, Suki desu Suzuki-kun!! shouldn't exist. It is an insult to the source material, a manga I am not even vaguely familiar with at the time of this review. It's just obvious that's the case because of how bad it is. It's almost like they tricked the mangaka into giving this the green light or something. It feels like a tax write-off, a scam. In any case, it's clear the people behind this anime didn't really care about how the finished product would turn out, and that is abundantly clear from start to finish in its mercifully brief run.