Love's Labour's Lost:
Acchi Kocchi
You just keep on repeating
All those empty "I love you's"
Until you say you deserve better
I'm gonna lay right into you
The White Stripes – You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You're Told)
Make no mistake about it. Acchi Kocchi (AK) is bad. You can be forgiven if you don't see it at first. It is not the insidious hate of Akane-iro ni Somaru Saka or the brain-melting stupidity of Trouble Chocolate or the infernal plagiarism that haunts To-Love-Ru. In fact AK appears out of place in a list of really bad shows. It's just a cute little romance show, incapable of producing that rage-filled hate, the kind of rage that would put Achilles to shame, that is generated by those other shows. But peek behind the cutesy facade and you will find nothing but echoes and tedium. AK is a wan, pale shadow, whose 'badness' comes not from errors or bad writing, but from its own ephemeral, empty nature.
AK is a slice-of-life title, which is to say it is, like Seinfeld, about nothing. Having no over-arching plot, these slice-of-life titles need to be character driven to succeed. Drama, action, and conflict all must derive from the characters. But in AK, all the characters are one-dimensional archetypes of basic character traits. They are static, unchanging, invariant, the Platonic ideal of their given attribute. However good for philosophy, Platonic ideals don't make good characters. Devoid of humanity, these characters repeat the same jokes and actions throughout the series, as the plot makes efforts to disguise this deception by constantly throwing up new settings and events. Regardless, everything remains mechanical and predictable.
Because its characters are incapable of generating conflict, AK relies on external forces to do this. Over the course of a year, in show time, we manage to hit every major holiday and event, as if this was a High School Greatest Hits montage. This is not to say that these events should not be shown, but relying on them is a weakness. The best slice-of-life happens not on holidays, but in the moments in between, where real life exists. Consider other successful shows in this genre, like Lucky Star and its discourses on dessert eating or Minami-ke and its conversations 'round a kotatsu. Because the characters are strong, these shows can have normal events be entertaining and fun. But AK's lack of personable characters means that it can not proceed in this way, so it tries to fill each episode with as much external action as possible. A good example is the sporting events, of which there are several. These competitions serve the story by creating conflict and action without having to rely on the characters in any way, shape or form. But here is the problem: Every event should do one of four things, even in a slice-of-life: Explore a character, develop a character, advance the plot, or serve the core purpose. Spending half the episode on a game of kick-the-can, for example, in no way explores nor develops any characters, and there is no plot to advance in a slice-of-life. What about the core purpose? The core purpose of story is the reason for which, deep down inside, the author wrote it. In AK's case, it is to show a cute, shy couple do shyly cute, romantic things. There might be one or two of these moments throughout this game, but a rate of one per every six minutes is pretty bad. The episodes are at best incompetent and at worst useless filler, but with so much action going on, they hope you won't notice.
But there are plenty of shows with these plot and characters problems. What makes AK so bad? Animation. The artwork of AK is both cheap and lazy, and while cheapness can be forgiven to a point, laziness can not. How lazy is it? The characters, already in chibi form, often devolve into blobs or head-only shots. The eyes, which are the most detailed part of the character design, are simply not even drawn a quarter of the time. Colours are generally single-toned, and shading is non-existent. Backgrounds are drab, uninspired pastel creations, simple and under detailed. And even these background are often too much—a lot of time is spent with abstractions, an even cheaper way to do things. The little eyecatches between scenes aren't bad, but they are little more than amusing diversions. Character designs are simple and generic, and the only thing remotely interesting about them is Tsumiki's two-toned hair, which was really cool, back in 2005 (besides, nothing can top Saitohimea's hair anyway). Character animations are basic and the whole thing just feels cheap. Excluding kids' shows and three minute shorts, AK probably has the worst animation of 2012.
Sound might be AK's strongest point, but that's not saying much. The OP is a jumbled, discordant mess, which switches musical styles and melodies seemingly at random. The ED is slightly better, as an utterly forgettable, sleepy J-pop tune. Voice acting is average, but there is little to be done with such personality devoid characters.
So it comes down to this. How bad is AK? In the technical categories, AK gets below average grades for plot and bad for art and character. Sound rates slight above average, mostly out of pity. And in the personal categories, value and entertainment, there is no hope to be had. I fell asleep during a couple episodes, never a good sign, and the inability of the show to do anything or accomplish its core purpose doomed it. The idea of AK is a good one, but it never coalesced beyond a vague, half-hearted concept. In the end, AK failed to be entertaining, failed to tell a good slice-of-life story, and failed to in its core purpose, and these failures are manifest in every aspect of it. AK may not have that shining moment of awfulness, but it is covered in a consistent, low-grade awfulness that blankets the show like the smog in Beijing. Its combined universal poorness is what depresses its grades so low.
Grade Summary:
Plot: 4 (C-)
Art: 3 (D+)
Sound: 6 (C+)
Character: 2 (D)
Entertainment: 4 (C-)
Value: 4 (C-)
Final Verdict: Avoid at all costs.
