Anime Review: My Little Monster

Anime Title: My Little Monster
Japanese Title: Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun
Episodes: 13
Genre: Shoujo, romance, school, slice of life
Rating: PG-13

Story
This anime sets itself up as a simple "studious girl meets rebellious boy and they fall in love" kind of thing. While there is definitely a romance in this anime, the show likes to deal more with friendship, jealousy, and how to open up to other people.

Characters
Our two main characters are Shizuku and Haru. Shizuku is pretty much obsessed with studying. She's seen as emotionless and cold, which is why her classmates nicknamed her "Dry-Ice" (which is actually pretty clever for a bunch of eight year old kids). Haru is pretty much the opposite of Shizuku. He's got a lot of "aggression" and absolutely no motivation to even go to school. Throughout the anime, we get to see more of them and who they are, and they make friends with a very colorful cast of characters. A few worth mentioning include the really pretty girl who can't make any friends because all of the girls hate her, the super-confident "cool" character who has a horrible sense of direction, that one girl who seems to appear at random plot moments to make the other characters feel embarrassed, and a chicken.

Art
There really is nothing notable to mention here. The art was certainly not bad, and the character design worked. The expressions on the characters' faces was priceless, because it was VERY clear if one of them was feeling angry, embarrassed, happy, etcetera. Personally, I like the illustrations they had during the ending. They were drawn with what looked like colored pencils, and it was a very cute touch. The opening also had nice animation, but I personally preferred the ending solely for the drawings.

Music
The opening and ending set the mood of the anime very well, but there isn't much to say about the music played during the rest of the show.

Other Thoughts/Things Worth Mentioning About . . .
The shoujo elements. One thing I hate about shoujo is how a lot of the times, the male protagonists have to nearly force themselves onto the female for there to be any romance at all. I find this annoying, and in some shows, it's gross. There's a lot of examples of that in this show, like the male protagonist pretty much declaring his love for the female protagonist in the first episode, There is one saving grace to this, and it's that Shizuku is a very blunt character who is not afraid to say no.
Streaming. It's available on Crunchyroll and Netflix as of August 2015.
Sub vs Dub. There is no dub currently.
Uncanny resemblance. For any Soul Eater fans out there . . .

To watch or not to watch?
This isn't an atrocious anime. It's also not a fantastic one. If you already know that you don't like shoujo or school romance anime, then I would definitely advise you to stay away from this one, because it doesn't offer anything revolutionary and exciting to the genre. That being said, if you know that you do like the genre, then this is probably something you'll enjoy. If you complete episode 1 and decide that you like what you saw, then I can guarantee to you that it gets even better from there.