Kobato - 18
Well, I’ve got to hand it to Clamp: they did it again. Kobato is a great example of why an anime doesn’t necessarily need huge production-values or incredibly solid direction, in order to have a soul. Wonderful characters can be written with any kind of budget, and while it definitely helps, it’s definitely not a necessary.
Because really: at this point I’ve been completely captured by Kobato’s charms. This isn’t exactly like Letter Bee, in which the characters have enough charms for me to keep watching, this is something more: at this point I consider Kobato to be a genuinely good series and I really admire how well the creators managed to flesh out Kobato and make her such a likable lead.
When it first appeared, the debt-problem sure seemed cheesy. But here’s the thing: it was cheesy, if it just was introduced and resolved within one episode. At this point the debt problems have evolved in a great driving force for the drama among the characters. It ain’t gonna destroy the world, we’re not stuck in a cheesy love triangle. Instead we have a bunch of people who try to protect something that they truly care for, even though the odds slowly stack up against them.
This kind of character-development was really what I was hoping for when I gave this series a chance.
Rating: ** (Excellent)