Reviews for Room Mate

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

I don’t get why this anime has such a low rating. I mean, yes, it isn’t of FMAB quality, but exactly what do you expect from a 4 minute-per-episode anime that’s obviously geared at a female audience? Intense emotional scenes, breathtaking action sequences or perhaps, some fanservice for their eternally parched eyes?? Room Mate is an xViewer anime (my first, I’ll be honest). I didn’t even know such a thing existed – I was only aware of this trend among fanfics and doujinshi. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised when I stumbled across this anime. Within the first 4 minutes, the personality of each malecharacter has been made clear, and if you ask me, that’s a hella difficult job. Sure, they do fit in your typical anime stereotypes (the shota, the tsundere and the loner), but then again – this anime doesn’t have the luxury of delving into deep character developments because of its severe time constraints.

Here, you are the manager of the inn/lodge where these guys stay (they’re roommates, duh) and you get to witness their day to day lives first hand. The ED was generic, but I’ll admit – the animation was far better than I expected. I found the interactions and the camera movements particularly interesting. The most impressive thing, of course, was how much the animators were able to convey so much in every 4 minute episode.

While not definitely a masterpiece, if you’re looking for a breather in between watching an intense anime, or are just in the mood for something different, I’d definitely recommend this sweet and cute anime. After all, what’s 20 minutes of your life, right? Give it a try!

PS. I was gonna give it a 7, but after seeing so many guys (and I do mean, boys) downvoting this series for not pandering to THEIR likes, I upped my vote to 9. It might not help its overall score, but that’s my way of rebelling against these people and their unfair scores.

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.

 In short : For people wanting to stare at good looking guys exclusively. I’m a straight woman. There, now that this is settled, I can delve in this review without people crying at me that I’m voting it down unfairly because I’m a straight man or something. First of all, I’d like to point out that I do wish for more equality in terms of fanservice, however, it isn’t at whatever the price. And this short Anime is a perfect example of that. Story :And actually I shouldn’t have this category to begin with. Because….it actually fails at delivering the most elemental point of a fiction : a story. I know that’ll be confusing for most, since in the vulgar sense of the term, it is, but in the narratological sense there isn’t. Now, I won’t make a narratology course, but let’s just summaries by saying that there’s 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 : there’s 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 won’t change that the result is a storyless anime.

That said, that “praise” itself could be questioned : those complainers clearly have no idea how writing works, is listening to them a good idea ? Sure, there’s a need to listen to your audience, however, it should be avoided to do it at all cost, there’s 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 isn’t an actual story, there are, at least, characters. Well, they are stereotypes and never delve into anything else. I’d even call them a melting pot, or a 3-in-1, even if it isn’t accurate, why ?

Oh I don’t know…  younger, middle , adult  blond, brown, black  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  uncommon job, athletic, geek

You got the picture…they try to touch such a large set of tastes to that they become…well, pretty much nothing. Because you can buy all the colours available in a shop, randomly throwing them at the canvas won’t magically turn it into a painting. You need to actually do something out of it.

In its defence though, and this time it isn’t one I shall question : it is a very short show, and even if it had tried to do something decent, it’d 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, because…truth be told, it’s probably the bishies they only cared about in their production, it is inconsistent. When they are close, most of the time, there’s no issue, when they aren’t, the difference in details is striking to the point of looking amateurish at times.

Well, at the very least, the frames are ok, I didn’t notice baffling misses.

Can’t say the same regarding the colouring. More specifically, the rainbow + blur at the edges effect. I suppose its aim is to make it look “prettier”, but it just unnecessarily dirties the image and it isn’t 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 “camera” is supposed to be “you”. The “camera” in this is the worst a xViewer show can have because...while it sets it as “you” early on, it’ll randomly move, zoom, jump cut, dezoom, float in the middle of thin air, etc. Oh, no, no, it’s not you having superpowers or something, it’s just that the camera switches from “default” to “you” at random. It can even totally forget “you” (what happened in that bathroom ? did “I” faint ? did “I” 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 you’re failing at sticking to it for four minutes ?

Sound :

The only thing I’d 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. There’s nothing worth mentioning aside from that.

Overall :

This is anything but a decent show, and I admit that if I hadn’t mocked the stereotypical dialogues I’d probably have dropped it soon as when I watched it normally I got bored after two minutes. (that’s…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.

First person should stay in visual novels and games, where the first person perspective is capable of giving "personal depth" to your choices while keeping the main character ambiguous in appearance to keep the viewer as connected as possible to said character. With non-interactive media it just comes off as lazy and forced by simply removing a character and everything associated with them. Especially when inexplicable and unexplained events happen that have no context or real confirmation of whats happening. In the end there's nothing here except average sound and art, when it is actually present. Any rating over a 5, if you absolutely adore it, isjust blinded by bias to the point that they ignore the obvious faults.

Simply having an actual main character instead of the gimmick this tries to pull would have made it infinitely better. Instead, it's just a missing character with no dialogue and a thinly veiled forced narrative.

This isn't meta in any way. It's just bait for the sake of bait, with no sustenance or meaning.

This is the type of anime that you do not tell your real friends about, for an obvious reason >> but hey in all seriousness... No dammit i can't. I mean what did you really expected, tbh the characters you could say that they're kinda likable and less cringy than others anime like (daki makura.. oh god the memories came back) they're NOT original what so ever, but they're entertaining, I laughed almost the whole way through.. mostly because of the cheesy and clished situations. you really can't blame them for not creating original or interesting theme and story, because all of the "otome" games or stories playon with the characters stereotypes, and the reason for creating these stereotypes is "everyone has a favorite type" so they could hook you at least with one of the characters ;D

Roommate was one of those guilty pleasure shows for me. Well okay, I don’t exactly like it but I don’t exactly hate it either! First we start with the story, “you” 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 can’t 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 couldn’t develop why the characters are so passionate about what they do. When they tried to explain Takumi’s climbing hobby, he just says it’s relaxing so it doesn’t 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 it’s the inside that matters but it’s an anime trying to fulfill girl’s 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 it’s always above waist. I don’t speak from research or anything but I am am a girl and at least for me I don’t think girls get as excited about nudity than males when seeing butts and boobs. That’s just me but that’s what I expect most of the female population to feel because I don’t want to generalize. I don’t mind the nudity but I can go without it.

Other stuff: I don’t know much about voice acting so I don’t 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 don’t absolutely hate it. Despite all of it’s flaws It is actually to some extent enjoyable and because of that I don’t 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 wouldn’t go to the extent of calling it a bad show which is why I give it a 5 out of 10 (average)

The premise of this anime is cute, if not a little cliché. But any redeeming qualities it might have cannot overcome the fact that the minutia of plot it has derails almost immediately. For a story grounded in the fact that "you" are meant to be the new manager of an apartment building with a whopping three residents, all of whom immediately fall head over heels in love with you only after the owner of the building decides to prohibit relationships between the manager and tenants... that they acknowledge their feelings and then all immediately abandon ship to 'better themselves' is not a good look.The story feels incomplete, with you left managing what is, ostensibly, an empty building, while you wait for three men to return that you may not even have feelings for.

And that's the real kicker. There's no indication of your feelings beyond friendliness for any of the men--which, while this allows for the experience to be more personal for the individual viewer... even otome anime pick one love interest to highlight over the rest. Failing to do so just makes all the potential options feel unsatisfying. If this was how they intended the story to play out, with a whopping 4 minutes per episode, there were infinitely better ways to structure the story so it didn't feel like a bunch of threads of exposition were just dropped at the end and the 'romance' just seems like three men getting friend-zoned.