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Our hero Ryo and his harem (the blue haired girl is his... sister!)

Final Approach (2004) - 13 episodes
Seen: October 2004 - January 2005
Written: January 19, 2005

Final Approach is based on some hentai game (or maybe it was just a dating game) as many new shows are increasingly following this trend since To Heart and the hugely popular Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien. Unlike KGNE, Final Approach is a very typical high school love anime with some comedic elements. It's basically the story of a high school student Ryo who lives alone with his cute younger sister Akane. Suddenly one day, a crazy (but beautiful) girl name Shizuka bursts into his apartment claiming that he and her are to be married by order of a secret government program. Aided by a large battalion of men in black, Shizuka spends the series trying to win the love of Ryo. As beautiful and talented as Shizuka is, Ryo is strangely not attracted to her and actually wants her out of his life (sounds exactly like every other high school love anime). The rest of the anime deals with the other girls at school who also all love Ryo and deals with his relationship with Shizuka.

I was a bit dissapointed with this anime actually, because I really liked the first episode. From the first episode I thought this would be a wacky and hilarious comedy at least on par with Midori no Hibi, but it quickly fizzled. The story, like all high school harem animes was quite predicable and the ending was known from the onset. The episodes more or less went through the motions of any harem comedy, with high school hijinks,onsen (hot springs) and all. The episodes were only 12 minutes long though so it never got boring, but then you wonder why with so little overall screentime was there so little actual story. As for the funny parts, they were funny at times, but too forced at other times. The OP was pretty good though so it wasn't all bad. Still I can't think of any other word than mediocre to describe this completely forgetable series.

Animation: 5/10 - nothing special, pretty low quality compared to other new anime
Characters: 6/10 - some standard characters, although Shizuka was good, and I liked Akane (the sister) too. The character designs were decent
Sound: 5/10 - nothing special
Music: 6/10 - pretty good OP, but very generic ED and background music
Story: 4/10 - unoriginal and unpredictable
Overall Enjoyment: 6/10

Final Approach was a small distraction that I could look forward to while watching this as it came out. Otherwise it wasn't anything that I ever thought about after I finished each episode and will likely be completely forgotten aside from the fact that it is the first review I've made for this website.

**Explanation of ratings**