Studio Apartment, Good Lighting, Angel Included Anime Series Review – Review

If there is one succinct way to sum up Studio Apartment, Good Lighting, Angel Included, it’s this: comfortably mid. The show doesn’t bother to reinvent the wheel; there’s nothing too intriguing about its rom-com premise, and it ends up being the mishmash of iyashikei and harem you’d expect it to be. Even though the show centers around an angel, divine intervention is inapplicable here since there isn’t much divine or fascinating about the show. But that’s probably the anime’s greatest strength. If there is one thing the show succeeds in, it is existing as harmless, mindful fluff made as an excuse to munch on popcorn. It’s not a bad thing for a series to be, since (let’s be real here) this is something we all need from time to time. A spoonful of sugar really does make the mid-icine go down.

Studio Apartment’s premise is nothing short of something we’ve already seen other rom-com anime do, and all of the plot points and beats venture into very familiar territory. Some may groan and roll their eyes at the predictable plot points, especially when they don’t leave much room for Shintarou to have any interesting chemistry or development with Towa or the rest of the harem. However, the show’s flare for the formulaic is not without merit and has enough for fans of harem, iyashikei, or overall moe (like yours truly) to lap up to its tried-but-true premise. Because hey, if it plays, it stays, folks.

When the jokes work, they work. I was smitten by Towa’s naive attempt to wait on people at Shintarou’s restaurant while she was attending as a customer. I liked it when the harem revealing their secret supernatural abilities to Shintarou in episode four caused his friend and classmate Tsumugi to reveal her own secret: that she wet the bed until fifth grade. Immature? Sure. But it’s the best joke in the show. However, what I absolutely adore is the eccentric vampire girl Sayuri, whose chuuni has her trying to cop a sniff off of people while trying to trick them into thinking she’s European. I have an affinity for weird characters, and the fact that Sayuri appears so late in the cour makes me wish we got more of her.

Surprisingly, the show does not slouch on the art front either. While far from extraordinary, the background art can create some lush environments for our characters to walk around in. I was particularly impressed with an outdoor shot from the ninth episode; the way the azure blue sky was juxtaposed with the deep verdant of the trees made for a pleasantly colorful urban landscape for our Towa to waltz through. Another scene in the fifth episode has Shintarou and Tsumugi sitting down in a library where the lighting has an odd enticement to it. Some generic and redundant directional choices may muddle down the animation itself, but it doesn’t dull the art’s occasional pristine qualities.

And yet, Studio Apartment stands as a very paint-by-the-numbers piece. Lacking any real twists and turns here means that the plot and characters are as predictable and static as you can imagine them being. Some Horny Harem Hijinks(TM) are brought early on to both fulfill the fanservice quota and to ensure Shintarou a few accidental Peeping Tom moments. One-note characters are then thrust into comedic predicaments with (mostly) predictable outcomes, and despite being composed of otherworldly beings, the harem’s supernatural abilities are not on display in the capacity they could be, mostly reduced to pure aesthetic. You’d think that a heavenly being like Towa would have more to offer than the ability to fly or yuki-onna Noeru making things cold for just a few scenes. Hisui is revealed to be a kappa by the end of her episode, but none of the kappa-ness ever really returns for the remainder of the series. A non-divine female mangaka and her artistic hardships are put into focus in one episode, only to leave the series just as quickly as they enter the fray. There are plenty of missed opportunities to make light comedy out of these characters and situations, and even something like, say, a festival that literally appears out of nowhere in one episode can barely make up for this lack of creativity.

Overall, there’s nothing noteworthy about Studio Apartment. On the one hand, it’s not particularly good. But on the other, it’s not particularly bad either. What you see is exactly what you get, and not once was I let down or disappointed by anything I saw. It’s a no-frills, non-controversial, twelve-part suite of moe rom-com junk food, devoid of anything earth-shattering. In short, it’s not anything special. But then again, maybe it’s not supposed to be. And maybe, just maybe, we should be a tad grateful for that.