Review of Sing "Yesterday" for Me

Spoilers for the story’s end in the last paragraph - because everyone deserves to know what a vomit-inducing ending it is. “What if we took Welcome to the N.H.K. and bastardized it into pure wish-fulfillment? We’ll earn millions!” The isekai LN title of this series would be “I’m the most dull, unremarkable, and devoid of appeal ‘literally me’ MC in existence, yet I’m inexplicably beta-orbited by an underaged manic pixie dream girl and an inexplicably single 9/10 woman in her prime.” In case you don’t like isekai LN titles and prefer comparisons to the previously seen shows, NHK ni Youkoso! is a perfect one. Imagine NHK. But insteadof a mentally ill shut-in, Sato is just a nondescript part-timer schmuck. And instead of the troubled characters with deep backgrounds, Misaki and Senpai are just wish-fulfillment waifus. And instead of the bizarre, eccentric and cringy story arcs - nothing happens. In other words, imagine NHK but entirely devoid of depth, fun, or identity.

Yesterday wo Utatte is an insanely frustrating show to watch because it’s not awful consistently. Despite being full of the massive red flags that scream “this is garbage, drop it without finishing a single episode,” it occasionally manages to have a genuinely poignant moment of drama that would be great in a better show not ruined by its awful premise and awful characters. No, “occasionally” isn’t the right word - that’s literally how every episode is structured. They follow the pattern of the first 15 minutes of nothing that leaves you all the time in the world to ponder how terrible this series is and what are you even doing with your life, followed by the 5 minutes of decent drama. Yeah, here is a wise saying: if you mix 5 barrels of wine with 15 barrels of mud you’ll get “don’t fucking watch this show, it’s bad.”

Since the characters are the main issue, I’ll elaborate on those:
Rikuo is what happens when you make your characters out of the TVTropes quotes. Here: “A soulful, brooding male hero, living a sheltered, emotionless existence. If only someone could come along and open his heart to the great, wondrous adventure of life.”
Haru is by far the worst thing about the entire show. You know how some characters, say, Haruhi get called a Manic Pixie Dream Girl just for being quirky and female? Not the case. She fits the definition of MPDG to a “t” - an assertive eccentric girl with wild hair and a pet raven that has no goals, agenda or purpose beyond attaching herself to the male protagonist. That’s unironically her entire character - her life is empty so she pursues the MC just to have some meaning in it (which doesn’t explain why she pursues this particular wet noodle). She’s so awful, the moments where she is being emotionally hurt are by far the most enjoyable moments in the show for me (and there is no shortage of those since Rikuo treats her like furniture). Also, she’s 18 y. o. because this is anime and you can’t have anime without a JK (the MC is 25 y. o.).
Shinako is the protagonist’s former classmate who kinda liked him in the past and now they’ve met again by chance. I wasn’t joking about the whole NHK comparison. And the comparison makes the biggest problem with her glaringly obvious - there is a snowball's chance in hell a woman like this wouldn’t be married or swarmed by dozens of potential suitors at this point of her life. That’s just not how it works. Senpai in NHK was married despite being an absolute mess - because that one is a well written story. Shinako here is not because this one is not. I mean, she has a half-decent story reason for staying single - but that doesn’t explain why every single male acquaintance doesn’t try to ask her out or why she spends all of her free time beta-orbiting a boring fucking nobody.
Rou is basically a male clone of Haru in a sense that they’re both teens unhealthily beta-orbiting a much older person that treats them like a piece of furniture. Outside of that his personality is that he has a safety pin for an earring.
There is also that one flirty shoulder-length-middle-parted-blond-hair-with-a-hairband guy that I swear I’ve seen in 50 shows before, even though I can’t recall his name in any of them. He’s not relevant or anything, I just want to point out a trite cliche.

That’s really all there is to it - the main characters all kinda make sense in a vacuum. What doesn’t make sense is why these 9-10/10 women would be throwing themselves onto this 4/10 man and how fucking dumb the show thinks I am if it expects me to not question this masturbatory fantasy of a premise? Literally just replace the MC of the story with Satou Tatsuhiro (i.e. a loser that is at least distinct enough to tell him apart from a potato sack) and this will instantly become a barely watchable poor man’s NHK, instead of an unwatchable morally hazardous shlock.
And now, the ending:

So, yeah, the manic pixie dream girl “wins” - after the MC first dates the actual woman for a while and then breaks up with her and decides, “Guess I’ll go for the back-up now, it’s not like that tool has anything to do besides waiting until I whistle.” They meet, kiss and the series treats it like a happy end. But not before actually lampshading what a piece of shit the MC is for doing that. Hey, author-san, just because you acknowledge a thing is horrible doesn’t mean you get a free pass to do that exact thing and frame it like a happy end. Go fuck yourself.

2/10 for “degeneracy.”