Shouwa Monogatari is a sedate slice of life story about a multigenerational family living in 1960s Tokyo. Your enjoyment is largely going to depend on whether you can connect with the specific sense of nostalgia that it's trying to cultivate. While there are some bits that are culturally specific to Japan and not easy for westerners to relate to, I think it does a good job overall of building a general atmosphere of "the good days gone by" that most will connect with, the vibe of your gruff dad sending you to the corner store to buy a pack of smokes for him, playing baseballin the vacant lot after school with your schoolyard friends, that sort of thing.

The music and visuals do a good job in giving it that hazy nostalgic feel as well. The use of period music and commercial jingles feels authentic, and a post-credits scene after each episode showcases the real life locations they were based on and includes some old photographs from the time period as well to give it a strong sense of place. The art and animation are merely functional, but look nice enough aside from one or two bits of questionable CGI usage, and the character designs are pretty strong.

One area where it falls short, however, is the voice acting. It is often stiff at best, and sometimes bad enough to break immersion. The main culprit here is Chiba Shouya as the elementary school aged son of the family, Kouhei. It's tough to blame him fully since this appears to have been his first main role and he was only 15 or 16 years old at the time, but his acting here is completely flat and affectless. It becomes distracting when Kouhei is meant to be jumping for joy or shouting mad, but all of his lines are still being delivered in the same emotionless monotone. This was a poor casting choice and he was plainly not ready for the role at this point, though he has gone on to have an excellent career since then.

In the end, how you feel about this series is going to depend a lot on your patience for slice of life material and your ability or desire to feel nostalgic. If you can let yourself get lost in its golden-era "remember when everything cost a nickel?" vibe, there's a nice enough show here. However, if you're someone that typically gets bored by low stakes slice of life shows, this isn't going to be the one that breaks the streak for you. Likewise if you're not the type of person that gets warm fuzzy feelings for a bygone era that you never actually lived in.