Review of Omamori Himari

Ecchi and harem, they go hand in hand in the anime industry and are two of the most popular genres within the otaku culture, but this is widely known, so the question is: Does this anime have anything else to offer other than fan-service? It's answer is: No, while it does have a plot and has some action mixed into it, this kind of a story could be from a kid's dream for all I know. So after stating that this has no story where does this enjoyment come from, the fan-service obviously, while plot wise it is bad, the way it introduces characters and createsfor the situations it has, it does relatively good. The "plot" revolves around a guy named Amakawa Yuuto, who is your ordinary high school student, nothing more than that, he has his caretaker (a tsundere) wake him up and tend to him for most of the time. Until one day he wakes up with a cat in his face (a catgirl, childhood friend) and they start out their adventures from that point.

But a story with only fan-service in it has no chance of getting an anime, so they added action/magic theme to it, which is fine in terms of content, we get to see a variety of magic they creator thought of when he added powers to his characters, the action itself is actually a bit good, they have some good fights which aren't only for the sake of fan-service.

Lastly in the story, I would like to address the episodes and their content, while it has a bad plot and no real character background, it doesn't have the cliché episodes and has some episodes with original stuff happening in them.

Art-wise it is good, like surprisingly good, the boob physics are used without holding back and the characters look colourful and vivid.

Sound-wise, it is decent, nothing amazing or outstanding which piqued my interest, seiyuu wise, most of them you can probably recognise and if not, you will later as they play lots of roles in different anime.

Now to add up on that tsundere and catgirl, childhood friend stereotype, we can add: a loli kuudere, clumsy maid and childhood friend 2. By summing all these up you can come to the conclusion that every cliché harem character is present, although I do say that, some of them have their own variations from their archetype, but honestly, most of them are textbook cliché characters.

Overall I though Omamori Himari was quite a weak anime, but there is worse out there, a lot worse, it made up for its no-plot with decently good fights and the fan-service was not half bad.

Strong points:
- Fan service has some nice variety to it.
- The episodes have some decent content in them.
- The fights in the anime are good, cliché and overused, but entertaining.

Weak points:
- Textbook characters. Including the weak protagonist.
- Weak plot, which doesn't get any expansion on in the anime.
- Nothing special about its sound part.

So if you are looking for a classic harem ecchi with some decent fights and episodes (in terms of content) and don't mind the weak characters, then Omamori Himari is the anime for you.