Tokyo Daigaku Monogatari is best described as being both boring and incomprehensible. The premise upon which it's built isn't necessarily the problem- Indeed, the premise seems quite strong, and coming from the creator of Golden Boy, that's to be expected. Instead, it seems to be a problem with how it's been executed. I'll begin with the story here. This tale, ostensibly meant to be a comedy, follows two high school sweethearts who face the trial of potentially being separated by not getting into the same university. It's a solid template for an anime like this one, and indeed, the manga it's based on seems tobe warmly regarded, but this anime adaptation has a lot of problems. To start, the story feels cramped and rushed, which makes sense since several volumes of the manga were crammed into a mere two episodes. It would have been very difficult to do it justice in the first place as an OVA, but such a truncated runtime doomed the effort before it even began. Moreover, nobody's motivations or reactions make any sense at all, beyond the protagonist being an insatiable horndog with little to no moral fiber. Things just seem to happen, and seem to happen in a vain, desperate, and unceasing series of attempts to make you laugh, almost all of which fail miserably. The final nail in the coffin, however, is the show's vague and all-too-permeable line between daydreams and reality. It doesn't make much of an effort to illustrate that a daydream sequence is initiating, not even so much as a hazy screen effect or harp sounds. It just seamlessly progresses, as though what you're seeing is the real story, only to pull you back after 10 or 15 minutes of what you thought was the story actually taking place. It does this several times, without any warning, and serves no other purpose than to make the story feel disjointed and genuinely schizophrenic, in a very literal sense of the word. The result is confusing, unfunny slop that feels like it has no real reason to exist. As for everything else this show has to offer, there's much less to say.

The art is good, meeting all the basic standards of quality for the time, even having some visual gags that stand out.

The sound is also fine, meeting the basic standards of quality as well, though it fails to stand out in any particular way.

As for the characters, they're fairly weak, and though they are unpredictable, they feel tossed around by the whims of the story, like puppets more than characters. As such, there aren't any favorites to choose from among the cast, given that they're all so broadly lackluster. Overall, Tokyo Daigaku Monogatari is strange, formless, and unfunny. However, it is mercifully short, and due to the story, or lack thereof, being the only major sin, it shakes out to something that is just fundamentally boring, and not fundamentally unwatchable. However, even with that caveat in mind, it remains impossible to recommend. There are very few people, if any, that would actually enjoy this title.