A Light Watch
So if you are looking for a do nothing comedy anime then look no further. This anime is your fairly typical slice of life comedy. I guess that is because it is based off a light novel. Not that this is a bad thing. The anime does have some interesting moments in it. There are some other interesting touches as well. Plus you get all your elementary school kid innocence if you are into that. So over all the anime can be enjoyed by some.
One of the more redeeming qualities of the anime is the fact that there are some decent moments when there can be character growth for more than just the main characters. When I say main characters I of course mean Yaichi and Ai. However, if you look at the anime there are plenty of times for growth, of a kind, for Sora and the aunt. That is always a nice thing to see. Generally with anime like this one the main character just sort of molds the other characters. It was nice to see the main characters sitting on the bench a bit. That is not something that you see everyday.
Now maybe this next part is just me but I also like how they showed what appeared to be other professional shogi players in... well I guess retirement. To be honest living is expensive and I cannot believe, with how few matches and tournaments the title holders played in, that wining a couple of games pays all that well. So you see some former title holders who have other jobs as well. One runs a bath house, the other runs a "Western" clothing store. Yes they include Shogi in those businesses. Both have some place where you can play the game. However, the business entities are completely separate from the shogi. Which is a nice change, at least from what I can remember about other similar anime.
Then there is the minimal use of the loli group. Of course since one of the Ais is so incredibly outgoing, confident, and successful she does manage to make a group of friends. On occasion these friends pop into her life. However, in other anime out there when they go for the elementary school group you generally have the entire group doing stuff not just the main character, Ai, and then her friends just sort of popping in. It was really nice to have a group like that who was not all that obstructive to the anime.
I guess one last thing I can really pull out is the fact that people are not complete asses in this anime. Most of the time when people are under stress and pressure those people crack and get angry and take it out on the group. However, in most other anime there is the big thing where the main character or character being angry, realizes that what they did was kind of a dick move and races to make things right. Not in this anime, nope the main character sticks to his guns. Then the friends do this odd thing, they remain understanding and see the situation for what it is, just stress. They know that this person is in a tight spot and they know that nothing they can say or do will make them suddenly become apologetic. There is some kind of implicit forgiveness and the other characters just sort of back off and give a helping hand but do not get in the way. There is none of this everyone getting pissed off and going around causing issues trope that we generally see in anime.
So yeah there is a nice sum of reasons to watch this anime. I have to say that maybe my memory fails me a bit as I am doing a lot of stuff. However, those are the reasons that I think make this anime great. That being said I might have gotten something wrong. Regardless this anime is not a bad anime. It is just not what one would label as good.... maybe something more along the lines of "Watchable" That is a pretty rare commodity these days. Anime which one does not have to struggle to chock down because people are just animating crap just because someone has a manga that people read. So if you are looking to change things up for a quick marathon then this anime is where you need to look and have a good time watching and changing things up.