No question Giji Harem is the biggest shoe to drop in this early part of the summer season. It’s the first show from the Mid-table category and my top sleeper pick of the season, besides. Not having read the manga I was relying heavily on my instincts here, and it’s not as if Nomad is a studio with a track record of sterling productions. Still – I’ve liked the vibe with this one from the moment it was announced and I went in with a pretty decent level of expectations.

Maybe I was predisposed to like this premiere, then, but – I did. I didn’t love it – not everything worked. But for the most part I liked the mood and the comedy did its job. The fact that this seems basically to be a gag manga adds to the challenge factor – when those get adapted to anime the charm can be tough to sustain. And when most of the humor is built around a single conceit, the same risk is incurred. But the very experienced and capable Kakihara Yuuko is the screenwriter, which should help on those fronts. My maxim is that the writer is the most important staff member on an original series and the director on an adaptation, but with Giji Harem specifically I think her role will be crucial.

That premise is the key to everything. It’s an extremely clever one, I think. but it does run the risk of becoming repetitive (especially in a gag series). At a private high school, freshman Nanakura Rin (Hayami Saori) asks second-year Kitahama Eiji (Okamoto Nobuhiko) the way to the drama club room. He tells her that he’s the president and the only member, and offers to take her there. Turns out he’s a goof, and the room is full of people  including president Nakayama Motokuni (Suwabe Junichi) and Iwata Tauguto (Kouji Yusa).

A couple things kind of bothered me straight off. I’m not that nuts for a bunch of seiyuu way too old for it playing high schoolers for starters, and all these guys are so recognizable that there’s a bit of a disconnect there. Then there’s the character designs – which are kind of derpy for lack of a better word – and low-rent animation. But the actors are all perfectly good ones, and once the comedy style is established the art style starts to seem like a good match for it. So in the end, neither of these is necessarily that big of a deal.

The aforementioned conceit is that Eiji isn’t too popular, and wishes he had a harem. Rin immediately falls for him and is quite an enthusiastic actor, and decides to be a one-woman harem for his benefit. As such, she cycles through all the romcom harem cliche personality types – tsundere, imp, cool girl, et al. Eiji is quite taken by this (one might even say turned on by it). But he seems to have a bit of a problem telling the real Rin from her characters, who he more or less treats as distinct individuals. For her part Rin is way too shy to confess her feelings, so her portfolio of personas make convenient masks to hide behind.

One could see that going in a couple of different directions but the buzzword so far is pretty much good-natured and goofy. This is sketch comedy with a romantic undertone, basically. Eiji is totally clueless about Rin’s feelings and manages not to catch any of the anvil-like hints dropping on his forehead, and for now she’s fine with that. The other two dudes from the club are part of the silliness (the salmon-tasting skit was amusing enough), and I think they’ll need to continue to do so to help give the series some desperately needed diversity. Most importantly, the chemistry between Rin and Eiji works, and her cast of characters are amusing, Will everything hold together? Too early to say for the aforementioned reasons, but I’m hopeful.