No-Rin Review

The sudden retirement of the famous idol Yuka Kusakabe from the entertainment business shocks the world and devastates her biggest fan, a teenager named Kosaku Hata. His classmates at the Tamo Agriculture School manage to get him out of his depression and bring him out of his room to attend his classes. However, as he does, Kusakabe enters their class under the name Ringo Kinoshita as a transfer student. Kosaku realizes he has a once in a lifetime opportunity to get to personally know his dream girl. With his group of friends, and under the persuasion of his teacher, he tries to find out why she came to the agricultural school and become more than just classmates.

In order to like No-Rin you have to be it's target audience. The target audience being the romantic, harem crowd. No-Rin has a unique setup that just falls flat for me after a couple of episodes. The premise of a retired pop idol leaving the business to pursue a normal life had me intrigue. However the show falls into too many of the romantic anime premise that we have come from expect from the romance genre. You have the male lead who is obsessed with the female protagonist almost to the level of stalking. The male lead realizes that his objection of his affection is here in his world and he has to try to win her heart. Throw in a little of harem in the mix and some comedy that doesn't land well and you have No-Rin. Don't get me wrong it's not a terrible show. The show is just not for me. I found the characters to be a little too one note, too basic and didn't really have any heart to them. I did find our female lead Ringo interesting with her pop idol and lifestyle and why she has chosen to give it up. However our male lead just kind of ruin it with his antics and characterization. No-Rin does look good in the animation department though. The character designs are great, the background textures are colorful and the voice acting is good in both English and Japanese. There is actually some good points and things on farming which I didn't expect to learn about from the show. Overall No-Rin has a unique start with a pop idol who gives up the fame but I wish that it would have focus heavily on it. 

Final Grade 3 out of 5 Stars.