Amagami SS, a show that I thought was potentially good until AIC showed up. My hope is that AIC will redeem themselves with this show. The first episode told me two things:
1) the show will be told in parts. Anidb says there are 13 episodes planned at the moment while MAL says 26. I don't know which to believe at the moment, but this means that each arc will range from 2-4 episodes given that there are 6 girls. From the preview for the next episode the latter seems to hold a little bit more at the moment
2) We may end up getting "world resets" as a result, as if the whole anime itself was a game. Not a bad idea, but not necessarily good either if done improperly.
With that out of the way, time to get into the actual preliminary review of the show. I held my expectations quite low coming into the series, especially given AIC's performance in the last 2 seasons after coming off a strong run in 2009. The biggest surprise this series had was the beautiful artwork and character design. Animation wasn't very fluid nor detailed though despite airing in HD. The OP video felt very lackluster whereas the ED video, or at least for Haruka's chapter, was very very well done. Music was good (not so much the instrumental at the end though) and video was definitely a nice touch.
As for a story, since it's too early to tell how AIC and director, Yoshimasa Hiraike (Director of Working!!, Solty Rei, and Kaleido Star), plans to go about the rest of the series. So that will have to wait and see. In addition, Hiraike also directed the first good episode of Mayoi Neko Overrun!: Episode 3, an episode where the plot actually moved forward significantly, if not the only episode that did so. I do like the somewhat fast pace for this show since most shows end up having a protagonist failing to ever make a confession even by the time the show is over. It's nice to see that Junichi makes a confession and is rejected immediately in an elegant manner rather than a tsundere fashion. Not to mention that Haruka is a seemingly honest person, which makes everything else more interesting (so long as she doesn't go yandere XD, School Days anyone?). With that said, this show has some promise going for it. A lot more than I expected when first expecting this show. Perhaps it will live up to the expectation I had when the project was first announced instead of the lowered expectation I made two weeks ago. The ending by Itou Shizuka was very good and the rest of the cast seems promising despite not hearing too much from them this episode.
For a harem show visual novel adaptation, this started off on the right foot. The question now is will it hold for the remaining episodes of the series.
Preliminary Score: 7/10
Preliminary Expectation (From Summer Preview thread): Low