Cliches become cliches because they work very good for comparatively little effort, so everyone starts using them. At the very least, cliches are a good way to get high scores in preliminary reviews.
Still, you can screw up even a cliche. Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun is a cliche high school love story that is just too weak to do justice even to that simple setting.
Presentation:
Presentation is on the level tech-wise, but definitely way weak in terms of vision and inspiration.
The backgrounds are cute. The sounds (voice acting, sfx, music) are not necessarily all nice and soothing (in fact, voice acting gets pretty jarring at times), but definitely fitting to the wishy-washy high school setting. In terms of everything else, though, which is characters, animations, opening and ending songs and sequences, - the only good thing to say about them is that they are present.
Mere presence of audio and visuals, however, means essentially nothing. The show's presentation feels like an execution of a technical document. In terms of distinct style, which is the selling point of all good high school comedies, Tonari has none. That wacky off-beat feeling you might have gotten from it's poster picture over at the anime's main page is simply not there.
Presentation in this show is a job done, but is not done well. While sounds do get a passing grade, in case of visuals it is not even satisfactory. 3/10 for video, 5/10 for sound.
Story:
The story follows the exploits of two social outcasts. The girl is deliberately studious and shuns other people for being distracting. On the other hand, the guy cares about people around him so much, he can't keep his emotions in check and ends up shunned himself. As the two meet and find each other attractive, the story begins to show great heartwarming potential through showing how the pair relies on each other to resolve their issues.
Sadly, the potential never gets realised. The are two reasons for it.
First - the initial episode, introducing the main characters, is both unbelievable and either boring, or scary (without being interesting). The male protagonist goes from laugher to tears to bloody violence at the drop of the hat. Reasons for him doing that are either not easily discernible, or way too shallow for the level of displayed reaction. All of this makes the guy's antics, which are the focus of initial story ark, decidedly hard to empathise with. The creators do attempt to alleviate this inconsistency by using it to make better presentation for the female protagonist, who looks upon all these developments with as much disgust and confusion as the viewer. However, this is a weak cop-out, which is both too little and too late to prevent the whole following story being painted in the "ridiculous, confusing and boring" color.
Second - the story doesn't really go anywhere. While at one point or another, plot developments are hinted at, they never get shown or resolved. While the secondary characters do get a sort of story for themselves, the main pair seems to be locked in an all too familiar unresolved-tension-preserving stassis.
Ultimately, it appears that the story was not the main focus of the efforts of the animemakers, and is mostly used as an excuse to show off the characters in various situations. While a point can be given for at least attempting to make stories on the side, this part of the job is simply not done at all. 2/10
Characters:
Characters can make up for lack of story and have been known to do so on occasion. This is clearly what the creators of Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun intended to happen.
Well, the good part about the characters of Tonari is that they all have that one defining trait that they stick to. Watching characters come into situation that puts their defining trait into question and finding ways to get back to it is the source of all enjoyment Tonari has to offer.
Problem is, the characters don't really have much else going on outside of their defining traits. And thus the ways to stick to it that they find are seldom creative and look more like stubborness than actual development.
The female protagonist somewhat breaks the mold, due to innate contradiction of being a girl that firmly decided to follow the traditionally male role models in life (for good reasons, too). But, again, this is just not enough to save the whole show.
In short, characters have weak, one-dimensional presentations and all their development is dependent on development of female protagonist, who can't really offer much in that department, being at best two-dimensional herself. 2/10
Value:
None whatsoever. No style. No new artistic ground. No story told.
The potential the show was offered by the time-tested cliche at it's core was left completely unrealised and unexplored. 1/10
Enjoyment
If you like seeing one-dimensional people struggle when faced with contradicting one-dimensionality of other people, you might derive some enjoyment from it. Heck, this is even a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine, so i'll go ahead and give a couple of points for that.
Also, despite everything, loved the chicken. Guess it's worth a point, too :) 4/10 overall.
