Often with an anime series, you get the caveat of “Oh, it has a weak start, but it really sticks the landing in the conclusion” or the warning of “Oh, it has a good start, but really fumbles the landing”. Studio Apartment, Good Lighting, Angel Included has the weird instance of being a series with a weak start, a weak end, but a really strong middle portion of the series. The series, which I’m going to just call Studio Apartment for the sake of brevity – starts out as a pretty standard magical girlfriend series, and ends as a magical girlfriend harem series – but there’s a moment in the middle, where the series really finds its feet as the supporting cast builds up – and where it has some interesting humor to go with it.
The premise is that Shintarou Tokumitsu is an ordinary high school kid, who lives alone in an apartment, when an angel – Towa – ends up on his balcony, and ultimately ends up staying with him in his studio apartment. After attempts to hide her identity as an angel from some of his friends and classmates, he ends up building up a series of female friends who have their own magical traits as well – along with another fairly normal girl who Shintarou was already friends with before the series starts.
So, Studio Apartment starts with some basic “Magical Girlfriend who isn’t used to the real world” hyjinx, of the variety that (frankly), Oh! My Goddess did a lot better back in the day. By the end of the series, it’s reached a sort of “Magical Harem Romantic Comedy” status quo, complete with a beach episode, a hot springs episode, and a main character who is utterly unwilling to consider picking a girl out of this group. However, right in the middle – we get some great comedy bits.
We have the introduction of one of Shintarou’s co-workers at his part time job, who is also one of his classmates, who turns out to be descended from Yuki-onna, and is undersocialized because when she gets emotionally wound up she creates snowstorms. We have a girl descended from vampires who is a 100% chuunibyou, because why wouldn’t you if some of the usual chuuni stuff people pretend actually applies to you? We have the shy girl who is descended from Kappa because she needs to be really careful around water (and because her family is both wealthy and deeply weird). Then there’s Shintarou’s utterly normal childhood friend, who gets to serve as a second audience perspective character as she gets introduced to all the supernatural people who she didn’t know were around her – and an interesting romantic interest as she tries to figure out what gives her a romantic chance when surrounded by all these exceptional people.
This makes for a slew of really solid jokes in the middle of the series – that then just eventually fades away as the later part of the series just slides into some of the routine material for the genre. Occasionally they bring up some of the bits that worked previously – like in the hotsprings episode, Noel (the yuki-onna), fully expects that Shintarou will and should try to peep, because that’s what happens in anime and manga, only for everyone to say no he won’t (and he doesn’t) and he shouldn’t, leading to Noel to be very confused. However, otherwise it just kinda falls into a rut. There isn’t any fanservice, or relationship drama, or even romantic relationship progression to drive things forward. It reached the point where I felt like I was watching this not because it was a show I totally liked, but more because I was about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way through the show already, so I might as well finish it.
It, ultimately, left me with the sense that either the writers of the anime couldn’t come up with a proper conclusion to the show, possibly because the mangaka themselves had started running out of steam. It’s rare to me for a show to fluctuate for the better the middle of the series, before returning to its earlier low point at the end, but Studio Apartment definitely did that.
If you do want to watch it – Studio Apartment is available for streaming on Crunchyroll.
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