The problem with me reviewing makuranodanshi, which may be enough to render this work useless, is that I’m clearly not the target audience. That may be excusable for an anime, but this is a work written and streamlined for the purpose of being therapeutic, by way of being absent of any plot, recurring characters, and by taking a first-person-esque approach. There are twelve episodes with twelve different boys (although one episode has two, and the last and first episode share the same one), each with different personalities and builds in different situations, talking to you soothingly and with some gaps in their speaking for you to react from your lonely place in front of the screen. So if you aren’t lonely or stressed and aren’t planning to react, then there will be absolutely no purpose for you to watch.
What about for the people who are, who want to soothe their tired hearts by talking to cute handsome boys? Well the lack of any background music is a plus, genuinely lending a certain degree of realism while also serving to not intrude on the viewer’s quiet relaxation. Except there is an opening theme, fairly loud and abrasive, that cuts in just as the premise is being established and ruining that exact ambiance. The first person camera cuts to different angles from time to time, which also tends to interrupt the experience.
The strategy of diversifying the characters in each episode seems to be to appeal to different audiences, meaning that if you have any interest in using this therapeutically you are best off reading their descriptions and picking your one or two favorites right off the bat, rather than also watching the other ten ones for the sake of completionism. And of course, with only four minutes in an episode there is barely enough time to interact with your one chosen beloved, even barring the fact that the conversation is fairly streamlined and the characters are for the most part unrealistic (not that there’s anything wrong with that level of escapism from real people). As another odd bone to pick personally, most of the conversations seem to head the direction of some kind of stilted confession of love or other sexual tension, which seems sort of odd for a work that is supposed to be devoid of stress or thinking.