The hilariously named Biscotti Republic, set in the even more hilariously named world of Floynard, faces a national crisis: It's being invaded by warriors who look like they just got back from a convention. Princess Millhiore F. Biscotti decides that the time has come to summon a hero, and as luck would have it, some British kid living in Japan named Cinque Izumi (gotta love Japanese attempts at European names) who can apparently perform acrobatic feats that should land him on a list of modern wonders (as usual, don't even ask why) has been fated to fall down a hastily CGI'd magical wormhole. When he pops out the other end inside a glowy CGI flower, Cinque is informed that he's the hero of destiny, which he refuses to believe for about 10 minutes in order to drag out the episode, but then he has a change of heart right before the end so we can segue into the closing credits with a dramatic pose.

Have you ever wondered where failed children's shows go after they die?

Pitch to me a show that has colour-coded princesses, shallow rival characters, fights where no one gets hurt, wars fought over obstacle courses, war crimes punished with bops on the head, a sociopolitical structure ruled by the adorable, and half the characters and one of the kingdoms having names derived from European desserts, and I'd point you in the direction of the Disney Channel and move on to the next pitch. Dog Days, in any other medium, would be a children's show. It's bright, shiny and sweet enough to make your teeth ache with a glance, but this is anime, so this show isn't for kids--naturally, it's for young men. If the superficial dark elements aren't the giveaway, then the girls' exploding clothes sure are.

Now, in the Year of Our Lord 2025, I don't view moe as a form of entertainment worth watching for its own sake and I don't actively look for it in what I watch, but I'm not against it either. Shows can be as cute and moe as they like as long as they have the story, characters and plot to match it, and ultimately, that's how I will judge Dog Days looking back on it all these years after first watching it. If you hate the perniciously sexualized cuteness of late-2000s/early-2010s otaku bait series as a matter of principle, then stop reading now and look for another series.

I'll get my biggest gripes out of the way first: On its surface, it's hard to think of a more unimaginative series than Dog Days, a show that moves mechanically from one plot point to the next and doesn't even really try to add fresh concepts or unexpected twists to its premise. In fact, nothing illustrates this problem better than the chocobos on loan from Final Fantasy. Yeah, that one's so damn blatant, you'd be forgiven for thinking future Pocketpair devs had something to do with this. The main character designs are hardly worth mentioning either--Cinque is a generic energetic teen with messy blonde hair and big blue eyes, and Millhiore and her warriors look like escapees from a "How to Draw Generic Vaguely JRPG-Style Characters" book. The animators also frequently use CGI as a lazy shortcut on things they could've easily animated by hand, like DOORS OPENING, and everything is topped off by a tinkly "Let's pretend these synthesizers are trumpets" soundtrack.

In any case, those of you still interested are in for a visual treat if you are a fan of unrelenting cuteness. Every single catgirl and doggirl is unfailingly adorable. The bright palette that dominates the backgrounds, along with the character designs, also manages to be pleasing rather than garish. Many "cute" series either drown their worlds in ribbons or leave them bare to lavish more attention on their characters, but Dog Days gets the balance just right. The music, while cheap-sounding, matches the aesthetic. The action also is pretty reasonable, mixing up actual fighting with big ol' ki blasts and generally manages to keep me entertained. One thing of note is that the production values don't always keep up, and that's particularly clear during the concert sections, which we receive via shoddy CGI.

In terms of story, Dog Days isn't pushing any envelopes. The isekai routine, which was still relatively fresh at the time, plays out completely straight, though the reasons why the world is essentially harmless (for the most part) are interesting. To be honest, the background is pretty competent, the system of wars and the reason why no one gets hurt are a clever wink to the tropes themselves, but they're simply adornments to an otherwise standard "help the princess, save the kingdom" story. It does play out well though and only feels a little aimless sometimes, since the series feels slightly chopped up between plot events and "characterization" scenes, for a lack of a better term. This would be fine normally, but I always found myself pining for another fight scene rather than the constant introduction of new characters that took up so much of the series. All I can say is that I'm glad a second season came along, because this series had far too many characters for a 13-episode show.

Honestly, you really can't get much more generic and safe than this, although it is admirable just how far they decided to go with the sugary sweetness mixed with incredibly out-of-place fanservice. See, while fallen male warriors revert into these kittyblob things, female warriors just get tons of clothing damage, but it never gets to the level of, say, Queen's Blade or Ikkitousen.

The characters themselves are a bigger problem. The series really does have more characters than it knows what to do with, and only Eclair, Cinque, Millhiore, Leo and perhaps Ricotta get anything close to minimal characterization. Yes, there are glimpses of other characters like Eclair's brother and Cinque's rival Gaul, but there are characters that get a sizeable amount of screentime without much personality at all, like the Genoise, Gaul's henchgirls who don't really seem to warrant inclusion in the series at all but can't seem to stay offscreen. That aside, even the main cast doesn't have much depth. Eclair is your basic tsundere, Cinque is the stock shonen hero and Millhiore is cute and earnest and not much else. Most of the characters can be quite fairly categorized like this, and while they certainly aren't unpleasant examples of the archetypes, they certainly are clear examples of the archetypes written with little deviation from the bare-bones basics. Sadly, that is as deep as any of the character seems to get. They're also clearly setting up some kind of chaste romance between Cinque and Millhiore throughout. You can see it coming from a mile away, even with the inevitable harem Cinque ends up getting (which they heavily played up in all the promotional art) and the obvious lesbian undertones between Millhiore and the catgirl warrior Leonmitchelli.

Ultimately, if you can overlook the unashamed pandering then you'll find a reasonable, modest series that's about as average as you can get. Outside of the brief-yet-frequent fanservice, Dog Days is so dedicated to being little more than just fluff that it's inoffensive to a strange extreme, like a show constructed entirely out of Nerf material. It's fine to watch if you've got time to waste or just want some background noise, and that's about it.