Ristorante Paradiso is the kind of series that comes every once in a while and becomes like a breath of fresh air amidst the popular mainstream series and their generic clones. As an Otaku it is hard not to appreciate what it boldly tried to venture on and yet lament on how it fell short.
Storyline
While the first 2 episodes seem promising for a story about a taboo love with family ...
Ristorante Paradiso is the kind of series that comes every once in a while and becomes like a breath of fresh air amidst the popular mainstream series and their generic clones. As an Otaku it is hard not to appreciate what it boldly tried to venture on and yet lament on how it fell short.
Storyline
While the first 2 episodes seem promising for a story about a taboo love with family tension sprinkled in those premises are sadly left unexploited. For a such a short series to take most of its time introducing secondary characters and leaving the juicy bits so unattended for most of its running is a receipe for disaster. What kept me watching was the tiny little bits of hope that it would get to what its niche audience was drooling for, the taboo romance between Nicoletta and Claudio. I was looking forward to a torn Claudio and a distressed Nicoletta fighting with their emotions for one another, sadly the latter became too passive in her approach after her second episode and the other was just too indifferent. Also a very important character was surprisingly left out, the restaurant owner made very few appearances and had very little to do with Nicolletta. I was hoping a bond would grow between the two as friends which would create an inner conflict with Nicoletta making her rethink her decision wether to come out as her mothers daughter or not. Well, events do happen but unfortunately all at once and in the last episode;
some may like where it goes but most will regret how it got there.
Characters
The characters all have their own different quirks and are visually pretty distinct from one another. Its hard not to like the restaurant staff,
older sexy gentlemen that have a thing for pleasing women. What is there to hate? The character I did dislike however was Nicoletta. Her actions are on either side of the extreme, wether too forward or too passive, she'll just eat at your patience. Her mom is just as irritating but she has a right to be since she is not the protagonist.
Animation
Aside from its story what sets Ristorante Paradiso apart from most series is its art style. The backgrounds have a distinct hand painted like quality and its one of the reasons it has attracted some fans . Unfortunately for Paradiso however, its beautiful
art style doesn't make up for its stiff and minimal animation that fails to rise to anything but average [perhaps they blew their budget on the backgrounds] . Suddle gestures seem omitted most of the time and its a real shame because for a series in which most of its episodes revolve around mundane slice-of-life scenarios that deal intimately with its characters these are sorely lacking.
Sound
The OP and ED in my opinion are just god awful, another reason to be thankful for the internet, so we can just skip right over them. :D
The background music is more bearable, but thats not saying much. : /
Voice Acting... now there is this thing about animes and trying to speak in other languages other than japanese that frankly for what they try to do they end up doing a 180. Incidentally this year's awards go to:
Spoiler Alert! Click to show or hide
Bleach's Espada for "Why in the hell do reincarnated ghost demons speak spanish?", Reborn and its sad attempt at pronouncing Italian, and this year's winner for Most God Awful Butchering of a Language Since Recent Memory: Chrome Shelled Regios for their what-the-hell-does-this-have-to-do-with-anything "movie" sequences...in English, which were so incoherent fansubs had trouble translating them. Thank you and look forward to not having to go through that again....
Its pretty unnecessary and more often than not it takes away more from the whole experience or causes confusing situations, but for Paradiso is not as painful I'll admit. The voice acting in general is pretty average though.
A decent mild distraction, if you are looking for a gripping romance story however I suggest you look somewhere else.
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