Saekano: How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend is based upon the light novel series. The first season has 12 episodes and an "Episode 0". The series follows Aki Tomoya, who while riding on his bike during spring break, comes across a girl whose white hat blows away. He picks it up and is stunned by the girl's beauty. This inspires him to make a game to capture this magical and fateful moment. Tomoya is an avid otaku, loving anime and dating sims while purchasing all their merchandise. From little, he wanted to be a game producer.
So it turns out that the girl Tomoya met is Kato Megumi, who is his classmate for a few years... This is explainable given that Megumi has no presence and is forgettable, despite being pretty. She is the title character for the game. Tomoya sets about recruiting other members to take on specific roles for the game. First up is Sawamura Spencer Eriri, who is half-Japanese and half-British. She is Tomoya's childhood friend and is introduced as an ace artist. Despite her looks and her refined attitude, she is secretly an otaku as well as being a doujin artist (of the more erotic kind). As she wants to keep her secrets, she initially doesn't interact with Tomoya that much at school. Eriri is the illustrator for the game.
Kasumigaoka Utaha is yet another promising candidate who despite being in high school, is already the author of a bestselling novel. She is shown to be intelligent but quiet, sleeping during class. Despite that, she is the number one student in terms of results at the school. While pretty, she has a sharp tongue and will not hesitate to voice her critiques. She is responsible for writing the scenario of the game. The last member of Tomoya's circle is Hyodo Michiru. However, Michuru appears really late into the season, which kind of feels like a spoiler since she was so prominent in Episode 0 and also in the opening theme. She is the one that will create the music for the game. She is in her own band and is talented all around except for the fact that she loses interest quickly.
Episode 0 has the group going on a trip to get ideas for their game and it ends up as a typical hot springs episode. Watching this first may be confusing since it jumps right into things and a really quick introduction of the characters. It has all the cliches you'd expect from a visit to the hot springs, such as ping pong and Tomoya listening to the girls' conversation from the other side of the wall. Once you get into the main episodes, you see that Tomoya has to work hard in the beginning in order to win the girls over to join his circle to create the game. We see him from hanging out with Megumi, who is shown to be "boring" to working through the Golden Week holidays in order to push out a proper proposal.
Megumi ends up having a lot more depth than you expected and quickly rises from her unremarkable personality to the most interesting heroine of the anime. She also quickly becomes the cutest girl too. The anime cycles through each of the girls' backstories and how Tomoya works to resolve their differences and strengthen their relationships. We find that Utaha's side profession as an author isn't as smooth sailing as she would lead you to believe. Surprisingly, Tomoya actually had a fairly big impact to her style. It's good to see them working together to improve upon the first draft of the game's plot, as Tomoya discovers what he really wants to portray in the story.
Characters surprisingly have a lot of depth and the anime goes into detail on how it affects their relationship as a circle. However, at the same time, some characters unlikable, even when they try to justify themselves. It's easy to see that all of them harbor feelings for Tomoya right from the start, although they display their affections differently. Eriri is a tsundere, while Utaha keeps it more to herself unless she's jealous. The later episodes are really good in terms of the dynamic of the group. While the characters still display their reluctance from time to time, you can see them working hard together. The fact that they are achieving tangible results like starting to put the background, character portrait and text together makes it seem like they are progressing and is not just another plot device that is shelved in favor of day to day harem events.
There is a noticeable improvement to the quality of humor as the series goes on too. In particular, the one where Utaha kept jabbing at Eriri about how she is just a cheap knockoff childhood friend in hilarious yet so true. Throughout it all, the characters each work hard in their own way to help making the game come true. Eriri struggles with trying to get multiple expressions off Megumi since she is so expressionless. On the other hand, once Utaha gets her first draft in and the circle reads it, it's way out of wack with abrupt changes and plot twists.
The ending was good in how it solved the problem of recruiting Michuru into the circle. Thanks to the rousing speeches and how it all works together in Tomoya's favor, it was a happy moment at seeing the circle now complete. Overall, Saekano: How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend is an interesting slice-of-life anime wrapped around the concept of creating a game. The depiction of Tomoya working hard to make his dream come true, and seeing how the game slowly comes together from the efforts of everyone is satisfying.
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