But as I continued watching this show it turned out that what I initially saw as a strength is actually this show's greatest weakness. Because all the characters are so level-headed and down to earth, there is no real drama and no real conflict. This would still be okay if there wasn't the one thing that made this show so boring and unbeareble to me:
All the characters are so perfect and amazing that it makes me want to puke. They are all good looking and excel at everything they do. They have all amazing grades without any struggles, are athletic and smart and have no weakness whatsoever. They are so popular that they are practically local celebrities. Additionally they are incredibly wealthy to the point that they have their own staff of servants. Arata drew the short straw with his room being the smallest and it is still bigger than many people's whole appartments. They have their own gym in their house.
This setup results in a void of main characters. There is no real struggle, these kids don't have any real problems or anything really holding them back. This whole show revolves around trivialities without any substance. These problems are so meaningless that I don't care at all about them. Gosh, Minami having a hurt foot and not telling anybody because of her stupid pride took two whole episodes. The resolution was framed as a valuable life lesson, but because it is such a non-issue it falls so flat that it looked almost like a satire. It was so shallow how a character who doesn't really have any problems overcomes these non-existing problems. All these characters being so detached from any real life person makes it really hard to root for them.
Even the main conflict with the setup that these siblings aren't actually siblings falls flat because the characters have no real personalities. They are so content and conflict free in their perfect lifes that there are no real cracks in their relationships. I have to wonder what the author's intention was, because the whole story is constantly rubbing this whole wealthy-no-struggle-lifestyle in our face.
With the characters, couldn't they be even more generic? They are all such huge personality voids that I often wonder why they are even part of the show. You could remove most of them and nothing would change. It is as if all the characters were all dipped in bleach to remove all their individual traits that could lead to conflict and interesting interactions.
We have Shion the younger brother. He is such a stereotypical stylish pretty boy with the presence and personality of a brick wall. He adds zero to the show and he is just there. He is so insignificant that we don't even get to see his girlfriend.
Banri is the typical cool babe onee-san. Seiha is the logical girl with the personality of a robot. Minami is the genki tomboy and Kotono is the shy girl. With that all their personalities are thoroughly described.
Ouka is kind of the biggest disappointment. She is framed as the tsundere, but has zero screen presence and zero impact.
Shiunji-ke no Kodomotachi is a clinically sterile character void without any real conflict, any real struggle and any reason why I should care about any of these characters. I liked how level-headed the characters were at first, but eventually realized that they are like that because there is nothing interesting happening here.
