One of the big themes in the new season's crop of anime is that of family. Aishiteruze Baby tackles this theme with a story focused on a care-free, popular boy whose life is turned around when a little girl is abandoned by her mother and left in the care of his family. While the animation is not up to the standards many have come to expect, this is a series with a lot of heart and some refreshing departures from the usual anime clichés.

Kippei is not your standard anime hero. He is a high school boy who excels at one thing only -- getting the ladies. He's the most popular boy in school, with half a dozen girlfriends who expect nothing more than for him to show them a good time. He's not your standard prude who overreacts to every, nor is he entirely disinterested in everything he does. He's just a guy who knows how to have a good time. Then Yuzuyu enters his life. After her father died her mother ran away, claiming that she couldn't possibly raise a child without the support of her husband. Kippei's family takes her in and she almost immediately adopts Kippei as her replacement mom.

Just as Kippei manages to avoid the biggest high school boy clichés, Yuzuyu avoids those for adorable little girls. The biggest and most welcome departure from expectation is in her voice acting. She does not have the high pitched girly squeals you may have come to expect, instead having a much calmer and subdued delivery with a natural sounding voice. She also does not have any cute catchphrases or annoying speech quirks. Sometimes she speaks above the level one might expect from a 5 year old, but for the most part she is reasonably realistic -- she has no super powers, amazing talents, or bizarre quirks. She likes to color, to eat, and to shower her new big brother with affection.

Of course the series would be terribly boring if it was just a nice guy and a nice little girl going about their lives with no incident. There is plenty of drama going on, from Yuzuyu's occasional bouts of separation anxiety to Kippei attempting to balance his over-full social plate with his dedication to his new ward. Some of Kippei's admirers get in on the act as well, each reacting differently from the sudden and unexplained changes in his behavior. He keeps Yuzuyu a secret from his school pals, except for the cool and mysterious Kokoro, a girl who claims to loathe Kippei for being such a playboy, who attempts to help Kippei out without giving away just how much she knows or cares.

As mentioned previously, the animation and character design really leave something to be desired. The design is frequently inconsistent and occasionally the anatomy of the characters gets entirely out of hand, with arms that extend much farther than they should and proportions elongated beyond absurdity. Yuzuyu occasionally resembles more of a head on a stick than a little girl, and Kippei is some sort of hyper-fragile giant towering over her. If you can get past the occasional unintentionally surreal moments, it has a good color palette, using light and bright colors that match the light tone of the series.

Another occasional irritant in the series is the voice acting. While the voices were chosen well enough, they are directed strangely. Nearly every exchange is done with several long and unnatural pauses. It's difficult to imagine what purpose these pauses serve, it is unlikely that they actually pad out the episodes that much and they don't make the characters appear thoughtful. Instead they break up the flow of conversation and make it feel strange.

Aishiteruze Baby is an imperfect series with a good heart under all its flaws. Making the characters closer to real people and less of the expected anime clichés was a good choice for this series, and the relationship that develops between Kippei and Yuzuyu is cute without becoming creepy or obsessive. Yuzuyu in particular manages to keep from becoming a singular cute engine and her mostly realistic reactions to bad situations makes her more endearing in the end. While unlikely to make it on to someone's top 5 list of favorite anime, it still manages to be worth watching. - Angie 'Foodbunny' Dietrich .