Summary:
  Shiratori Ryuushi aspires to write children’s stories. To pursue that dream, he moves away from home to attend a vocational school to get the proper training to enter the industry. His new home, Narutakisou, is an…interesting place. All its other inhabitants are odd, to say the least. The landlady, Aoba Kozue, seems like a refreshing breeze of normal. Shiratori falls for her immediately. As the two get closer to each other it becomes clear that there is much more to the humble landlady than he first thought.

Review:
  Mahoraba is a superb example of romantic-comedy done right. As a male, I almost universally find the entire genre to be predictable, boring, and often infuriating. Watching shows like Love Hina for too long very nearly destroyed my interest in anime completely. So many shows rely on that one gag that was already beaten to death in the first episode. More often than not, that gag is gratuitous violence against the single male who inadvertently does something ‘perverted’ in a place that can only be described as a harem. Love Hina is the worst offender I can think of offhand to demonstrate a series that had a good, slapstick routine going for it, but they destroyed any chance of the series actually being entertaining by overusing the same joke over and over and over again at the expense of character development. But, I digress…
   Kozue’s personality will change if she is surprised. There are a total of five such personalities including the real Kozue. Each personality is distinct and interesting and so vastly different than each other that I was concerned the entire series would be built around the embarrassing-yet-amusing situations brought about because of these transformations. Imagine my surprise when they didn’t overuse the gimmick! Mahoraba is absolutely about the characters and their relationships within and without Narutakisou. While Kozue’s changes do play a major role in the progression of the story, they don’t feel arbitrary.
   The story is a lot of fun. There isn’t anything especially earth-shattering to be found here, but there are a few twists and turns that I didn’t quite see coming. There was never a point in the story where I got bored. Never. This phenomenon occurs largely because the characters are so much fun. If you’ve read some of my other reviews, you may notice that I harp on character development a lot. There are two reasons for this. The first is simply that it is often the least developed piece of any TV show or movie you come across. The second is that it is the single strongest piece of artillery in a writer’s arsenal. Good, solid, dynamic characters can elevate what would otherwise be mediocre to an art form. I wager that Mahoraba’s writers knew this.
  Is Mahoraba a spectacular bit of anime? Not really. It is, however, a testament to what can be accomplished within the genre. There is more potential with the romantic-comedies than your run-of-the-mill tired, slapstick humor that pervades so many shows today. There is no social commentary as in Ghost in the Shell. You won’t find the heavy handed good-versus-evil battle as seen in every shounen anime ever. What you will find is a heartwarming story of seven people living in the same place doing nothing but simply living their lives.

Final Thoughts:
   While Mahoraba ~Heartful Days~ is certainly not the most powerful or poignant show I’ve come across, it achieves the goal it was designed to achieve. The purpose of this show (in my ever-so-humble opinion) is to leave the viewer with that warm, fuzzy feeling as the credits roll. In that regard, Mahoraba performs admirably and is very much worth watching.

For its stellar portrayals of dynamic characters, its lack of ecchi jokes, its judicious use of transformations, and its absolute achievement of the goals for which it was designed, I grant Mahoraba ~Heartful Days~ the Chris and David Stamp of Approval.