This is very much unlike anything else I've read. It's fluffy and cute most of the time, but occasionally deep (culturally). Characters in it are easy to follow and somewhat obvious yet not stereotypical. For the most part though, I think it's fairly light reading. If you like one or more characters in it, you'll most likely enjoy reading it, but if you don't like any of the characters, you'll probably not get much out of it because I don't think the story is all that engrossing.
The premise of humans and "special races" living together is definitely interesting, but I can't help but to think that it needs a magic touch of ABe Yoshitoshi to bring out the ordinary from this extraordinary story (or vice versa).
Unlike in the case with the anime version of "Iriya no Sora, UFO no Natsu," where many major events were skipped in order to fit the story into 6 episodes, this anime conversion tends not to skip over major events. Instead, they took the approach of shrinking down little bit from all events. I think that makes it harder for viewers who did not read the original work to really appreciate it because it's basically an eye candy. I prefer the approach "Iriya no Sora, UFO no Natsu" took because, even though it requires very observant viewers, it can still make a big impression on people who did not read the original work.
Anyway, my favorite character is Sahara Kuguru. She's so decisive about making big life choices. Now if she can just apply that to making little choices, she'd be set. Oh, and Ueda Kana's voice acting role for the anime was so good, her voice rings in my head while reading Petoko's lines in the book.
