As someone whos generally a fan of visual novels I was interested in ATRI: My Dear Moments since it was written by Konno Asta who also wrote some of my favorite romance visual novels like If My Heart Had Wings and A Sky Full of Stars if only THOSE got anime adaptations. Despite its popularity I was weirdly hesitant and never actually read it. Maybe it was because its a linear allages VN or because its 10+ hours long. My gut told me Id stall it since it felt like itd fit an anime adaptation better. Thankfully the anime adaptation came out and as someone whos watched my fair share of anime adaptations of visual novels Im glad this one turned out to be pretty competent. It helps that its linear so theres no need to worry about cutting routes. I looked up lists of differences between ATRIs anime and VN and while Im kinda disappointed by what didnt make it in Im overall satisfied with what we got. Konno Asta to me is a master of creating wholesome emotional moments and when the anime focuses on the emotional development of Natsuki Atri and a few others those are easily my favorite parts of the story. Some of the buildup to these memorable moments reminds me of the best parts of the common routes in If My Heart Had Wings and A Sky Full of Stars. The characters in general are fairly likable. None of them are close to being my favorite visual novel or anime characters but they fit the setting and plot just fine. That said the pacing and plot convenience are definite weak points. Considering the original VN is around 13 hours long which already feels too stretched for this story the animes 4hour runtime still feels all over the place. Even with cuts the execution is uneven. While the wholesome emotional character development is nice everything else is much more hitormiss. The first half of the show is mostly sliceoflife. Some parts are kinda nice but others feel padded out. Apparently this was even worse in the VN so Im glad I never read it. The worst part for me is the melodrama. In the visual novel world theres a genre called nakigestories meant to make you cry or at least hit you in the feels. Sadly this story doesnt handle its sad moments very well. A central theme is whether Atri as a robot girl has emotions a heart. Its a nice concept if unoriginal but the obstacles thrown in to explore this theme feel contrived. A few villains pop up just to create conflict and question Atris humanity but the drama feels insincerelike it was forced into the story without proper buildup. I liked the setting of a hightech world where a city was devastated by rising tides. However outside of a few great flashbacks the story does a poor job making me care about this world. Most of the focus is on personal struggles and growth within a small part of the city. So when the plot suddenly shifts to worldlevel stakes it feels out of nowhere. The forced nakige endingwhy does every robot girl story need one?felt too predictable. At the end of the day I still enjoyed the ATRI anime well enough. The likable characters and their emotional growth carried the show. But the forced melodrama poorly builtup plot elements overly padded sliceoflife and predictable nakige stuff made it a lot less consistently enjoyable than it couldve been. If this had been a 2hour movie focusing on personal growth with properly paced setting drama Id have liked it a LOT more. As it stands its an enjoyable enough show just a bit messy.