Bartender is to drinking what Disney is to romance. Before you've experienced it first hand, you think it's all sunshine and rainbows. Then you come to CMU:
Clubbing sucks. A typical club breaks down something like this:
If you don't go clubbing, you could always play beer pong, the stupidest shit ever. Nothing says "party" like throwing a ball into a cup. The worst part is that people always pretend to care about it, even though it's all luck (unless you cheat), not to mention it's dirty and wasteful. Some people don't even drink up until the game is over. Why don't these morons just drink their beer while doing something legitimately entertaining?
But Bartender doesn't showcase that side of drinking. Drinking in Bartender is elegant, so elegant that LunarAnime found it immoral to release episodes in lower resolution than 1280x720. In Bartender, people don't chug alcohol for the sake getting drunk; they take their time, enjoy the moment, and select drinks that appeal to specific tastes, settings, and emotions.
Each episode of Bartender consists of a one shot story. As usual, if you're all about
continuous plots, Bartender won't appeal to you. Interestingly however, characters from other episodes
randomly hang around and take part in the narration, which, by the way, is the most impressive
I've ever seen in any anime.
| Well developed minor characters |  |
| Simultaneous subplots | |
| Unforeseeable plot twists |  |
| Comical victimization | |
| Recurring random character(s) | |
| Badass mid-episode transitions | |
| Soundtrack by Yuki Kajiura | |
Fade into intro/ending | |
| Themes of Hatred/Suffering/Revenge | |
| Topics of Hatred/Suffering/Revenge | |
| Lesbians | |
| Hilarious ambiguously gay dude | |
| Stylish visual effects | |
| Dinosaurs | |
| Giant Robots | |
| Rivalry | |
| Graphic violence | |
| A character vaguely resembling myself | |
| Failed confessions | |
| Misunderstandings | |
| Pimp in a white suit | |
| List of progressively revealed elements | |
| Supernatural Power | |
| Self-parody | |
The checklist doesn't promise much in the way of extras, but since Bartender is a slice-of-life/drama, it only needs the basics to kick ass. And now, the intro and ending:
3225 people think Sasakura Ryou looks like a grown up Azuma Kazuma