If you ever wanted to watch a chill, slice-of-life anime with an adult cast, you might enjoy the 2024 series, Bartender: Glass of God. While I don’t think it qualifies as a good anime overall, I still enjoyed it for the music, mildly interesting character stories, and bits of knowledge about mixed drinks. Objectively, Bartender: Glass of God is a lower budget anime that owes most of its existence to product placement deals with alcohol brands. If you’re still interested knowing that, please enjoy this brief series review.
Note: At the time of writing this review, I have not seen the older anime, Bartender (2006), on which this newer version is based. I have often heard that the original version is better, but I can’t speak to it either way, and I won’t be using it for comparison.
Contents:
- Story
- Visuals
- Audio
- Characters
- Personal Enjoyment
- Overall Score
Story
Score: 5/10
Ryuu Sasakura was the bartender at a small establishment called Eden Hall. Despite being a genius at mixing and serving, he didn’t mind humble, simple work like this. Ryuu was minding his own business, when a lovely young lady – Miwa Kurushima – tried to hire him as the bartender for her grandfather’s luxury hotel. In order to satisfy her grandfather’s requirements, Miwa needed to find someone capable of creating “a glass of god.” Miwa thinks Ryuu is the right person, but will he quit Eden Hall?
This is the closest thing to a main plotline in the anime. It isn’t a very gripping concept, even for a SOL show that’s largely about adults working. Moreover, this plotline isn’t even relevant half of the time. Most of the show is about the strangers who wander into Eden Hall and find themselves comforted and restored after a drink and a talk with Ryuu. This series also lacks strong story themes which could have been woven into the episodes in potentially powerful ways. Sadly, the story is average at best.
Visuals
Score: 7/10
Bartender: Glass of God is a decent-looking anime. The art style is quite appealing, especially the colorful and emotive eyes of the characters. It resembles a 2010s anime more than a 2020s anime in style. The color pallet is fairly realistic for an anime. There are many pretty shots of drinks, glasses, and bars, which always look nice. Last of all, the character designs are often interesting and attractive. I’d say the visuals are good but not great.
Audio
Score: 8/10
The audio category is the strongest positive element of this anime, at least in my personal opinion. The Japanese voice-acting is excellent all around. Takuma Terashima voiced Ryuu Sasakura and made his voice incredibly smooth, suave, and sexy. I also enjoyed hearing Yoshino Nanjou as Miwa even though I don’t recognize her from any other roles at the current time. My last note on voice-acting is that I loved hearing Makoto Furukawa play Kelvin Chen. He is a talented voice actor with a deep, attractive voice that I now know by heart.
The opening and ending songs for this anime are both beautiful. Recently, I’ve been learning and singing along to the opening, which is called “Stardust Memory” by Takaya Kawasaki. It’s a very chill light rock song with an upbeat and inspiring chorus. The ending song is “Spica” by Mone Kamishiraishi. It’s a soft piano ballad one could fall asleep listening to. The female vocalist and the melody of the chorus are very soothing. Personally, I prefer the opening song, but both are excellent and add to the wonderful audio of this anime.
Characters
Score: 6/10
The character category wasn’t awful, but it was rather weak. Characters do go through interesting development in most cases. However, it’s often rushed or feels a little forced. Ryuu Sasakura is a fine main character, but in my opinion, he’s a little too perfect. He’s skilled, perceptive, emotionally intelligent, sexy, has an amazing voice, and can comfort anyone with just the right drink. I think I would have liked him better if he had some more quirky characteristics or serious flaws.
I liked Miwa, as she was cute but never infantilized. She has her own goal in the series and pursues it with determination. Also, there were a number of good characters who only appeared in one episode, and their stories were generally interesting. Examples include the lawyer lady from episode 2 and the emo writer man from episode 12. Some of the recurring supporting characters were bland, while others – like Yuri Ginjo – definitely appealed to me. However, I wanted more from characters like her. As you can see, the character category was satisfactory but not exactly good.
Personal Enjoyment
Score: 7/10
My personal enjoyment of Bartender: Glass of God was relatively high for an anime that many would consider boring. My favorite things were the attractive character designs, pleasant art style, and the music and songs. I also loved hearing Takuma Terashima (voice of Ryuu) perfect his suave gentleman voice. I would have enjoyed this series much more if the characters were better developed and the story a little more compelling. Still, I don’t regret watching this anime at all.
Overall Score
Score: 6.6 / 10.0 “Fine”
If we take the average of the five scores for the five categories, we get the overall score. Typically, I consider anime “good” when it’s in the 7s range. However, Bartender: Glass of God didn’t quite make the cut. I still recommend it for those who have time and enjoy chill anime featuring delicious alcoholic beverages. That’s all for today’s mini review.
~Thanks for Reading~
Written by 7Mononoke
