Manga Adaptation by A-1 Pictures
Streaming on Crunchyroll

Premise

Hana is coming off a gap year in which she studied to get into her new high school. She’s very self conscious about her age, but this has no bearing on anything as she meets her new classmates.

Jel’s verdict: Don’t Start

At one point in this episode the main character says something to the effect of “…but all we did was talk and look at cherry blossoms” and I thought “THAT’S IT, that’s the show”. Slow Start is a show about high school girls doing nothing, to a degree that I don’t think we’ve seen since the mid-2000’s moe boom. I’m talking more than just plot (or lack thereof), I mean girls who are presumably teenagers that look like they’re no older than 10 slapped with a layer of weird sexuality that a decade later I still don’t understand.

The supposed hook in all this, the fact that the main character is secretly a year older than her classmates, has absolutely no bearing on anything. She thinks about it briefly from time to time but it makes no difference. That’s sort of the point I guess, but is that a profound enough message to merit basing an entire series on? Not even close. If I can think of one positive, the episode is exceptionally well animated to the point where they are almost overcompensating for the lack of action. Even so, the childish character designs and squirrelly voices cancelled that out, and with no other payoff there is zero reason to watch this.