Anime review: "Inu X Boku SS" (GOOD)

NOTE: I watched this series in English.

Series in one sentence:
I get a private stalker to drive me to school.

Series in more sentences:
A rich and sassy demon girl goes to live on her own in a special apartment for highly valued demon people and gets assigned an attractive, slavish bodyguard she never asked for.

One of the requirements for watching this series is that you have to be female. Unless you're a boy who absolutely adores romantic soap operas that stars a Gary Stu obsessing over an unfairly treated girl. This series is like a cheap fanfiction. A cheap fanfiction that works.

This is a series of only a few episodes, and I have yet to decide whether I'm happy or sad about that. I looked into the manga series it was based on and the story is certainly not something fans would like to see animated in full. Especially not the people who only know and love the anime. There is no happy ending.
The TV series keeps things cheery and cute, even with the introduction of a man-hating lesbian pedophile, an SM sex addict, and the clear insinuation that the bodyguard was once a soulless male prostitute.

I wasn't sure what to think when I watched the first episode. The bodyguard, Sōshi, annoyed me a little in the beginning. His watery eyes and continuous rambling about how he's just a dog and not worthy of anything was hard to swallow, but he pretty much stops doing these extremes before it makes you uncomfortable. At the end of the series you understand his behaviour.
I still think the girl, Ririchiyo, could've been a whole lot more distant and mean, but the series puts great focus on the relationship with her bodyguard and her inner struggles to socialize. It's these two characters you're most eager to see on screen.
The English dub was also pretty well done, I liked the voice actors. I preferred the English confession scene over the Japanese one. Fight me.

I normally don't consider these kind of animes to be at the same level as Attack on Titan or Elfen Lied, score wise, but it did something rare I wished more shows did; and that's getting to the point. It never lost its focus or pushed it aside by distracting viewers with filler episodes. The romance between Ririchiyo and Sōshi was what mattered, all way through. Except perhaps for the one episode that starred a different romance, but the characters were cute, so fine.

If I had to think of one issue I had with the series, it would be that the characters being (partially) demon was completely unnecessary and hardly of any real importance to the story. Every one of these people could've been a normal human being. Just replace the few episodes that included a demon attack with something else.