The above is spoken in French by a fluent French speaker. I love the world.
This series is under a studio named Satelight of Macross, Hellsing, and Fairy Tail fame, so it's a relatively solid studio. That being said, even rating Ikoku independently one can see that it's quite a good and unique series by itself.
I think I've already gone over a lot of what needs to be said about this series. The OP is surprisingly delightful to hear - not an all-out guitar + power chord + snare drum combination, but rather just a single clear female vocal and pseudo-French music. The soundtrack is very calming too, which makes it a great series to watch during evenings. The plot is freeform and obvious, but it's pleasant to see it lazily slip along.
What I would like to emphasize is the heavy Western-ness of this series. The music does contribute to it by using jazzy brass/wind ensemble/violin/harpsichord often. The graphic style also shapes the series greatly by creating a childish drawing style for comical situations and a remarkably clean style for everything else. Why is this distinct? Notice that I said childish, not chibi. Small characters with huge heads making "><" faces represents the chibi style. Ikoku merely simplifies the character drawings, giving it less of a Japanese feeling.
Although the graphic style retains the chibi characteristics, it's more realistically cartoon-ish.
But the main consideration is related to plot. Not only is the series recklessly free (as in "everyday adventures" free, not "casual school life with eventual overarching development/plot" free) , giving it more of a sitcom feeling, but it also resembles "Western" TV shows by coming full circle every episode more literally than most Japanese series do. If we consider popular Western series that are mostly independent of arcs, whether it's Seinfeld or Johnny Test, what we observe is that each episode starts and ends at nearly the same place, or implies the same place. Other than perhaps a small deviance in future character behavior, the setting and situations of the cast is exactly the same from episode to episode. They start at home (or maybe even at school), do some weird stuff, then each of the characters return to their respective places/homes. Most series even do it physically (as in, the character returns to the exact same place they were at the beginning of the episode).
You're going to be seeing this a LOT.
Japanese series don't tend to be like that - the settings and situations of each character tend to differ significantly from episode to episode. Only perhaps the most straight-playing comedic series, such as Azumangah Daiou or Gintama, try to repeat the same setting over and over again - and even for them it's hard to come full circle after 15+ minutes of surreal exploits. For most, such as Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, the characters may begin in the comfort of their own home...but end up on Mars. Call it an effort towards originality, call it a cultural difference, whatever. The fact is, many if not most Japanese series do not have intra-episode closure.
I don't care how half-asleep that knife-carrying girl was. Good luck getting back to normalcy from here.
If you look at Ikoku, you see that it falls more under the Western style; yes, it still has consciously noticeable development after each and every episode, but in the end of the episode, Yune and Claude are pretty much back in the exact same place they were at the beginning of the episode - near or inside an old store along the side of the street in the Galerie du Roi. There is continuity between the episodes that forces a more anime, slice-of-life feeling, but this sense of completeness after each episode gives a definite Western vibe. And by doing so, Ikoku Meiro no Croisee has successfully created a very refreshing series that I'll be looking forward to for some time to come.
Anyways, if you like slice-of-life series and you want to relax, I highly recommend watching this series. Suffice it to say that this series is not like the others.
Going to be an important supporting character. So far all I really know about her is that she is amazingly blonde.
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