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Feb 17, 2019
In a nutshell, I think that Casshern Sins is a terrible anime. I might’ve given it a slightly higher rating, say, a 2 or even a whopping 3 instead of 1 like I am giving it now, if only I haven’t picked it up because after watching Ergo Proxy I read on Reddit that “Ergo Proxy is just a pale shadow of Casshern Sins”. I loved Ergo Proxy to bits, so naturally I just had to have a look at something that was potentially even better. This, however, made me compare the two series at every turn, be it consciously or subconsciously, and it was
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never in Casshern Sins favor. So, I went in with reasonably high expectations, and what I have encountered has disappointed me so badly that my overall impression of Casshern Sins ended up being even grimmer than it could’ve been. That being said, I am certain that if I had gone in blind, I would still hate it.
Anyway, the plot tells us a story of a not-quite-robot-not-quite-human named Casshern who mopes his way through the wastelands of a planet where once a mighty robot civilization now falling prey to Ruin has flourished, or so we’re told, at least, but I somehow doubt the civilization had been that advanced. We only get to see a handful of small towns, one (one!) spare parts factory, a church, and the rest is, well, desert, copious amounts of flower fields (I swear, there are more flower fields than there are towns, but of course there are, everyone knows flowers are essential to robot well-being, right?), desert, lake, plains, sea, some more desert, caves, some gigantic microphone-shaped constructions of unknown origin and purpose protruding from the sand in the, oh, did I mention there’s deserts? No, there’s no roads or any infrastructure whatsoever, except maybe, uh, some pools or hot springs or whatever, which again, everybody know robots can’t live without, like flowers. Oh, and there’s a hidden experimental laboratory tucked away somewhere, too, but it’s the humans’, not the robots’.
Yes, there’s apparently humans, too, although you only ever see, like three of them over the course of the entire series and they’re all minor background characters. They have created robots, and the apparent root cause of all conflict in the series – Luna, an, uh, immortal frog-faced girl with twin blue ponytails that provided life eternal for man and robot alike, until Casshern came along and somehow managed to do her in despite her stated immunity to death, thereby attaining immortality himself and unleashing the mysterious plague called Ruin upon the world. What it does, as we’re told and shown, is that it makes robots rust and start to break down gradually, resulting in their eventual death and dissolution into dust. All tools are apparently subject to this too, for some reason. In episode two we’re told that replacing rusted parts doesn’t work, but it doesn’t preclude robots from still trying to do that in a bid to save their life. Just, y’know, not in a rational way of “mass-producing spare parts so we could change them as soon as they start showing signs of wear” (the only factory we see is in perfect working order, so it’s certainly not out of realm of possibilities). Instead, those who can, choose to hunt smaller and weaker robots to take them apart for their innards. As in, in one instance, a large, classic box-shaped giant robot with a flail or a morning star for an arm picks up a tiny robot identical to a human child in all respects, cackling triumphantly, and gleefully tells us he’s going to get so many good parts from this body still relatively untainted by Ruin. Are you fucking dumb, Robot-Man?! There’s no way ANY of her parts will fit you.
And that was a major source of my unending frustration with this anime – NOTHING adds up. The world is an entirely illogical mishmash of half-baked apocalypse-themed ideas no one ever bothered to think through. The details of it end up contradicting each other ultimately, and that’s where the details are given at all. I have mentioned above that humans are a part of the world in Casshern Sins, but nothing is ever explained about them, not their relationship with robots after they have created them (we only know that the robot king hated them, and that “bad” robot goons will kill them on sight, but the why of it is left out), not where they reside and what they are doing now, not how the Ruin affects them, if it at all does (seems to imply it does, fails to explain how), nor, most importantly, what the difference between the robots and people even is, despite this seemingly being a plot point.
Robots in Cassern Sins behave exactly like people would. They fall in love, the feel anger, joy, sadness, despair, they cry (one character remarks to the other with disdain “You’re crying?! Like a human?!” only to do that herself a few episodes later), they dream of becoming famous singers, they bleed, they can go for a swim, they sleep and rest, they breathe, they take pills, they have families, baby robots grow up into adult robots and grow old… About the only thing they haven’t explicitly shown them doing is eating, but neither do we get a sense of what energy source if not food keeps them functioning. No sockets or landlines, no batteries, no tanking stations, no solar panels… Why bother making most of the characters robots at all, if their being robots doesn’t add anything to the story? They could’ve just as well been humans that have attained near-eternal life through advanced medical technology (as the humans in Casshern Sins apparently have!) and not a single thing would have changed.
Because the world falls apart (literally, too, har-har), the motivation and the backstories of everyone involved crumble to dust right with it. Recurring characters are static and one-dimensional, and minor characters all blend together to form two blurry blobs: the bad guys that have to hurt others just because they happen to see them, cue our protagonist flying in to save the day and utterly destroying them in a bland fighting scene without any real stakes, and the, er, I suppose, good guys, that are trying to live to the fullest despite the world around them having gone to shit, or something. Just, the ways they do it are often absurd – there’s a guy who paints the whole town bluish white, even the tallest buildings somehow, despite him being in a wheelchair and needing help to go up a flight of stairs, a woman that tries to knock out a robot who’s just passing by and strikes her fancy with aroma candles to try and make him a part of a bell (don’t even ask), a girl who likes to beat others up and fight, but somehow she’s admirable unlike the bad guys because, I guess, she looks pretty and asks before she goes impaling robots on her sword? The only decent episodic character was the human from episode three, at least he brought some much-needed levity and exposition into the dreary mess Casshern Sins calls its plot. Just as well that he died very promptly.
The main character oozes angst like Ikari Shinji on steroids. From episode one it’s obvious that none of what’s happening is really his fault, but still he spends all of his screen time (and most of viewers’ time along with it)being emo about it. His preferred method of conversation is staring at people dumbly, moaning about his suffering and repeating the last few words his conversation partner said in a questioning tone. There’s also a robot dog, the only one we see in the series, whose relevance to the story is a mystery shrouded in an enigma, but it’s there in almost every episode anyway. Then there’s a girl who starts out hating Casshern’s guts and wanting to exact revenge on him, and then ends up falling in love with him out of the blue over the course of two bizarre episodes dedicated solely to the topic. No, they’re not about their interactions – their interactions are minimal at that point. It’s a peek inside her “inner world”, and boy is it weird as heck! You could say that this is the character with most development, but since all that development is shat into existence out of nothing, it doesn’t really count. Or maybe her falling in love with the protagonist was inevitable – because this could’ve just as well been a harem with how many women fawn over Casshern, cling to him and call him beautiful. Just because. Also, we have an annoying child, whose primary function is to a) laugh like an idiot, pluck flowers and marvel at how pretty things are so that we know how innocent and beautiful her heart is and b) run away and get lost. At one point, she also serves to get the gang’s hands on an important gimmick that turns out to be a MacGuffin, forgotten about in the very next episode and ultimately serving nothing. Oh, and there’s also her guardian and apparently, gasp, the creator of Casshern (which is never explored at all), whose sole purpose is to rant about how precious the robot girl in question is to him and drive a truck around to take her places. Places where she can stumble upon Casshern, so we can listen to how she repeats his name over and over and watch her gift him seashells or something. The antagonists are similarly one-note: Mr. “I-need-to-kick-Casshern’s-ass-with-my-two-feet-because-he-humuliated-me” and Ms. “Maleficent-who-wants-to-get-knocked-up”. I won’t even touch upon Braiking Boss and Luna, because that fail is of truly epic proportions.
Many here praise Casshern Sins for its visuals and sound. I won’t deny it, the crisp lines and stark, bright contrasting colors make this series easy on the eye, and the animation is fluid and dynamic. There is of course this weird fetish that the art director has with drops of water, flower fields and pieces of robots affected by Ruin chipping off and scattering into dust, and while it admittedly looks great, it’s repetitive to the point of obsession. It smack of an attempt to appear deep and meaningful through visual means without anything of substance backing it up. The black-and-white video footage insert in one episode is another example of that visual pretentiousness. Also, I, and this is due my personal taste, absolutely loathe the character design. It’s so overwhelmingly 70’s? 80’s? There’s very little variety in facial features – we have ugly classical “bucket of bolts” robots, humanoid-type robots with distinct half-oval eyes and single vertical line on their faces, and Casshern-style sleek and pretty robots indistinguishable from, say, humans. The only exceptions to the rule would be Ringo’s guardian Ohji, Braiking Boss and maybe that short dude from the church in episode two. Casshern, Dio and Leda’s design with their regenerating bodysuits and Gundam-esque horns made me giggle. Especially Casshern with the blatantly Superman-like “C” on his chest. Also, the trio seems to have a pair of weapons hanging from their hips purely for decoration as Leda is the only one to actually use them. Why do the rest bother with them again? And Luna… well, she just looks as if someone stuck a frog’s head in a blue wig and a bicycle helmet on a loli body.
As for the music, honestly, it made me laugh at the most inappropriate moments. Sometimes, the characters would talk, and then this incredible sappy melody would start blasting full-force, and instead of moving me to tears the scene would make me gag because of its blatant grab for my heartstrings. I’m familiar with Kaoru Wada’s work through anime like 3x3 Eyes and InuYasha, and the similarities between those OSTs and Casshern’s are striking to the point of the man plagiarizing his own work. I swear there was this one track that was a dead-on ripoff of his own Sango’s Theme for InuYasha. Where that sort of music worked for a simplistic and a bit naïve shonen anime, it fails to deliver in a postapocalyptic series with philosophical aspirations. It sounds pretty, sure, but it’s completely at odds with the world and the story it tries to convey. It doesn’t add to it, it detracts from it. The voice acting is unimpressive, particularly in the leads. I suppose that Casshern’s VA does an adequate job of conveying what a sad little boy the protagonist is, but he also manages to make him sound like he’s got a developmental disorder, and his “howls of pure agony”, groans and grunts sounded very unnatural. Lyuze’s VA made her character have all the emotional range of a toaster oven. Ringo sounded whiny, bratty and annoying, good job picturing a child, I guess? The rest were passable. I’d say Braiking Boss’ and Luna’s VAs hit the mark with their acting, but that didn’t save their characters from poor writing, unfortunately.
I’ve seen reviews claiming that all lore omissions, plotholes and worldbuilding problems are actually non-issues because this anime is not supposed to be a consistent, fleshed out sci-fi story, but more of a philosophical\psychological exploration of sorts, particularly of the issues pertaining to death and life in the face of immortality and unavoidable doom. I don’t know where people saw depth, or metaphors, or anything like that, because the series is about as subtle as Casshern’s fist in a random robot’s chest. Already in episode one (or was it episode two? they do blend together so) the main message of Casshern Sins is established – “there is no true life without death, precisely because of the prospect of perishing one must strive to live as full a life as possible”. Roll credits, I guess, because all that follows is a disjointed series of mind-numbingly repetitive vignettes that serve to illustrate this particular point with plots so similar they seem cloned. There’s also an overarching plotline that comes to the forefront in the latter half of the series, but it doesn’t bring any satisfying answers about the world or the characters, and the message stays exactly the same. I swear, this could’ve been one or two-episode OVA and it would’ve been sufficient to tell this story, if you wring it out to rid it of endless landscape shots, intense face close-ups, characters standing or walking in silence and meandering pointless dialogue that doesn’t shy away from repeating the exact same phrases several times in a row in the exact same wording.
Bottom line: Casshern Sins is a hollow, artificial, pretentious attempt at making a puddle look like an ocean. If you’re 13, like the idea of robots and have never happened to ponder your own mortality, give this a whirl, and maybe you’ll like it despite its agonizingly slow pacing. Also worth a try if you like to poke fun at logical fallacies, plotholes and poorly written dialogue. For the rest, it would be an exercise in frustration.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Mar 17, 2017
"Flower" is one of those mangas that have more educative than entertainment value. It's very straightforward: in the very beginning it promises to tell a story of romantic trials and tribulations of a girl forced to live out her days in a wheelchair as a result of an accident and the impact it has on her as a fun-loving active person just wanting to continue her normal life. What can I say, it certainly delivers all of that, and yet leaves somewhat of a lackluster impression.
It's a slice-of-life, coming-of-age story primarily driven by the main character's disability and the way she overcomes difficulties arising
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from it from her middle school days up to her adult life after university graduation. "Flower" is down-to-earth and realistic, I was very impressed with how meticulously the artist researched the reality of life as a wheelchair user in Japan. This is immediately the greatest achievement and the greatest stumbling block of this manga: the author dedicated so much time and effort into researching and elucidating this topic that the story and the characters feel a bit like vehicles for exploring it rather than being the focus and the driving force of "Flower". Romance is supposed to be a major part of this story but it is quite bland, predictable, and seems to be moving in endless circles going nowhere.
The two main characters are reasonably well fleshed-out, with a clear set of ambitions, motivations and a clearly defined personality, and yet if you take away the unique situations and interactions arising from the main character's disability, they fall neatly into cliché types we all have seen one too many times. The rest of the character cast is very sporadically and inconsistently used, appearing and disappearing without clear reasons, and most of them are just walking disposable plot devices appearing for a chapter or two to try and stir up some drama which gets very repetitive very soon. One notable exception would be Kitagawa, one of the recurring characters who's charismatic enough to warrant some chapters dedicated solely to his side-story.
The pacing is a bit erratic, the primary motivation of the story clearly being to show as many aspects of a young Japanese female wheelchair-user's love life as possible. There is only so much you can do with this idea, and it shows. The tankobon version of "Flower" includes some side-stories, not necessarily connected to the main one, that are essentially sweet romantic vignettes, and quite good in their own right. Toward the end of the main storyline, when it becomes apparent the artist was running out of ideas, the side-stories even become a welcome distraction.
The art very much falls into shojo genre conventions, nothing that stands out in particular - it's decent and that's all there is to say about it. All in all, I'd highly recommend it to anyone wanting to learn more about the struggles of day-to-day life of Japanese wheelchair users, and to anyone seeking a psychologically compelling, intricate love story or a turbulent plot with twists and turns, I'd advise to look elsewhere.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Jul 27, 2016
Summary: I watched it and hated it, but I suppose that being a 26-year-old introverted girl who has seen a lot of much better anime has a lot to do with my profound lack of enjoyment of Sugar Sugar Rune. I wish I could say I would recommend it to at least 8 to 12-year-old girls but honestly I can’t say I would: this will be a negative review. Anyone who’s interested in the show’s positive points, please look elsewhere.
So, Sugar Sugar Rune. I somehow missed the Sailor Moon craze when I was still a small kid so I actually don’t have a lot of
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background in mahou shoujo, which I attempted to remedy by picking up this show. The reviews were pretty good, promising a surprisingly nuanced, slightly dark twist upon the genre so often accused of being rife with overblown drama, too much saccharine and self-righteousness. I was instantly attracted by the series’ premise: two young witches who are childhood friends vying to become the next heiress to the Magical Kingdom’s throne. Both have their own sets of strengths and weaknesses, ultimately challenging and completing each other in the new and unfamiliar Human World. Will their friendship endure under the pressure to compete, especially when a mysterious bishounen is thrown into play?
The biggest disappointment for me will have to be the wasted character potential, translating into wasted plot potential. Ostensibly we have two main characters who balance each other out, and around whose interactions, trials and tribulations I expected the show to be built. First, we have Chocolat Meilleure, an extraverted, bright, spirited, feisty young girl. She is strong and fearless, and while she may be a bit stubborn, brash and strong-headed, she always means well and she’s not afraid to admit her mistakes. She is very open and spontaneous which helps her to make friends, and to those friends that she makes she is fiercely loyal. Her temper and foul mouth are considered to be good qualities in the witch society and a lot of show’s plot revolves around how that clashes with what’s considered good behavior among normal humans.
Her opponent-cum-best friend is Vanilla Mieux, a lovely, nurturing, gentle and kind girl. She’s introverted, shy, and scares easily, but she makes up for it by being very studious, hard-working and smart, and while her timid demeanor made her unpopular back in Magical World, she has the chance to blossom now that she’s in the Human Realm. Thus, the show had an excellent chance to show how two very different people can walk towards the same goal each in their own way, relying each on their own strengths of character, and still be friends, working together despite all that divides them. “Being friends with someone who isn’t like you isn’t only possible, it’s exciting and opens a lot of possibilities and manners of thinking before you if you’re open-minded and want to make it work”. “If you believe in yourself, work-hard and embrace what makes you unique, you can achieve anything you want”. I thought Sugar Sugar Rune would be about this, or at least something in a similar vein. Welp, forgive me for having high expectations.
The penultimate quest that drives the plot of this 51-episode series, the mystery of who’s going to ascend the Magical World’s throne proves to be solved in the very first episode. Just by watching the opening and looking at the mid-episode commercial break screens can you accurately say who’s going to be the next queen by the end of the show, roll credits, everybody can go home now. From the very beginning of the show it’s just “Chocolat!” over and over again. My question is: why bother with the pretense of having two main characters, if you’re not going to give the other one equal attention, screentime or development, or any meaningful role at all? Right off the bat you see Vanilla fulfilling just three functions, and those three won’t change at all during the course of the series: a) damsel in distress, b) Chocolat’s caretaker and cheerleader, c) a background off of which Chocolat’s character is constructed and supposed to shine that much brighter. That is to say, the show’s true heroine is Chocolate, and to rub it in we have Vanilla. They are supposed to be these childhood friends with an indestructible bond who complete each other and balance out each other’s flaws but all I have seen is codependence and Chocolat mooching off Vanilla’s goodwill and support.
I won’t lie: I have major issues with the brattish character of Chocolat, how they pit her against the gentle Vanilla and every step of the way tell us “Vanilla is okay, but Chocolate is the real star”. They aren’t subtle about it in the least, even their surnames speak volumes: while Vanilla’s means “better” in French, Chocolat’s of course, is the superlative “best”. It seems a bit like a misguided attempt at feminism in the deeply patriarchal Japanese society – choosing a strong and confident girl as the main character above the meek and domestic one is certainly far from traditional and I would applaud it if not for the fact that Chocolat doesn’t have much going for her besides being the not-your-run-of-the-mill magical girl character. She’s brave and strong, okay, I get that and I admire that, but she’s also ridiculously stupid, clueless, annoyingly rude and if not for the help of her friends she would’ve been dead or disqualified ten times over. She’s the focus of the story from day one, and while you would initially sympathize with her because she unwittingly antagonizes everyone in the Human World with her brashness, isn’t good with studies and has no parents or backing in contrast to the well-mannered and well-read Vanilla whose mother is the reigning queen and who enjoyed the life as a princess up until now, you quickly come to realize that Chocolat’s the over-privileged one here. Girls idolize her, boys adore her for being a great pal and occasionally swoon over her tsundere-ness, she has a loving family of aunt, uncle and grandfather, she is super-popular in the Magical World, she has two loyal knights who have been in love with her since back when they were kids (who worship the ground she walks upon and whom she strings along just like that), the mysterious bishounen is head over heels for her and everyone, including Vanilla’s mom queen Candy never shut up about how her courage and strength are exactly what they need in a future queen. Not to mention it turns out that she has some kind of super-special power to purify evil and her supposedly deceased mom is actually very much alive.
Vanilla, for her part, has been shunned for her meekness in the Magical World for as long as she remembers, never had any friends besides Chocolat, and while the Human Realm seems to be the place where she can finally be herself and be appreciated for that, it turns out that all the girls hate her guts, and while she seems to do well among the boys, no recurring character of any importance seems to care about her. She has two boys who are shown to be smitten with her, but they are so unimportant we never even get to know their names. She finally seems to get a chance towards more agency and character development near the end of the series with the short-lived Ogre Princess arc, where she decides to quit being on the sidelines and take Chocolat on, embracing her dark side, but even there she’s relegated to being mysterious bishounen Pierre’s second choice and the victim of his machinations. No one seems too worried about her when she crosses over to the dark side, no one makes any persistent attempts to get her to change her mind besides Chocolat. If anything, all the other characters either tell Chocolat she needs to focus on the becoming the queen instead of trying to get Vanilla back, or they want to help Chocolat, but just because they can’t bear to watch her being sad, not because they actually give a damn about Vanilla. She ends up being “rescued” by Chocolat from being the Ogre Princess which is very ironic because it was something that she chose for herself, for the first time in the series. The power of friendship prevails, so to speak, which again would be great if they actually showed us why or how the two girls became friends in the first place and what makes them so irreplaceable to each other, but all we get is “they are and have always been BFFs, just because”. Oh-kay.
Sugar Sugar Rune is profoundly underwhelming because it flirts with so many interesting themes and then dumps them. The Ogres are the apparent main antagonists, but wait… They aren’t actually that bad, they’re just misunderstood and wrongly oppressed so they have no choice but to fight back? Nah, well, it’s all true but they’re still evil, because damn, we need someone to be a baddie! The witches have hearts, the very essences of their being that they must under no circumstances give away lest they die on the spot? Oh, it turns out that the Ogres can implant black hearts of envy and hate into the witches which let them harness the humans’ negative emotions too, which they normally can’t do AND they get an extra spare heart! Cool, right? Well, turns out it isn’t because the black heart will fight with the witch’s original heart and cause her a great deal of pain. So, the black hearts that represent the negative emotions are supposed to hurt witches, but unless someone sticks the actual thing into their breasts, they can feel sadness, anxiety, jealousy et cetera just fine without any complications or pain. And can I just say one thing about the series’ main love story? When was it exactly that our brazen heroine started falling for the gallant Pierre? Well, kids, it all happened that day when *drum roll* he ate soup with carrots to impress her, and he HATES carrots. Is that super romantic or what?
With ridiculous, filler-laden plot, two-dimensional characters, lackluster animation and entirely forgettable music, Sugar Sugar Rune is just meh. It might have an interesting premise and a pleasing aesthetic, but with its only message being “you gotta be strong and brave, because if you are nothing else really matters and everyone will suddenly start loving you” it just doesn’t do it for me, as I don’t think it will for anyone with half a brain. It’s just frustrating to watch.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Jan 29, 2015
While indubitably a good one, this anime might not be just everyone's cup of tea. Speaking of cups of tea, Saraiya Goyou is very much like a good cup of tea on a winter's evening, when you're snuggled up in a chair with a warm blanket and a good book. It's a cup of green tea, gently warming your freezing palms, with delicate yet sweet taste and subtle fragrance.
While one may call it slow-paced, and there's not much action to be seen there, its beauty lies precisely in its slow, meditative storytelling. It's a genuine drama in its portrayal of people with unique circumstances,
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how their fates, pasts, motivations, hopes and fears cross, clash, grow together. It's a show about forgiveness and reconciliation, with the world and with yourself, a show about how everyone starts out with different dreams and goals but, in the end, is just searching for a place in this world that they can call their own, about how letting people in and loving people is so hard, how it doesn't happen smoothly or easily, but how when it does happen, it's what matters most. It's a show about how what one may perceive as one's grave fault may very well be one's merit. It's a great slice-of-life in a historical setting of late Edo period (for those who are studying Japanese, it gives a nice sample of Edo period dialects), showing the frailties of everyday life and how unimportant and mundane things are often the best in life. One of the greatest strenghts of Saraiya Goyou is that while this is a show featuring samurai, yakuza and geisha, kidnappings and (some) swordfighting, it successfully escapes the tropes that usually go with it all. It discards the bombastic, bathos-laden, overly dramatic, move-flashing, testosterone-flaring, tear-jerking, over-the-top moves for a softer storytelling which makes everything a lot more believable, relatable, and manages to deliver a lot of impact. To continue the drinks analogy I started, it might be like a cocktail in a way: deceptively light and sweet, but packing a punch when you cease to expect it.
The art style is... unusual, especially the character design with angular faces and weird rectangular eyes. The color palette is muted, with a lot of greys, browns, yellows and blacks, underscoring the overall subdued atmosphere of the show. Yet let that not scare you away: the backs are drawn beautifully, you get treated to realistic representations of Edo street life and architecture, and character design, if not always easy on the eye, grows on you over time and is a nice change of pace from the stereotypical huge-eyed brightly-colored too smooth almost-no-nose faces you see everywhere lately. It adds this nice, tingling touch of uniqueness to the show.
The sound is absolutely fantastic. I will no doubt buy the soundtrack for Saraiya Goyou given the oppotunity. The score is heavily influenced by traditional Japanese music, using many traditional instruments, but retains a modern feel to it. It is very atmosperic, brimming with emotion, and compliments the action perfectly. Not only the music is outstanding, but the VAs did a damn good job too, conveying the complicated characters and their emotions perfectly. Masanosuke is completely believable with his soft, low voice, and Yaichi shines with his contolled intonations.
The characters are the core and the driving force of this show, so, naturally, for the show to work, they have to be good, and they are indeed. It's a shame that the show contains only 12 episodes, because there is not enough time to provide a proper background and exposition for everyone, but it's getting to know the cast and seeing them interact, clash, soothe and change each other that is the most enjoyable. The tones of their voices, their clothing, the faces and poses they make, their silences and gazes even, there's a lot more to the characters than just what they say, and it looks way more real and interesting than endless dialogues or narration. It's a shame that not everyone gets to shine, but everyone gets a unique personality constructed with love and care.
If you like fast pacing and action, this is not something for you. But if you're looking for a deep story with a lot of character development, room for thought and emotion, this is definitely something for you. This story might make you reconsider your own life - for, really, how many small coincidences, meetings, word exchanges that seemingly mean nothing occur every day in your life? You might not know it yet, but it is those small meaningless things that make up our lives and that weave the threads that will someday show bright and strong on the tapestry of your life. What is later perceived as fate always begins small and insignificant. This show teaches one to treasure it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Jan 19, 2015
I just can't bring myself to like True Tears. Maybe it's because I haven't played the game it's based on, although I firmly believe that if you're making an anime out of a video game, you should make sure that it can properly stand on its own. I also clearly do not belong to the target audience of True Tears, not being an adolscent boy, although I do believe that if an anime is well-made, it will be able to capture hearts regardless of its genre. There are many people that have written what there is to like about this anime, so I will concentrate
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on what there isn't to like so that True Tears will have a fairer representation here.
First, a short section on what I liked: at least in the Blu-Ray version, the visuals are really nice. Aside from really clumsy and obvious CG-sequences, the art is easy on the eye and the character design is simple but well-done. Shinichiro's watercolor fantasy scenes are especially beautiful... and that's about it.
Now, for the things I disliked: the story is dreadful. Even 13 episodes seem like too much because thing are going way too slow. Rather than things going way too slow even, the story is just too disjointed and ridiculous. I'm guessing it's supposed to be a touching and inspiring story growing up and dynamics of young love in a school setting, but all you really get is endless moping from the two lead charaters. You can see the supposed "huge revelations" coming from miles and miles ahead through not-so-subtle hinting, but when they come, you end up feeling nothing because nothing is explained about them in the end. You just know they're coming, but when they do, you get no background, no reasoning, no explanatory flashbacks or story to it. They're just there. The plot is essentially a huge piece of Swiss cheese: decisions come flying out of nowhere, vital plot points suffer from lack of exposition, problems appear and get solved without any of the characters doing anything about them. You are essentially forced to sit through 13 episodes of watching the characters mope around, whine, be scared, do nothing, procrastinate, be indecisive, and when they finally decide on something, it's usually either something stupid or a bad decision. If the series were about how teenagers are stupid and helpless, I'd probably have given the show a better rating, because it does a great job of illustrating this particular point, but I get the feeling the authors aimed for something else. The sad thing is, essentially, nothing happens in the anime. It's 13 episodes of going in circles. Even all the relationships stay essentially the same, which is horrible for a romance anime. Even worse, though this is clearly supposed to be tear-jerker, nothing that happens makes any emotional impact whatsoever. Anything of emotional import that happens gets no exposition or backstory to back it up and gets forgotten as soon as it's done. It's just flat and lacks life.
If anything is worse than the story, it's the characters. I realize I'm watching a sappy shounen harem anime, so I shouldn't really be surprised, but enter the protagonist: Nakagami Shinichiro, your typical Japanese schoolboy, who's quite perverted, very indecisive, an overall wuss and has nothing going for him whatsoever besides his drawing skills, but of course all the girls will fall head over heels for him! He's spoiled rotten, lives in a huge mansion with his mother doting on him, he doesn't have any extracurricular activities, doesn't help out with his family business, which seems a very busy affair, by the way, and his teenage angst is through the roof. Steeping in this idiot's awkwardness is essetially what the anime is all about. It's just really pathetic to watch how the girls throw themselves at him, and all he can do is blush, fret and be down about it. How conceited can you get? The female lead, Yuasa Hiromi, is an unsympathetic passive-agressive controlling egoist with huge emotional issues, and a lot of unnecessary pride. We are supposed to feel sorry for her because of her family issues, but that gets dispensed with in a very quick and unsatisfying manner, and she has nothing going for her just as the male lead, besides her basketball then. Another female lead, Noe, is your typical quirky and clingy girl with troubled past, but she has an endearing freshness and naivety to her. She might have been the redeeming point of True Tears if, well, her storyline amounted to anything in the end. It ends in nothing, however. A pity. The third female lead, Ai, seems to have been inserted into the story just because she was there in the game. She serves no purpose in the anime, besides pointing up the mysterious appeal of the protagonist by pursuing him. However, even that pursuit ends up really half-hearted. Therefore, Ai has no real story to her or any impact on the unfolding of the plot, she even fails to stir up a potential conflict, so it really made me wonder why she was even there in the first place. Cutting her out would have made no difference, really. The rest of the cast is equally confusing and insignificant, especially the ever-pathetic "best friend" and evil mother that doesn't make any sense. I give True Tears 1 for the characters.
Overall, if you're anyone but a teenage angsty boy, I recommend that you skip this in favor of a worthier title. If you're a huge softie romantic teenage guy, this might be something for you.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Dec 10, 2014
Let me start off by saying that Golden Time is not a bad anime. It's a decent romcom and coming-of-age-and-finding-your-true-self story if nothing else. The thing with it is, it's not all what it could be. It has a lot of potential in it the authors failed to realize, and it constantly falls short of the expectations it sets itself for the viewer and therefore can be watching it is extremely frustrating at times, yet it definitely has its moments and a lot of good points. The reason I gave it a 5 is not because it's really mediocre; while it's definitely nothing too special
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either, the main reason is that for every great point of Golden Time there's a bad point too. Good and bad in this anime kind of cancel each other out, making it a 5 not in terms of medicority, but in terms of being very mixed.
If you like psychological anime dealing heavily with characters' psyche and emotional growth, this might be something for you. The controversial storyline revolves around the main character Tada Banri and his medical condition that I personally feel is rather used as a metaphor or a device to explore such topics as dwelling on the past and learning to let go of it, early adulthood and the associated problems of still being a child at mind and heart but having to grow up and conform to society's norms, carving out a place for yourself in this world, identity troubles, acceping life, the people around you and yourself for what it all is and many more quite profound questions. Mind you, it only touches upon these topics and does not discuss them at length, but at its best the show delivers on making the viewer consider some important questions, offer an interesting perspective on them through characters' words and actions and entertain with light-hearted slice-of-life sketches peppered with light humour and nostalgia that are quite heartwarming.
The worst thing about the show, in my opinion, is that it can't decide what it wants to be and ends up being nothing, or, rather, tries to be everything at once and ends up falling short on a lot of fronts and becomes a poorly sewn together patchwork of episodes further ruined by uneven pacing. There's tangible tension between the introspective character-study side of Golden Time trying to be serious and profound, and the romcom part of it. The authors have completely failed to properly combine these two parts of it, and one ends up competing with, and ultimately ruining the other. The mood constantly switches between quite heavy drama and light-hearted silliness, which makes it very difficult to make either of them believable and enjoyable. In the end, both parts look abrupt and forced, although at some fine moments you get honestly moved or can laugh with characters as they show their softer, dorky sides. The build-up to development of both sides suffers from lack of proper exposition and explanation and extreme abruptness, which makes both profoundly underwhelming, In a way, Golden Time is bipolar, violently swinging between its two extremes, with the end result of feeling sloppy and rushed.
24 episodes seem to be too much. In some episodes, the strain to fill out the 20 minutes is evident through unnecessary exposition about irrelevant stuff that could easily be left out in favor of developing the characters and their relationships, for ultimately this kind of anime stands or falls depending on whether this is done properly. In Golden Time, sometimes it is, but most of the times there's either too much or too little of something. The dialogues often feel bland and underwhelming. For a show that deals a lot with the theme of past, the flashbacks feel forced, too short and lacking the proper exposition to understand the characters' motivation and personalities.
The primary genre of Golden Time being romantic comedy, it disappoints quite a lot. Romantic comedies are meant to explore a budding romance in a thrilling way, often using love triangles as a device to ramp up the tension and excitement. While I do appreciate that authors discarded the overused "will they or won't they" cliche that plagues the genre by the making the main characters a couple less than one third into the story, they did so at the expense of a thorough build-up towards the relationship which ends up barely believable. The love story of the main characters will not make your heart beat faster, and the love life of the support cast is even less developed and is only outlined very generally, appearing only when the author seems to have some spare time from exploring the main couple's relationship, making the timing, pacing and spread of the support cast terrible. The worst thing is, is that authours end up relying on the "love triangle" device at the heart of the series to spice it up, however, it has got to be the most pathetically botched attempt at using it in the history of anime romcoms. That is, the OP erases all and any doubts one could have about how the love triangle will be resolved: as OP is annoyingly centered on the female main character and the only other character to appear there is the male lead, and they do nothing but express their love for each other in the opening animation, well... I mean, they could have thrown other characters in there too just to make it less obvious. If the main couple stubbornly appears acting all lovey-dovey every time in the beginning, there can be no tension whatsoever regarding the love triangle. It just spoils it big time and all attempts at creating suspense about who ends up with whom just seem really pathetic after this.
To me personally, the characters were both what made Golden Time very enjoyable and very annoying to watch. At times, they are incredibly sincere and very human, and their antics set against the backdrop of uneventful everyday university life make them very lovable and relatable. Through the main plot device, the main character's medical condition, this title goes to show just how precious even the most ordinary and unremarkable everyday life can be. No one in the show is perfect, no one has superpowers, but they all have their quirks and care for each other in their own special ways, and the beauty of Golden Time is that through this it expresses the happiness that can be found in small things very believably. For this, and for all the funny moments where authors let the characters' personalities shine and interact in hilarious ways, I loved this anime. However, I really hate it when this happens, but sometimes some characters are just not my cup of tea and it just ruins it for me. This was the case here. Again, from the very beginning, i.e. since I first saw the OP and the poster, I knew it was all going to revolve around the female lead, who is going to take up most of the time. That is indeed the case, and I just can't bring myself to like her. The writers obviously did their best to develop her character, but all their best efforts couldn't save her for me. At best, there are times when she's less annoying than usual, and it's cute when she's upset about doing something wrong, because you do realize she's not a bad person and that she cares and feels too and is by no means a cardboard cliche character, but... They tried to porrtray her as a very lonely character who needs love and understanding and people who can see past her very bitchy and arrogant exterior and reach out for her, they made hints that she may have some problems at home, but they never actually explore it. I never saw why she should feel lonely and never understood why the writers decided she deserves any sympathy. From the story, it is very obvious that she is the root of her own problems, and she never learns from her mistakes. She is clingy, annoying, downright parasitic and pretty much good-for-nothing dumb bimbo\spoiled princess. She is supposed to also be very caring and loving, but the way she expresses her love is always cringeworthy: she just smothers the one she loves and as a viewer you are supposed to somehow admire and praise her for being overbearing. Sorry guys, I just don't buy it. I don't see any reason why it all should revolve around her. The rest of the cast I loved, the main character is finely analyzed and well fleshed-out, his battle with his insecurities believable and touching. Linda, Yana-san, 2D-kun, Nana-sempai - everyone from the supporting cast was fresh, cute, very human, but really underused. I am convinced that too much screen time was wasted on the female lead that had nothing interesting to say. She was good as a comic relief, but the rest of the gang had more to offer.
The final episode was a disaster. You can see the end coming from a hundred miles away and it's the most disappointing cliched let-down you could imagine. It is supposed to tie up all lose ends and provide a happy ending for evertone, but it is just unnatural and feels very forced and just wrong. I might have given Golden Time a higher rating if the last episode, especially the later half of it didn't exist. It is boring, all kinds of stupid and does not serve to bring home the point of the anime at all.
All in all, it is a nice anime that has a lot of undeveloped potential. People who like tsundere characters, slice-of-life genre, coming-of-age stories and are nostalgic about college life will probably enjoy it immensely. It gives food for thought. However, the many shortcomings will also probably frustrate you, so beware!
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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