devvyn

I just finished watching volume 2 of Koi Kaze, and...wow. This is exactly what I look for in an anime. No explosions, no supervillians; characters that drive the story and develop slowly and realistically. No gimmicks, just heart. It's so emotional and interesting. Ah, I can't stop gushing about it. Anyway, what's it about?

The story starts out by introducing a man in his 20s, living at home with his father. One day he runs into a junior high school girl for the second time that week. One who seems innocently interested in killing some time at the fair with him as a kind stranger (who left a train to return a dropped wallet to her earlier). He finds himself in a "date"-like situation with her, and even breaks down and confides in her about his most recent failed relationship. He feels kind of weird and embarrassed to be seen with a young girl like that, so he shurgs it off, knowing it was just a random encounter and he'll never see her again.

This man had a sister who went to live with his mother when his parents divorced, and at the time, he was 12 and she was just a baby. Now, his father tells him that his sister, who he's lived apart from almost his whole life, is moving in to be closer to her new school. To his shock and dismay, the girl he is supposed to meet as his grown-up sister for the first time is actually the girl he shamefully spent an afternoon with at the fair. Forced to set that aside, she moves in, and he attempts to distance himself from the awkward feelings that he can't go back on. He tries to do this by being rude and mean to her, but she sees remembers his sweet side and keeps trying to get along with him for the sake of being family.

She's never had a boyfriend before, and never had a male in her life in any close capacity, so she interprets her desire to spend time with him as a longing to have the big brother she was always without. When they met that day, they met as strangers, but now they have to come to terms with the current situation. Is she just too naive to understand the full scope of her feelings? Is he able to hide his from her, or will the guilt eventually cause an outburst that gives it away? How would they cope if it came out that they might have feelings for each other they're too embarrassed to admit?

I tell you, this has got to be one of the best stories I've seen in a while. A big development just happened in the last episode on this disc, and I'm going to go crazy if I don't get the rest of the series! Anyway, I highly recommend this anime for fans of the romance and character-based genres. (There's a recurrent bit of comedy in there, too, but it's much more as a cathartic device than it is a mood for the show in general.) If you like a little bit of a thought-provoking twist to the typical romance, put this on your must-watch list!

I used to claim to be all into animé, and I fear at one time I was mostly just following the popular emerging trend amongst those of my age at the time, and this was largely due to the spawning of the Pokémon phenomenon on Canadian television. I devoured hours of animation without discrimination in terms of quality in either visual style or strength of meaning. This tendency died out when I tired of movies and series populated with gratuitous explosions and sexually enhanced visuals.

Flash-forward to last week, when I finished watching a series that had piqued my interest some two years back. Called Haibane Renmei, it's one of those quietly portrayed, slow-moving animé with a story entirely motivated by character development and exposition. In fact, the final episode is centred around the exposition of a character whose importance is so closely tied with that of the main character that the end effect is stunning, and prompts to mind such thoughts as "whoever wrote this story is brilliant."

The Haibane story centres around the arrival of a new young woman to a town surrounded by tall walls, where humans live in peaceful coexistence with a race of angel-like creatures who arrive in a state of amnesia, and eventually depart the world in a manner veiled in mysticism and myth. The new arrival struggles to understand her place in this world while at the same time desiring to repay the person who first cared for her upon her appearance in the town. Maybe it sounds as dry as a high-school literature assignment when I explain it this way, but suffice it to say it was nonetheless quite immersing about three-fifths of the way in.

The same concept artist also came up with Serial Experiments Lain, which is another animé I watched a bit of a long time ago and never had sparked the kind of mature interest I now feel for it. Like Haibane Renmei, this series exposes itself in layers as the series progresses. As yet I have only watched volume one, so I cannot say much about the series as a whole except that I already have fairly high expectations for the story development and depth of character. It already displays signs of poetry which I greatly appreciate in an immersing story. It shares something of the same degree of philosophical and metaphysical undertones with Haibane Renmei as well.

Lain explores the boundaries between belief and reality, focusing on the experiences of a young girl who gains a sudden interest in the world of cyber-culture after receiving an email from a so-called deceased classmate.

Midori Days is a far more light-hearted though no less enjoyable work than the above two mentioned animations. I hate to sound corny, but the characters are very heart-warming. Full of a romantic yearning quality, Midori Days offers a bizarre twist very early in the premise of the series to make even those with only a casual interest in animated storytelling intrigued enough to sit down and get involved in the story up until the end. My room-mates, whose attention spans are no better than my own, sat down and watched episode after episode once they'd seen the two main characters' relationship: the male, who has long dreamt of having a girlfriend, now has in place of his right hand a girl in miniature form who secretly fell in love with him from a distance before this all happened. He struggles to maintain normality while she seems oddly content with the situation, and together they eventually gain a deeper empathy for each other and a more comprehensive understanding of themselves. Highly recommended.

Well, I knew sooner or later I'd write an anime review; I just needed to watch one worth writing about, let alone three.