This was my biggest surprise of the past autumn season. It’s just one of those shows that from the outside looks like nothing special: we have this girl who is in love with another girl but that other girl is oblivious to this, hijinks ensue, blah blah blah. It’s been done many times before. But what a good attempt it turned out to be!
The biggest reason for this is the truly excellent cast of characters. Sumi is a wonderful character to watch; she’s fun, exciting, compassionate and her personal issues of always being seen as the strong dependable friend on their own are alone to make the entire series worthwile. She has her quirks, but she’s not over the top or one-sided.
Apart from that, this really is a great slice of life series. It always has fun situations to put its characters in, and even when it goes the predictable way of the beach episode, it still manages to make something creative out of it. This series is so down to earth and yet enjoyable. The drama knows that it shouldn’t drag on forever, and yet it’s built up well.
I really didn’t think it was possible, but Sasameki Koto managed to set itself apart in the lesbian genre with a genuine, fun and very enjoyable series that’s easy to digest, yet very charming. It’s one of those series in which hardly anything went wrong: the pacing, characters, story. It all seems to fit. Well, okay. If I had to mention a flaw, then it’s that at times it looks a bit too much like a harem. But the love triangles all serve their purpose, and do a great job to not get in the way of the other subplots.
| Storytelling: | 9/10 – Down to earth and charming. |
| Characters: | 9/10 – Sumi rocks, and the rest of the cast is great too. |
| Production-Values: | 8/10 – Pretty nice, though nothing special. |
| Setting: | 8/10 – Decent, though not the main focus at all. |
While I mostly agree with your review, I was wondering what you meant by “lesbian genre” in the context of your review. As far as I’m aware, lesbian relationships are a central theme in only 5 other animes(Strawberry Panic, Aoi Hana, Simoun, Kashimashi?, Maria-Sama?) with Aoi Hana and Sasameki Koto making up 1/3 of this “genre”. Knowing that they both aired this year, I’m not sure Sasameki Koto has many shows that it can set itself apart from in the lesbian genre. I’m not very knowledgeable in the genre though, so maybe I’m wrong on something here.
Looking back at the shows I just mentionned, I don’t think each has much in common with the others apart from having lesbian themes.
Don’t forget that there also are Blue Drop, Candy Boy, Kanamemo, Ice, Kannadzuki no Miko, and I pretty much said that because Sasameki Koto looked to be the most average and generic of all of them.
But now that you mention it… there are far less lesbian shows than I imagined, yeah. I agree with that.
Hmm might drop Kimi ni Todoke and try this out instead…
There really is not much anime with yuri in it.
But I agree with psgels. While there’s not much to compare Sasameki Koto with, the show is enjoyable. That’s what’s truly important (at least to me).
“Noir”,”Madlax”,”El Cazador”,”Oniisama ee”,”Versailles no bara” (to some extent),”Yami to boushi to hon no tabihito”, even “Mai Hime/Otome” is often considered as such, “Develman Lady”,”Ice”, “Venus Versus Virus”, “Kiddy Grade”,”Uta-Kata”,”Kannazuki no Miko” ( even if I haven’t seen it yet), “Utena” and many others, it will take a long while to list them all, but there are others, some of them don’t present it at the heart of the topic though, like “Ga-Rei Zero” and ” Loveless” ( or some episodes of Sailor Moon), but there’s a whole lot of shoujo-ai/yuri series, so yes it has become a genre setting itself apart from the others.