Okay, my entries on Inu X Boku have now been turned into a Winter 2012 Kaleidoscope. That means that I’m pretty much going to blog either this, Inu X Boku, Black Rock Shooter, and Smile Precure, depending on what interests me the most. This week’s episode of Ano Natsu raised the bar a lot for the bunch, though.
The reason I’m not just going to blog this fully is because of the annoying romance cliches. I can fully understand it if this series decided to take it slow for its first half and let the cast play out. It dropped enough hints that it knows what it’s doing. However, I’ve gotten really annoyed with the romantic misunderstandings, not to mention how the male lead was very annoying to watch.
This time though, things just worked.There were some lesser parts. I’ve gotten a bit tired of school film projects in anime that just have to mirror the plot exactly. That’s all way too obvious, and I’m still not sure why nobody finds it strange that Ichika has this weird pet mascot thing that keeps following her around. At the moment, this feels like Birdy the Mighty Light, without the action, variety or intrigue. Yes, Senkawa was actually more annoying than Kaitou at the beginning, but he had 26 episodes and he used that to develop really well. This show doesn’t have that luxury.
And so there came this episode, where it finally really moves away from theusual cliches. In particular the second half of this episode was great, when Kaitou started filming Ichika for natural scenes of her. It’s there where he set himself apart from his cliche. Tetsurou made it even better afterwards, when this show seemed to go down the road of being yet another “just confess already!”-series, to actually telling Kaitou about the love triangle he’s in. That was great.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
“Kanna is in love with you.”
WHAT THE FFFFFFFFUUU- did he just say? Loved that part too.
Some people think that Mio might like Kanna |: i was hoping that she was interested in Tetsurou.
I suppose you’re not gonna do the style of kaleidoscopes you did in summer 2011, Psgels?
This is what made please teacher and please twins stand out from crowd. Unlike a million harems and go nowhere shoujo romances these series got results. From the looks of it I say the writer isn’t planning to change his ways and go for a harem ending. And thank god for that.
It seems to me that Remon clearly knows about Ichika visitor status, hence her rather unsubtle movie script. The show seems to be set in the same universe as ‘Please Teacher’ and may even be set in the same town (some fans have commented on the town shots being very similar), although I’m not sure if it’s before or after the events of Please Teacher as that’s set after a mission to Mars took place.
Anyway .. it may well be that Remon is an alien observer.
That’s interesting that you compared this to Birdy- I should have thought of that.
The one thing that I hope this show covers but almost certainly won’t is the difference between being attracted to someone and love.
Kaito and Ichika are clearly attracted to each other but they know almost nothing about each other so to call that love is cheeping love (‘Love at first sight’ IMHO is bollocks). I would consider what Kanna feels towards Kaito is love, after she knows all about him and his faults and still feels that way.
Anime for some reason has a bad habit of treating them as the same thing.
Finally, a blogger who isn’t gushing with praise over this overly average series. I mean, it’s not horrible, but it’s not good either. In my opinion, compared to Ano Hana and Toradora the cast of Ano Natsu pale in comparison.
AnoHana is so far, pretty average, and if it doesn’t regurgitate its triangle/unrequited love, and actually makes decent progress plot-wise, it can graduate to a solid/good rating.
I liked this episode for it’s artwork, there are just some really nice shots, esp of the rain and the bus stop scene
I’ve warmed to kanna a bit somehow, at first she annoyed me, but her character became less one dimensional, like she’s genuinely fighting the jealous side of her that.
great that tetsurou told him the truth, at least it wont be some long dragged out thing .. i hope.
i genuinely want to know what happens next.
I want to believe this series has potential, so far I’ve given shows like AnoHana, Toradora, Birdy Decode and have been pleasantly surprised.
But I do wish AnoNatsu could get over its cliches and having the whole story premise built entirely upon the main heroine being in two-minds about the main character, right from the get-go with no build-up, no explanation – literally zero story. If the main character has personality and acts convincingly, I could understand but unfortunately that hasn’t been the case.
Not sure what it’s going to do (to redeem itself) but I’ll sit through it. I have been surprised before, hopefully fingers crossed things will turn for the better for AnoNatsu.
Not the best of the season, but after this episode it grew a bit on me. I’m just scared because next episode will be the dreaded beach episode O_O