You know, I said in my Umineko post that I’d be blogging Bakemonogatari… but its second episode was so underwhelming that I’ve nearly lost interest… I mean, the awesome OP was gone and instead we have a random J-Pop song about staplers, the entire first half of that episode was filled with pointless fanservice and the eventual conclusion was just… shallow. Once you remove all of the fancy filters and confusion that the first episode threw at us, you remain with a story that lacks depth and characters that are just the average stereotypes. Hitagi’s story was so easily solved that they needed to waste the entire first half with Hitagi getting dressed and embarrassing that lead character. I’m not sure whether I want to cover this series every week. I’m still going to watch it, and it still can become very enjoyable, but at the moment it just feels like an inferior version of Shikabane Hime, and I’m just going to casually enjoy it instead of having to blog about it every week.
For now I’m just going to continue with a story that I’m much more certain of that it will turn out awesome: Aoi Hana. It’s really been ages since I’ve seen a good yuri-series. Its only flaw at the moment is its so called “everyone is lesbian” syndrome, but that’s just a first impression I got from it, and there are plenty of episodes to fix this one. What really stands out in this episode is the colourful characters. There are lots of emotions and creative yet realistic situations that can really get the best out of the characters, and take a look at that director: Kenichi Kasai, the director of the first seasons of Nodame Cantabile and Honey and Clover (yeah, yeah: some day I will watch that one). Sure, he also did Major and Kimikiss, but with the supposedly excellent source material, I see little that he can do wrong.
What I’m expecting of Aoi Hana is that it’s going to continue being such an excellent character-study, on top of the shoujo ai. The characters all feel like they’re living their own life, and they’re already incredibly colourful. The Noise time-slot has a limited amount of episodes, and this show will probably like Ristorante Paradiso only last for eleven episodes, and in that time-span it’s going to have to be able to pull off some believable character-development and make at least Fumi and Akira a couple of well-rounded characters.
This episode was mostly about the new clubs that the two of them joined: Akira went for the drama club (it would be nice if we could see her perform in the end. Stage performances in anime have always rocked), while Fumi whimsically entered the basketball club because its captain impressed her. Her running away from her past relationship with Chizu has been influencing her nearly non-stop, from trying to stay around other strong people, to simply hiding from Chizu herself as much as possible.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Subtle and charming episode. Aoi Hana definitely is among the top shows of the Summer Season.