This! This is everything that rocks about Noitamina: a focus on adults, a great director who is able to show off his skills, terrific production-values, excellent acting and a focus on a much different target audience than usual. Plus, an amazing cast of characters and a delivery full of emotion.
Seriously, this series blows away all other anime this season, this second episode only continues this even more; yes, this episode was even better than last week’s installment. The acting still is completely amazing, for all three main characters. I like how we’re also given an in-depth look into the mind of the main female character, because this episode showed really well how she dealt with the loss of her husband.
With this episode, the creators also showed how well they are able to use the main gimmick of this series. Over the top facial expressions are often used as fourth wall jokes (nobody seems particularly bothered by them. Here though, they were used in a different way: in order to make the male lead feel uncomfortable. It just adds wonderfully to the fantastic chemistry in this show. Seriously, these characters make the cast of Sakamichi no Apollon look like simple romantic cliches.
My only gripe: the sudden forced sickness; either build this up or just allow the characters to play out naturally.
Rating: *** (Awesome)