Category: Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo

And suddenly, the ED makes sense.

This episode really impressed me. Nyaboron at the start was quite the interesting animation project, and I like how the creators showed the whole thing. You could really see traces of everyone (including some of Shiina’s voices because there was no other good sound person available). Most interesting was how Jin screwed up the script with the word “love”, although that did lead to quite a memorable and for me quite confrontational scene.

In real life I’m struggling with my own shyness, so when Shiina started yelling it really hit home to me. Not to mention all of the confessions that followed after that. Just about every couple moved forward here in a really charming way. Two relationships seem to be put on a bus at the same time though (Rita went back to America and the guy who had a crush on Nanami got rejected), but I’d really like to see if the creators did more with them in the second half. These people were actually quite good in making this show move away from its harem format: turning this show into a show about multiple couples, which is much more interesting than watching a bunch of girls like one guy of who it’s entirely obvious who he likes and will end up with. Just… don’t bring back the sister.

Also, a few years ago I remember getting really annoying about all of the misunderstandings that romance anime kept pulling in order to create artificial drama. Thankfully the romances of the past years have moved away from this trend. This episode had one big misunderstanding, but it was resolved in this episode, fit the characters and actually was just a troll move from Rita that lead to quite a good confession
Rating: 5,5/8 (Excellent)

School festival arcs. Inherently boring, so series really need to add something to make it work. This series does that by just doing what it always does and making the school festival not the central focus. Instead, this was again about working hard to make something good, and very sharp dialogue and lots of addictive character chemistry.

I noticed that the bad school festival episodes just put too much emphasis on the school festival: just doing boring stuff like having a haunted house or a cafe, and having characters walk around without much passion. And really: having a school festival in real life sounds really fun, but only a few anime really manage to capture it. Sakurasou didn’t exactly capture it, but ir rather avoided it. Misaki’s bit with her sister was very surprising and a great way to develop her, but it had absolutely nothing to do with the school festival. Same for Mashiro’s subplot about returning to England.

There is one thing that I’m a bit bothered with: the way this show looks at Shiina. It’s a bit subtle, but sometimes the focus is a bit too much on her as a “pet”, rather than as an actual character. In this episode there was this focus about him not letting Shiina go back, as if she was his property. Only at the cliff-hanger the focus returned to what Shiina really wanted. It’s a missed opportunity.

Also, small detail: I like how Shiina’s painting on the wall stays there. Yay for continuity.
Rating: 4.5/8 (Good)

And here Sakurasou comes with a pretty interesting climax here. I had this same sharpness that this show is known for, but was much more dramatic than usual. For the first time it really cut through the soft stuff and really started focusing on one of the characters, Rita.

At first her story was what you’d expect: she hates Shiina because of how talented she is, although then that hikkikomori came in and made things pretty interesting. Again, the sharpness of his words and how he saw right through her: in the way that she forgot about her original goals. That the biggest reason for her wanting Shiina to go back, was that she could feel a bit famous herself.

Although the thing with this talent is that there are probably a lot of artists who’d love to work together with someone as talented as Shiina. Her talent is something that can give so much inspiration when used well, and it can only make yourself better. It only gets bad when people want to stand in the spotlights, which is something that just won’t work.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

I’m thankful that in general, the trend of giving anime characters hair colours that match the rainbow has been reduced to a minority, rather than a majority. Having said that though, there is still a trend that refuses to die: if there’s an english character, then that character has to have yellow hair. It works a bit bizarre in this series when Shiina’s hair already is blond, so he character in question had to be even brighter in order to stay true to this, to the point where it just gets ridiculous.

What also bothered me about this episode was the repetition. This is the umpth girl that keeps clinging to Sorata, and it’s getting a bit much. The balance is starting to get a bit lost. On the other hand I liked thta the creators are hinting at an actual other potential relationship for Aoyama. Please develop this well so that we can also can get rid of that annoying love triangle.

And yeah, I did get the point that this episode wanted to make about how Mashiro’s art, and that message definitely delivered, and made this episode worth watching. It’s a big theme of this series: how ridiculous amounts of talent can be overwhelming, and this episode yet again asks the question of what to do with it. At this point it’s clear that Shiina is doing what she likes, but in the end those are just romantic comedy manga…

Wait a minute, is this show also trying to bite the hand that feeds it?
Rating: 4.5/8 (Good)

And as if nothing happened, this show returns back to its usual level of good writing and character chemistry. This episode thankfully reminded me again why this show is so special for its kind: the characters and their chemistry just are incredibly addictive. Where the fanservice in the previous episode was terrible, here it was back to being good again. It wasn’t there for the sake of “hey, let’s show panties!”, but instead they were all about creating tension between the characters. Without it, this episode would have been completely different and actually less entertaining. That’s my definition of good fanservice, and I rarely see a series that uses it as well as Sakurasou.

The previous episode did create a bunch of really big problems though, which really need to be fixed. First of all, the sister in this episode did not return, however she will come back. Being such an inherently wrong character in every single way, the writers really need to do something if they want to be able to make something out of her character. Also, Nanami. Her character still revolves around Sorata. Granted though, she at least started to redeem herself with the help of Sorata and Shiina with how her crush developed over this episode.

Meanwhile, Sorata’s feelings through this episode were wonderful, being rejected for something he worked really hard on. And it’s also interesting how the creators found a way to keep the angst from getting too out of control with their anti-climaxes. There also was a lot of play on symbolism (you should start running forward… if you don’t want that guy to catch you!).

Also, there is one thing I’m wondering: why are so many series centered around school? Don’t get me wrong, Sakurasou avoids this wonderfully: the characters go to school, but instead of that we see the interesting parts of their lives. But what I mean is that since these series are supposedly aimed at teenagers, why pick school as the setting so often? Don’t most teenagers that age hate school?
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

Aagh! Not the sister!

This episode made this show cost a lot of points. Mari Okada, you should know better than this. Even if this was exactly like the original source material, this episode had such major problems that they should have been fixed by the script review. I think everyone here is to blame for not noticing it, but even then: someone had to have come up with this.

First of all, the sister was an exact carbon copy of all the other token sisters you see everywhere. That was by far the worst offense this episode made. It didn’t start well when she started by randomly showing her panties, but the rest of the episode did not make this better by making her only defining character trait “I like my brother”. This was just plain bad.

Another problem was that she also dragged the entire show along with her. Previously I said that the fanservice in this show adds to the characters: remove it and the show would be less good. The fanservice in this episode however, was just plain random and pointless. The sister just randomly shows her underwear, the bath randomly breaks down so that we can go to a bath to see the girls grope each other… it’s all incredibly shallow that you’d expect from a third rate hentai game adaptation, not this show that prided itself with quality writing and character development.

On top of that, there was Nanami. Previously she was a character who also had her agenda. In this episode her entire character also got reduced to “I like Sorata”. Again: Mari Okada, you should know better than this.

The sole salvation for this episode was the direction: it knew it had something completely awful to work with, and at least tried to make the best of it. The visual images were great to watch, the use of life action worked great and the camera angles and timing actually made me laugh. Sorata’s straight man act also saved this episode from a complete disaster, and Misaki getting her drivers’ license also was a nice touch. I expect much better next week though. But what do you mean that the sister is going to be a recurring character!?
Rating: 3/8 (Mediocre)

Now this was a very emotional episode, especially for Nanami. From the previous episode it would become clear that at some point it would be too much for her, and this episode immediately goes with it. Unlike Sorata who sits behind his pc all the time, she has a part time job, she has to put a lot of energy in getting her voice right. She’s overworked herself pretty badly, but what really impressed me in this episode was that despite collapsing, she still tried to go to her audition. Of course it was a complete mess and she failed horribly, but it was a worthy experience for her.

So from now on it seems like they’re going to split Mashiro duty, which seems to be the wisest choice. To split the load and stuff. The chemistry between the characters by the way still was great in this episode. Mashiro in particular was as sharp as usual again. She makes the most hard-hitting lines right from out of nowhere.

Meanwhile, the creators are doing a very good job in building up the subplot between Misaki and Jin, and it really works from both sides: I really felt Misaki’s loneliness there, but on the other hand Jin is a great character to watch as well. We still don’t quite know why he is purposefully trying to stay away from her, but this episode took it even further by showing that within a year he’ll be gone.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

The one charcter I always found a bit questionable in this series was Nanami Aoyama: the classmate. Why would the creators want to bother adding a harem element with this series when the relationship between Shiina and Sorata already is interesting enough? With this episode she took an interesting new twist.

So it was obvious that she would move in at some point. I did not expect her to actually take over Shiina duty for at least a while though. It’s a nice touch to finally have a normal girl in Sakurasou to balance out the aliens that are Shiina and Misaki, and the creators make great use of it. This episode was actually quite hilarious whenever Shiina started trolling the couple of Nanami and Sorata.

Also, this episode was about deadlines: everyone in Sakurasou is pretty much incredibly busy with their work, and this episode was full of all-nighters. It’s actually quite inspiring to see everyone work so hard at what they want to do, while also balancing out the chaos that happens in Sakurasou.
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

What also fascinates me about this series: it’s two cours long, and already really engaging. This isn’t like Sankarea or Nazo no Kanojo X that just go on for one season. It’s got me intrigued, because it’s been quite a while since we’ve seen such a long romance series that made good use of its time.

This episode was quite sappy, but I liked it a lot. The point of this episode was pretty much to get Sorata to stay at Sakurasou, but the way in which they made him realize this was something I really liked. There were a lot of subtle and not so subtle hints thrown at him, and I really like how Shiina turned into his inspiration to pursuit game development.

Jin meanwhile is quite a bit unpleasant to watch at times, not necessarily in a bad way though. It’s not just his utter refusal to date Misaki despite his obvious feelings for her, but also how he stops Misaki from running after Sorata… only to go after him himself. As if he doesn’t trust her with anything.

EDIT: Holy crap, I just realized that Rintaro, my favorite movie director along with Satoshi Kon, directed the ED for this series. The ED indeed is quite stylish.
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

Sorry for the lateness. A combination of me having many real life appointments and my computer catching a virus lead me to create quite a backlog. Still, now that I’ve managed to finally see this episode, I can again get really surprised at how GOOD this show actually is. At this point this show can pretty much become the best shounen romance in a long while.

So many cliches died today. Sorata definitively stepped away from the other male leads in this episode. Before, he was like them in that he had nothing that set himself apart: everyone else in Sakurasou had something to do, but he had no hobbies. In this episode, he actually realized that, and became fully aware of it. That is so much better than your average shounen lead who is kept bland on purpose and doesn’t even seem to realize it.

Misaki meanwhile. Holy crap, her role here was really good. I really feared that she would be the typical ditzy girl you see everywhere. Well, those ideas ended with this episode as well; she really managed to show her feelings for Jin. Who by the way had the best dialogue of the episode. The guy is subtle: he was obviously pissed in the first half of the episode, yet he hid it in a really good way. It’s still a mystery why he doesn’t just go after Misaki though. My guess is that his pride is in the way, but they just know each other for too long fot htat to be true.

Also, Shiina. I mean, she started out as the typical girl who needs to be taken care of by the male lead. It’s a typical wish fulfillment trope, and yet in this episode she became so much more. She’s just so focused on drawing manga that she doesn’t care about anything else (or so it might seem), but she’s really sharp in her dialogue and she really knows what she wants.

I’m really glad to have decided to blog this series, because there is so much interesting stuff going on. I also don’t mind the fanservice at this point. It’s blatant yes, but it’s part of the characters, instead of just there for the sake of having fanservice. That’s also why I minded that one panty-shot of Little Busters so much: that just had a girl tripped up in an incredibly weird position that made no sense, just for that shot). It also is there to create this wonderful tension between the characters: without it the chemistry between the characters actually wouldn’t be as good as what it is now. That’s what I call good fanservice.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)