Let me say up front that I am not fond with either romance or melodrama. We usually mistaken romance for love but whenever I think about love I’d think of commitment. Melodrama don’t do well to me either as I always feel forced, like most of the time when the show goes big, emotional scenes, it often implies us what to feel and I feel manipulated instead. Orange, unfortunately go straight to these directions which naturally would put me away for good, but there’s something that keeps me hanging here, and that is the sense of regret. While I said before that I can feel for Naho’s behaviors and the way her shyness keeps her from doing what she should do that lead to her regrets later on, I can’t deny that Naho is NOT a well written character. It got even worse in this episode that she ends up as plain and unremarkable. And I don’t mean her introvert and shyness actions; yes, usually the main protagonist needs to actively carry the story but that’s not a point here; I mean that she’s so average that there’s nothing that makes her stand out. And that’s a problem. We see the story through her eyes, and if she’s unremarkable then it’s hard for us to identify with her. The rest of the cast, while they are natural with each other, still need more development to become full-fledge characters.
Regret is one of the big theme of this show, and it comes straight from the regrets of older Naho towards what she could do in the past for Kakeru and that feeling holds so much weight. The one thing that I really like from the premise of Orange is that this is the younger version of Naho who has to deal with it. Naho the 16-year-old is still immature, she’s still and will make lot of mistakes in her life and as one scene of the show nicely puts it, those letters tell her what to do to avoid regrets do not mean it will change her personality. She’s Naho and she will always be Naho. At least for those first 2 episodes she manages to do what her previous self didn’t have guts to do: to hit the final ball and to make Kaheru a proper lunch. All the details so far strongly foreshadow that Kaheru is going to die in a year’s time, even if Naho tries her best to prevent it. But it’s the actions that count. At least she tries and it’s the time that the group enjoying together that will be their most treasure moments, and that holds no more regret. There’s a real potential if the show ends like this.
Then again, it’s never a good sign that we can see how it would end up just after 2 episodes. This would be predictable and I really expect Orange would do something different to surprise us, or if they go that route they have to be very well executed. There are still more rooms for character’s development and I want to see more from Naho herself. Kakeru’s revelation about his mother committing suicide; for example, is a step in the right direction, because the detail gives us more light to Kakeru’s personality: the way he hides his emotions away and the way he yearns for a female figure. This is where Orange really shines and I expect more of this in coming episodes.
And I still hope they’d tone down the melodrama later on.
~SuperMario~
