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Title Info
- type: movie
- grade: watchable
- made: unknown
- Review created: A while ago, i'll revise it eventually.
- mod: none
I was going to give this movie a slapping, as it certainly wasn't the most exciting anime experience I've ever had. On reflection I realised it had a unique value, although that still doesn't change the fact that this has some problems. The story itself is a romance tale, with a young male suddenly coming face to face with his childhood idol who he still holds a torch for. She has some problems of her own, her career as a model being less uplifting than she had hoped for and having just broken up with her womanizing boyfriend of 5 years. Given that this is the guy who got in the way of his romantic possibilities originally it looks like the stage is set for love to blossom again.
And that is where both the disappointment and the novel value of this tape come out. This is because the atmosphere is done from the shounen (male) point of view, both in the story and in the ambiance. Thus those of us familiar with how `shoujo' (for girls) romances are supposed to work will find this a different, and almost annoying, experience. The lead character is an interesting male image, largely silent he never seems to quite have the words to say what he's thinking, even in the multiple one-sided romantic conversations that occur. He's strongly physically attracted to this girl (and wouldn't mind losing his virginity) but his own sense of honor, of how things should be handled (and some story interruptions) conflict with this. At the same time we are never given a clear idea of what the woman is thinking, which becomes irritating because we can't understand what is going on any better than the male lead.
In the end there is a resolution which is sudden, suprising, unsatisfying and unclear...exactly how such an event might really occur. Indeed it is so abrupt that I had to wonder whether the translation was tripping me up. Still, it is very possible that I am reading far to much into a drab, slow-moving and unromantic anime, so be warned. The movie runs for about 40 minutes, the visual style is older and very dark, there is little action and dialogue that I hope was intentionally restricted. The production on this tape is not impressive, and a whole heap of people will probably hate it with good reason, but as a potential shounen answer to the dominant shoujo influence in romantic anime it may contain more than meets the eye.
I was suprised to find a short review at the Anime Review page. It slams it "The story... is barely there." and calls it shoujo inspired. I agree with the first part, but not the second.
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:22 WST 2009