Ranked #521

Hatsukoi Limited

*One step at a time, slowly they find themselves falling in love.*

“Geez, women are so hard to understand” – Etsu Kusuda

Most, if not all male viewers tend to agree with that statement. The various male characters in Hatsukoi Limited (literally means first love limited) all experienced the same problem. But before you get the wrong idea, it should mentioned that this anime is directed from the female perspective most of the time. Hatsukoi Limited explores the early love life of a group of teenage girls and how they cope with boys that they like (or don’t like). While 12 episodes are hardly enough to cover any in depth relationship for over half a dozen girls, the story remains a highly enjoyable one. Simply put, Hatsukoi Limited is as close to an idealized slice of life / romance comedy one could find in the market now a day.

Complex love web is one of the main elements in the story. However, viewers will have no trouble adapting to the environment as everything build on one another slowly one step at a time. In fact, the overall plot to the story tags along quite well with each major character’s development. One could even say the characters are a natural complement to the story or vice versa (this may be a natural thing to say, but in reality not a lot of shows can even do this properly).

A well structured story must also have a logical order for presenting its characters and Hatsukoi Limited excel in this department as well, as previously mentioned. What most people worry about is the sudden rush of information in the early episodes (like just dumping all you need to know about all the characters in episode 1), but thankfully that is not the case for Hatsukoi Limited. In hindsight, starting the story with Ayumi was an obvious choice for the author although her character as a whole may not have been the easiest to accept by most audiences.

Viewers will enjoy watching most of the characters grow and develop themselves along the way. Most have gotten more mature and act more reasonably, but there are some exceptions. Whether the lack of character development for these characters are attributed to the length of the series or the story was meant to be that way, is up to viewers to decide. However, it should be pointed out that all the characters have a sense of realism in them, nothing from their characteristics seem fictitious or too fantasy-like. Through the eyes of these 14 to 16 years old, one might even see a resemblance of your own younger self.

Perhaps the most painful part of Hatsukoi Limited with regards to its characters is that, like most shounen shows out there, it has really wimpy, stupid, and annoying guys (to make matter worse, most of them look quite ugly too). On the other hand, the females characters are often really smart, kawaii, and gorgeous looking babes (yes Misaki, that means you)!

Quite frankly, it was the character animation that first caught my attention to this wonderful romance comedy as the storyline sounded rather generic to me at first. As to be expect from J.C. Staff, they always deliver high quality animation (and consistent too). The backgrounds are often lacking in detail, but that help put the characters in focus and viewers will spend 90% of the time looking at the characters anyway, thus there isn’t much to complain about. It was also interesting to see that the characters in the anime seem to be an exact carbon copy of their original manga self. Believe it or not, it is not easy to find an anime adaptation that follows the manga as closely as Hatsukoi Limited, both in the looks of the characters and the story itself.

Finally, music is THE area that surpirsed me the most throughout the show. First off, both OP and ED are just splendid. The additional BGM and soundtracks in between just amplifies whatever tiny emotion I had in my mind, making this series a bit more successful than it should have been in my eyes. I hope you will find Hatsukoi Limited as enjoyable as it did for me and it is definitely a series in which I plan to have a blu-ray collection of in the future.

Are you in love right now? read more

Hatsukoi limited follows the lives of a group of teenagers from a few schools that are connected in some way or another. It covers the early part of their love lives and deals solely with the issue of love. So for those who enjoy school romance you will probably enjoy this series.

The story i gave a 10 because it was clique but at the same time original at some points. While it's about a typical school romance it involves many characters that shape the story differently from a usual school romance. We get to see all sorts of love which is why i really enjoyed the series. From unrequitted to mutual to family. All are touched upon. The story can be said to be quite light hearted as it involves a lot of humour, but it is not too slapstick and it does have its serious moments which make the story entetaining. I think what i enjoyed most was the realism in the story in that it's not always a happy ending but it still gives us the feeling that it is in its own way because of the way the characters feel or get out of the experiences. I also found it interesting how the story intertwines the characters such that there is always some relation to another character and we go like "what a development! so complex!".

The art was appropriate for the series. The characters were drawn out vividly and colourful which suits the light heartednes of the story. The humour came out quite nicely as well as it's not like those blank face drawings you get in the more humourous animes and the scenery is done up quite nicely as well so 9 for art.

The sound i gave an 8 because in relation to other animes i have seen it cannot match up to the wide selection that they give. But nonetheless, there were several endings used in different episodes that helped to bring out the mood at the end of the episode. Personally i felt the ending song was a more appropriate for this anime than the starting. So all in all an 8, because i think that it has potential for more.

The characters were fantastic. I would give this anime a high9 which rounds off to 10. Considering the length of the anime, i think that the characters were given decent coverage and there is depth to most of the main characters. the only one who has little depth would be enomoto's sister whose love life was not covered. The story is really character-driven in that we get to see the story from many different angles depending on whose love life it is focussed on in each episode. Of course the main characters is still Ayumi but we get to see different points of view on love based on the different characters. This is what makes the story so colourful. Which is why i have to give both story and characters 10 as they go hand in hand. The characters have very real and different personalities which are explored in this story and help to make it intersting. I'd say that almost all the characters are main characters because they get an equal coverage and hence it adds to the realism as it's not some anime where the main character always wins in the end.

Overall, i think the anime was great in balancing the comedy and romance in the story. It can be said to be somewhat of a romantic comedy though there is no one focus. The episode length was actually quite adequate for this anime because of its ending which i will not spoil. For an anime of 12 episode, i must commend it for being one of the best i have seen in terms of character development and plot development. You will surely enjoy this series unless you are into more psychological or drama genres. read more