To Heart: Remember My Memories

WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT'S HOLY HAPPENED TO THIS SERIES!!!

The original To Heart is rather enjoyable. It's a nice slice of life show that gets misnomered as a harem romance. This extension on the other hand, should never have been made.

The story in Remember My Memories is set around a year after the end of To Heart. Multi has left, Hiroyuki, Akari, and the rest of the cast are still pretty much the same. Hiroyuki is pining for Multi though when she suddenly comes back to school, only for everyone to be told she has the robot form of amnesia!?!?

Okay, I'm not going ... to harp on about the rest of the story, which in itself is pretty much standard fare. The creators decided to turn what was an enjoyabl slice of life show into a true harem romance/drama. The only problem is they failed abysmally.

The art and animation are sorely lacking in Remember My Memories. Gone is the naturalistic character design and the nice watercolour stillframes. In their place the animators saw fit to make the faces more angular (pointy chins abound in this show). The animation is decidely jerky, and the colour palette has been changed to make the show more "cheery" (failing miserably at this as well).

The sound is another area where a lot of corners have been cut. There's no mellow BGMs in this show, and the effects are sometimes random. The voice acting in this show has also dropped in quality (even though the same actors were used - how the hell did they manage that?). Ichijou Kazuya (the voice of Fujita Hiroyuki), must have been up all night smoking and drinking before recording this series. In the original To Heart his was quite smooth and well defined. In Remember My Memories he sounds like he's desperate and screaming all the time. The other voice actors are no better, which makes me think that these changes were intentionally added to "heighten" the drama (when all it did was make me want to kill the characters or kill myself).

The characters are the main reason why the show is a huge let down. As I pointed out, the voice acting was a major disaster, but the character flaws don't just end there. The creators have tried to make Remember My Memories more "dramatic", and with this in mind they have turned the characters into an abomination of what they originally were. In the original To Heart Hiroyuki was a kind, sensitive (if somewhat absent-minded) guy. In Remember My Memories his character comes across as annoying, whiny, selfish, angry (in other words, he's a brat). Akari was originally a gentle, caring girl, and although they tried to keep those traits for her character, they spoiled it by making the show "dramatic". Akari's character flaws are highlighted in many of the "dramatic" moments of the show, especially towards the end of the series. The supporting characters also suffer from this "drama", as many of their characteristics and personalities are just plain annoying now.

I'm not going to recommend this show to anyone except a complete masochist.

If you're a fan of the original To Heart, or even To Heart 2 (which, even though I didn't enjoy it as much as To Heart, is still miles better than Remember My Memories), then do not watch this show- ever! If you like a good story, romance, drama, great characters, great animation and sound, etc, then avoid this at all costs, and go watch Kanon or Clannad, or even Da Capo.

I'm not going to say anything good about this show (so those of you who liked it, don't hold your breath). It's bad - end of story. This series is to To Heart what The Phantom Menace is to Star Wars.

I'm not going to insult anyone who liked Remember My Memories, but I will say this - compare it to any other show of it's type and Remember My Memories loses in every department.

If I could sue the creators for making this pile of ...., then I would happily do so.

Oh, and for those of you who wonder why I didn't drop the show, I should point out that the show has to rate as a 1 or 0 for me to drop it. Remember My Memories may be bad, but it's not the worst I've seen (which is it's only saving grace).

Overall
Ok, so by itself the original "To Heart" was awful, but it actually makes a lot of sense as a prequel to "Remember my memories". Where the first season was shallow, episodic harem nonsense, this season expands in every dimension and is actually really good.

Animation
Nothing spectacular when it comes to graphics, but decent character design. Boy, am I getting repetitive or what?

Actually, it's too bad they didn't stick with the original art style. The graphics were far better in the first season.

Sound
Good voice acting (except for the obviously fake Amewrican Remmy/Lemmy.
...
The intro tune is likeable, but background music and ending theme are pretty bland.

Story
RMM is a direct continuation of the first season, and considering that was just an introduction of all the characters, the actual story begins here. And it's a good one. Both backstory and depth is developing, and it turns out to be something as unusual as a plausible and catching drama.

Remember my memories might not be very original (reminding of stuff like Chobits, Kimi ga nozomou Eien etc), but it fuses clichés together in a brilliant way.

Character
Since all of the characters got introduced in the first season, RMM can focus on developing them instead. And it is an impressive amount of character development going on. None of that boring episodic "girl of the week" nonsense, instead everyone get screen time when it fits the story.

Most of the characters are very likeable (Remmy's irritatingly bad english and the witchcraft girl are notable exceptions) and act pretty much like real people.

Value
The Anime keep translation was good, no complaints there.

I love it when a second season makes the first one make sense.l Makes me want to watch them both again some time.

So TO HEART: REMEMBER MY MEMORIES is a sequel To Heart and continues the story and boy does it blow it out of the water compared to the previous one.

STORY:Yes it does have a story compared to the previous season and its present from episode 1 nonetheless,while the story itself is not groundbreaking,it is done really well with good pacing and the romance while not too much prominent in first glance,it is tied neatly into the story and characters.

ART:Its about the weakest part and the only thing that is done better in the first season.Its way more generic(not in the good way) and less detailed,animation ... is about what you would expect from this genre.

Sound:The seiyu are good and fitting for most characters,the opening is very nice but the ending song is very forgettable.

Characters:For the most part you could watch this season only and you would easily follow most things but if its anything to be gratefull for the first season for existing is that it introduced the characters so this season has more space for fleshing them out and developing them.Their characterization mostly overlaps with the main plot and romance so its done well.

I enjoyed this season was more than the last and while i don't think it was worth the 13 episodes of boredom that was the prequel to this,this season as a standalone was fairly decently-goodish.