HIROMI OR NOE ???

godmite said:
Hiromi was selfish the entire time. It took her a year while living with Shin and ignoring him to realize she loved him. While Noe always believed in him the entire time and was the reason why he wanted to draw. She also did try to do anything sneaky like Hiromi did. Ex. Trying to become friends with Shin's friends. NOE ALL THE WAY!!!!

Fronzel said:
The only appeal they seem to have tried to give Hiromi was pity; her parents are dead, her life is so hard living with this woman who hates her and thinking the boy she loves is related to her. Well, so what? Fine, it'd be cool if her life got better, but having a hard life doesn't make her likable. The opposite; I find her to be a dreary person because of all the moping she does.

It doesn't help that in the rare cases that she gets active, she's pretty selfish and ruthless. Again, these are understandable but nonetheless unpleasant. If she were likable there would be a tension between this attraction and the repulsiveness of her actions, but since she's a bore, they just make her an ugly bore.

I initially didn't like Noe because weird, childish girls are a cliche in romantic drama anime (because of Kanon and other Key-based shows, probably), but she turned me around when she proved to be oddly perceptive and philosophically pure-minded. Her childishness wasn't pushed nearly so hard as with some I've seen, either (the girl in Air comes off as downright retarded).

The clincher for why I prefer Noe is that her story is a love story; we see Noe and Shin fall in love. Hiromi and Shin's story isn't about love, it's about contrived obstacles; they're related! (but they're not), she's dating another boy! (who doesn't care about her), she tries to run away! (but doesn't get far). It's just soap opera. We're told they're in love and then there's a bunch of angst for like ten episodes and then they (literally ) fall into each other and it's over. Actual romantic drama of any kind looks pretty good when set next to mere pulp.

While I don't think this story works very well, it isn't irredeemably broken so a sad ending for Noe isn't in of itself bad. But since I like Noe much more, I'd have preferred a story about Shin moving on from this childhood crush which has come to weigh him down. It would be at least equally interesting as what we did get and would have the added plus of going against the usual grain; Japanese romance is obsessed with childhood connections.