Mar 23, 2008
I'm not usually into the whole twelve episode thing, I normally don't think it's enough time to tell a good story, but did this prove me wrong. Asatte no Houkou is an extremely emotionally complex anime and I was seriously taken by surprise when I learned that by the second episode, because it starts you off making it seem like it just might be a loli anime, but if you keep watching, which thank goodness, I did, you'll learn that not only is she no longer a child after the first episode, but this entire anime is about everyone, including the adults, learning to
...
behave like adults.
Anyway, Asatte no Houkou is about a twelve year old girl, named Karada Iokawa. She's unusually upbeat considering all the crap she's been through over the past four or five years. At least, it seems like she's upbeat. When she was eight seven or eight, she learned that her parents and older brother are not biologically her family, we never learn what happened to her real parents, we assume they're dead, but a year later, her adoptive parents die. Shortly after, her older adoptive brother comes from America to take care of her. Unfortunately, Karada is extremely bright for her age and knows her brother is in a lot of pain over everything he left behind while he was in America to come take care of her. Over the next four years, the guild of her brother having to take care of her all the time and having to work so hard to do so, torments her. Eventually, she meets a woman whom was a friend of her brother in America, but the woman, Shoko Nogami, is very cold to her to Karada and treats Karada like a child so much, Karada runs away. Feeling guilty, with Karada's brother angry at her, she looks for Karada and finds her at a wishing stone near the woods. When Shouko sees Karada praying at the stone, she asks if she can wish too, and sits down next to her. As they sit together, the two wish for what they desire most. And, this is the part that got me to keep watching, When they opened their eyes, Karada had taken on the body of a 20-26 year old girl and Shoko a 9-12 year old girl. I know that this has been done before tons of times, like with the thirty remakes of freaky Friday and all that stuff, but it was really interesting to see the direction they took it where they didn't switch bodies, just ages.
From there on, the anime is surprisingly real. Like if that were to actually happen to someone, everything that followed was exactly like what you would expect in real life.
So the two of them hide out for a while and everyone thinks they've gone missing. The police aren't involved, since they think Karada's with Shouko, but still, everyone looks for her.
the anime is all about Karada learning how to appreciate her childhood and Shouko learning how childish she behaved as an adualt. Shoko learns that she was jealous of Karada, for having taken her boyfriend away, Karada's brother, and Karada learns that even if she is an adult, her brother will always want to be in her life and that she's not holding him back from anything.
There’s also a character, Tetsumasa Amino, who is Karada's friend from school. He's huge for his age and looks like he could be in his late teens to early twenties, which makes him look really bad since Karada was extremely undeveloped for her age and looked six at the age of twelve. But anyway, he's really cool.
He and Karada are in love and he spends nearly the entire series looking for her, even though he meets her on a number of accounts he doesn't recognize her. He and older Karada spend some time together in the last few episodes of the series and he confesses his love for the younger Karada.
Just to spoil some stuff, everyone finds about and comes to believe that Karada and Shouko had swapped ages, which is really cool since usually in those age swapping movies no one knows but them and there's a cute ending that isn't the least bit corny, which made me very happy since I was expecting a very cheesy ending.
All in all, it was pretty flawless for what it was going for. I can't really think of anything they did wrong other than in real life the police probably would have gotten involved. But again, it's a very real anime and that's why I probably appreciate it so much.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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