Natsuyuki Rendezvous

Keep in mind that this review is going to be pretty spoiler heavy.

Info
This is a prime example of when a great idea and concept is made but then the show just falls flat on its face as it doesn’t fully understand how to utilize the great premise.

Natsuyuki Rendezvous is a 2012 anime of only 11 episodes, backed by Doga Kobo it’s a supernatural, romance drama based off the manga of the same name, and it’s so fucking boring!

Story
So what is the premise of Natsuyuki rendezvous I hear you ask, well it’s basically ghost cucking. Our protagonist Hazuki has fallen in love with a much older ... lady - Rokka - who owns a flower shop. Due to his love for her he stops by the shop daily and buys small potted plants despite owning a very small apartment, because of this his apartment is filled with tiny plants.

The point is that eventually Hazuki decides to take up a job at the flower shop in order to be closer to Rokka, however Hazuki eventually encounters Shimao, Rokkas dead husband. He is bound to her apartment which is above the flower shop so he can also be there however no one has ever been able to see him before Hazuki.

What follows is Shimao using his ghostly-ness to try and stop Hazuki’s advances on Rokka, eventually he even pulls off some poltergeist and is able to throw objects or make a room shake and the whole time he’s really only able to effect Hazuki as he doesn't want to hurt or upset Rokka and she can’t see or hear him anyway.

Now the show starts off pretty interesting, Hazuki tries his best to develope a relationship with Rokka and to his credit he does a great job, the two become close rather quickly and he gets very close to kissing her and at one point possible sex with her however Shimao is always able to at least stop anything big from happening.

So this is a pretty neat concept right, Hazuki and Rokka have a budding and interesting romance and there’s this constant Ghost who has entertaining banter with Hazuki and the situation is always weird as we the audience can also always see this ghost. The romance is good, the banter is good and the situations are interesting and there's tons of possibilities. What could possibly go wrong?

Episode 4 is what. So the show is going along strong and episodes 1-3 I loved and watch in a single sitting and I bet I would of the got the whole show done in one sitting if it hadn't hit such a hard wall. Episode 4 itself isn’t that bad but the things that happen in this episode set up the downfall and it's because of this episode that I take issue with the show.

Throughout the show Shimao (the dead guy) is constantly asking Hazuki to lend him his body, Shimao says he can posses people but only if he has there consent, it's weird how he would know this since he claims up to this point no one has been able to see him so I don't know how he got someone to consent, so I can only assume there's some kind of ghost handbook you get if you die with unfinished business, cause there's really no way for him to know he can do this.

Shimao wants Hazuki’s body so he can talk to Rokka and if he's able to do this then he will be able to move on, or so he tells Hazuki at least. His true intentions are a lot more malicious, he plans to permanently take over Hazuki and then continue on with Rokka where he left off, it's pretty fucked up, trying to just move on to a new body.

At the end of episode 4 Hazuki, in a drunken state, submits and consents to letting Shimao taking his body and then we get greeted to a scene of Shimao (in Hazuki's body) getting emotional and seeing Rokka and actually being able to make contact with her, this is a good scene and at this point I still had no issues with the show, this is just the thing it needed to spice things up and help the plot more fuel so it wouldn’t slow down however this very thing is what causes all the problem I have with the show later down the line.

While Shimao is in Hazuki's body we still get scenes of Hazuki doing stuff and his in some weird alternate world that’s the book world from a book that Shimao was writing but never ended before he died and overall it’s really weird and poorly explained. Overall these scenes are really boring because nothing happens and he also keeps running into different girls that are all just Rokka but she's a fairy or a mermaid of something and doesn't go by that name or know who he is, since they’re just characters in the story that Shimao obviously modeled off his wife.

Every time we cut to Hazuki is this world is the worst fucking experience of my life, they go on for way too long have no purpose and don’t forward anything, they’re extremely boring and I can’t find a way that this show was made and people thought it was okay for these scenes to play out the way they do. It’s like Hazuki tries to move a giant pot but gives up because it’s heavy and then Rokka as a mermaid shows up and then Hazuki realises that he loves Rokka so he tried to move the pot again and that's it, but it took like half the fucking episode to show it. Its ridiculous and I absolutely hate this, however right away it’s not all bad.

Seeing Shimao in Hazuki's body is actually super interesting, the way Shimao has to try and act like Hazuki and can’t easily completely do what he wants to. He’s so close to his old wife and yet he can’t actually do anything about it, he isn’t fully back, she can still only see him as hazuki. This all comes to a head when he straight up asks her is she loves him of course she thinks hazuki is asking this question and answers with a yes admitting that she has fallen for hazuki however Shimao is the only one who receives this information and of course hazuki doesn’t get to know it.

Now up to this point I’ll admit that while I still hated the hazuki parts I was overall still enjoying the show as a whole however the Hazuki sections begin to get even worse as they begin to kinda consume the show, I’m not really sure why this is but rather then shorten the lengthy and pointless hazuki sections down they start to make them longer and almost the focus. While yes hazuki is our protagonist, he’s not what made the show interesting and by himself he actually works really horribly, he works best when he has someone else to bounce off, but I’ll come back to this later basically these sections don’t work because they’re mostly useless and feel like filler. Cutting them back so they took up less time and thus hit the important points more often and had less fluff would of been the much better part and while I can’t remember for sure I’m pretty sure there's an entire episode in the book world with hazuki and it’s just… pain.

Eventually we start to learn some more about Shimao’s past which is kind of a mix between the book world and real world that helps us piece things together, turns out he got cancer and was writing the book hazuki is now in when he died, he never got to finish it or something like that. Now while this is a kinda cliche thing it can be done right, ‘Princess Tutu’ uses this as the basis for the entire show to exist and that show is freaking amazing and while it has a few episodes early not that aren't super interesting it never gets as boring as this done and that's because it doesn't do anything interesting with the book world.

It also never explains how Hazuki gets into the book world or how it even works or what rules it's run by, which is weird because they spent a lot of time in there and it's clearly an important part of the plot and if they spent more of the time in there explaining what it is or how it works, then maybe it would've been slightly better. Plus these Shimao backstory parts are also boring as dirt, they move so slowly and have a bunch of still or barely moving shots and I feel like the show might be trying to be deep or moving but it's just too much of a slog to really be able to pull it off in any way shape or form.

Anyway eventually Shimao tells Rokka what's going on or she figures it out I can't exactly remember but either way, she knows. And then Hazuki comes back to the real world as a ghost that only Shimao can see and this is all also never really explained at all, it's super fucking weird and also not interesting in the slightest. You may think I'm going on about this stuff for too long but it seriously is some boring crap, don't watch this show it's crazy how much of a wall it hits. Anyway in the end it's a happy ending or something. The show had put me through so much boredom that at this point I didn’t care about the characters in any way by the end and so I just kinda watched it to be done with it.

Characters
Hazuki
Hazuki isn't an interesting protagonist, he’s a rather boring person who has lives a mostly boring life and is so useless that he buys flowers everyday despite living in a god damn apartment just cause he likes the girl there, like just talk to her dude.

Either way the main reason that Hazuki is able to work as the protagonist is because of the way he interacts with those around him, he has a serious kinda dead pan way about him and doesn't get easily agitated.

The interactions between Hazuki and Shimao are at the core of the original premise and some of the interesting stuff, after all Hazuki is the only one who can see Shimao and so Shimao will constantly be floating around or trying to annoy Hazuki and make him slip up and the way Hazuki and Shimao have small banter sessions at each other is fun to watch as Shimao is kind of dick and Hazuki can't really do anything in response.

Hazuki's interactions with Rokka are also good because he's like a completely different person when he’s with her, he clearly cares about her and wants to be with her and it's shown multiple times in many different ways in the early good part of the show. Early on in the show we get very few to no scenes were Hazuki is by himself and there's good reason for that, he's always interacting with someone so that he isn't just some brooding guy.

When he's trying to forward his relationship with Rokka but Shimao is also there shit gets interesting and this is when the shows is the most enjoyable to watch and what got me into it originally, SO THEN WHY THE HELL DO THEY LEAVE HIM ALONE IN THE BOOK WORLD!

Okay they don't really leave him alone, he's always interacting with a different rendition of Rokka as I've stated before but for some reason she's like, kinda dead inside or something. She doesn't have much to say or is super cryptic and it mainly is just a bunch of boring stuff, it's not really Rokka and Hazuki knows that so he has no reason to try and forward the relationship and these side Rokka’s usually go away after an episode or two so they don't develop or really matter in any meaningful way and it's because of this that it’s not the same as in the real world where he has a real goal that's tangible and he knows how to get it while facing an obstacle that only he and the viewer are able to understand and that isn't easily removed. Nothing means anything in the fucking book world.

And now I've just spent more time complaint about the premise of the show but really there's not much to say about Hazuki, he loves Rokka, hates Shimao and is useless and the source of my pain once in the book world.

Shimao
Shimao is a weird character and an interesting one for me to talk about while not interesting himself. Not at first he's basically the villain since he is the obstacle to the protagonist's goal but for some reason he kinda ends up becoming the protagonist by the end, not only does he take over Hazuki's body but his backstory becomes a huge focus.

After all he constructed the book world since it's a book he wrote while he had cancer and so we get a bunch of flashback stuff to before he was dead and he was quite different back then in reality, he was much more nice and sweet and overall he seemed happy where in his ghost state he just seems depressed and even when trying to act caring or panicked he just seems dilated and emotionless.

The problem here is that sweet and caring dude who has cancer and that we know is going to die doesn't make for a good or interesting character, it makes for piss boring shit as he just spouts generic crap in a way to maybe make the show feel deep or something, I'm not really sure why they do it cause it sure as hell isn’t interesting.

The other issue with having him take control of Hazuki and basically become the focus of the show if the fact that this then means that there is no villain in the show, nor is there any real conflict, as I said the juxtaposition of all of these characters and there various relationships and how they all play off each other is key and while you can still create a dynamic like that and take people out of it, you can't in this show specifically and that's a for a few reasons.

Firstly it's all the show has going for it, if you stuff it up then you got nothing interesting left to show and so you'd have to be careful with removing someone from the dynamic of changing there situation so drastically that they're not even in the same god damn world. And also because it's a fucking trio, destroy the trio and you have only two damn people left and that's very bad for the dynamic as you just can't have as much going on between two people it also doesn't help that Hazuki really was the heart of it and while Rokka still thinks he is there he's not and it ruins the whole thing.

Maybe I'm just repeating myself at this point but I really did enjoy the show a lot at first and it just went and ruined itself hard.

Rokka
So now let's talk about Rokka, the love interest of Hazuki and Shimao's ex-wife. Now she's meant to be a pretty interesting character because she's still dealing with losing the love of her life while falling in love with this much younger boy and the whole time she's still running this flower shop that was Shimao's dream in the beginning anyway.

Now, Rokka is interesting early on, since her juxtaposition is indeed interesting and how she deals with it seemed very real and like the natural progression for her character to take and the fact that she can't see Shimao really helps Shimao and Hazukis interactions shine, after all Shimao can do some crazy stuff and Rokka has no idea about any of it.

However she's kinda bland outside of that and it becomes a serious issue once Hazuki is gone. She's meant to be bland anyway, she's meant to be the pretty normal person in all of this while Hazuki and Shimao do all the real interesting stuff, she's just a means to an end off the show, used to set things up despite not actually really being the one who does, she's the reason things happen without actually being the exact reason things happen, if that makes sense.

This causes her character to fail completely once the focus shifts and it really is a shame since before that I was somewhat kinda liking her character despite the obvious blandness she presented. Doesn't help that Rokka doesn't fucking change or grow at all. Yes she does eventually fall in love with Hazuki however as soon as she finds out that Shimao has taken over Hazukis body she reverts right back to being in love with him again.

Now I know it might be considered normal to fall in love with your dead partner if they come back in the body of the new person you love, but I feel like it's not. Now obviously we can't know but Rokka does truly fall in love with Hazuki and I feel like if that happens you truly have to be over you old partner to a serious degree and I know there's the always loving them and crap but if they come back wouldn't you at least be a little weirded out.

Instead Rokka reverts back to fully loving him and sitting around just being with him and then he has to go and Rokka gets all upset about it again cause she has to say goodbye again and it's just like why did you even come back you dumb fucking ghost, you didn't change anything, you just made the show worst’ so Rokka ends up basically having some kind of reset button pushed if you will and now she has to try and get over him all over again and I'm sure this only hurts Hazukis current relationship with her to a great degree.

Her character design is also god awful, I know there are people like this out there I'm sure but she has a huge forehead and her hair is done in such a way that really fucking shows it and my god it doesn't look good, her eyes are also done in a weird way that doesn't complement the rest of her design and that doesn't help her, especially when the eyes are right below the god awful forehead.

It doesn't look good and it took me a while to even get use to seeing it cause most of the time it's just a really off putting look to look at normally, I don't know what exactly it is but something about it makes me have trouble looking at it even though I've seen shows that are arguably much worse in this area and have no issue with it.

Overall all the characters are bad on their own or eventually devolve to that state due to the story writing them into situations that don't work for them or flatter them very well. But this is going on for too long and I’m really just starting to repeat myself and getting more angry plus I really just wanna get this done. But hey at least there's no chance of it being longer than my New Game! Review.

Presentation
This is gonna be fast, you see all aspects of the presentation can be summed up in one word. Generic. The animation is generic to the standard animation that doesn't really do anything or special I guess the book world does mix it up a little but it’s a blending of styles that first of all doesn't even look good. Secondly it’s been done a million times so it’s not like the show is special or breaking new ground and lastly it’s just a still frame that the characters look really weird in front of, it’s like when CGI is used and looks weird cause its a 3D model. Well the 2D characters look weird in the book world because they have shading and the bookworld environment doesn't making it lack depth and thus the styles clash way too hard.

The animation in terms of actually animating is very low effort, all the movements are simple and only things that need to be done, the characters can spend a lot of time being very still or there mouth is hidden so it doesn't have to be animated when they talk, the camera rarely moves most of the time it just stays still and it’s rare for the characters to move too much. It’s very simple and very lazy and can be a real annoyance as it continues to just stay that way as the show goes on. It’s not exactly horrid, I’d say it’s bearable but still a problem nevertheless.

Music and sound effects are basic and unmemorable, I’m sorry but I actually can’t talk about it because of how bland it is, and again very unmemorable, so I don’t even fucking remember it. I guess next is the OP and ED which are also really bad, the OP is bland, slow and uninspiring, the images used are mostly still shots and even before I started hating the show I very much didn’t enjoy the OP, but I watched it anyway cause I’m not a scumbag who skips the OPs. (#ForwardingMyOwnAgenda) It’s slow and boring and I don’t like it, and the ED isn’t much better.

The ED just kinda slaps visuals together and I feel like it’s going “Look how I deep I am, I’m only using pretty moving visuals for my ED and pretty music” and while the music is nice and pretty the music doesn’t belong to the anime, music shouldn’t make you enjoy or hate anime or the OPs and EDs, enjoy what ever music you want but what the show does for it is the animation and that’s the interesting part and here it’s just horrid. I could get more meaning out of looking at a kaleidoscope for the same amount of time and I bet I’d have more fun.

Ang guess what I can just have the song play in the background because it’s not a part of the anime and I can have it play while I do a number of things better then watching crap, so don’t tell me I’m wrong cause the music is good, that doesn’t matter.

The voice acting is also super generic, it’s just what it has to be, no one is really that good but none of it’s really that bad either, well some of it’s bad but some of it’s good too so it evens out and hit a dead average. I said this would be done fast, not much to say about the presentation really.

Wrap-Up
So Basically this show is really bad and after those few early episodes there was little left to enjoy from it, I overall regret having watched the show and I hope that if you have read this and can understand why I found the show horrid that you will also avoid it, I think this show is liked by more people then it’s hated by but that's the same for Sword Art Online and Re:Zero so general consensus isn’t a good way to judge something.

If you understood what I was saying and don’t like the kind of things I bought up then don’t watch this show, it’s painfully boring and I wish I had known more about it before I jumped in with high hopes, it’s a good concept gone wrong.

Overall I have to give this generic piece of crap a 3/10

I didn’t enjoy watch it at all in the end, the negatives outweigh the positives way too heavily and those positives are the only reason this isn’t a 2.

I really liked the poster and it is 11 episodes only so i decided to dig in finish it quickly, it looks really cute i thought

the first 3 episodes or so were really good hazuki was so adorable i liked him i was wondering why it has a score of 7 ?
i was kinda guessing what is going to happen but oh well everything just .. got really twisted and i was like wait-what(?)..

the story
its about mainly a ghost of a dead young husband shimao and his widow rokka and the poor young man hazuki who got stuck in their twisted ... world, because he just decided to fall in love with rokka, who i think was trying to move on

it would have been a nice story if there wasn't so much complications really, i dun wanna put any spoilers but seriously the begging was so promising it hurts.


YES the Art
i loved it that's why i decided to watch it, so simple and cute, was deceiving tho
the art sigh

the sound
was really good i have nothing against it

DE characters
hazuki, poor lil hazuki that bright lil man i was almost attached, well almost. His character development ...well there isn't any, he was just madly in love with rokka and was willing to do anything for her and it almost coasted him his life

shimao
That guy pisses me off, not only he is selfish, cruel, annoying and did i say SELFISH ... he is so childish (although i like childish) but this one gave me a headache.

Rokka
that person! i never really understood her intentions her feelings(?) her character was the silent straight forward type the lack of expressions when she is with not-her-dead-husband was misleading.


Enjoyment
i didn't really enjoy this, maybe hazuki's bashful attitude and although the art was nice the ending song was really catchy and sentimental the story tho, gave me a headache and heart aches cuz i never felt that the manger really loved him
her annoying ghost husband controlled his body
he was almost dead
he was dealt with like he was a second option
the age gap
sigh

this is my first review and its all "negative" written all over
im sorry i wrote this out of frustration, really wanted to vent.

There used to be a time when the Noitanima timeslot was synonymous to uncommon stories and quality shows but those good times are now over. Even Noitanima succumbed to the stereotypes and fads that plague modern anime, and thus we get this show. Don’t fool yourselves to thing it isn’t because it came out during the ghost/zombie fad and is nothing more than a rehash of the premise of AnoHana, which also aired in the same timeslot half a year ago.

THE STAFF
- The animation is also not done by a bigshot studio but rather a minor one called Doga Kobo. These guys haven’t even produced ... a single above average show in their whole career, so what the hell are they doing here, collaborating with a top tier production?
- The directing is done by Matsuo Kou whose roster is filled with nothing but mediocrities. I sincerely see nothing good coming out of this combo.

SPECIFICS

STORY

The premise is about a guy who wants to have a relationship with a widow but the ghost of her deceased husband is still lingering around her life. And he is not the scary haunting type, since tortured souls and animated rotten corpses are presented as moe in anime. He is a bishonen who occasionally doesn’t wear clothes, or has an open shirt so we can feast on his hairless chest. KYAAA fujoshi service! So this ghost refuses to move along to the afterlife because he doesn’t want to leave his wife behind. So when another man tries to take his place in her heart, he gets annoyed. This new man is the only one who can see the ghost, and constantly has it in his way every time he wants to advance past the safe zone with the widow. Imagine a steamy scene where he is about to kiss her but the bishonen ghost appears in front of him making it look like a gay kiss. KYAAA more fujoshi service. Other than that, a lame cockblocker.

And that is the whole conflict in this show. What do I think about it? It’s totally boring! Aside from being a rehash and a fad chaser, it also lacks any hook to keep the viewer interested. There is no love triangle or dilemma going on in here to spice things up, since one is alive and the other one is dead. How hard is it to tell whom the heroine will choose? There is simply no motivation to keep watching further.

Of course in the minds of the fujoshis there is a lot of interest in how the live dude is going to win the widow’s heart. Maybe the ghost can give him advices on what he knows about her as means to press the proper buttons to win her heart. Maybe it will be somewhat interesting to see how they will open up to each other and reveal… well, hopefully something more than typical stuff. Maybe her grief will come out, the live dude will smile for a few times in his life, and the ghost will move to the afterlife.

ENJOYMENT

Well, you can stop hoping because the plot is running on convenience and not logic or even free will. All you get is a line of asspulls and the characters acting completely out of sync with what is going on. Imagine the woman getting sick out of nowhere and the ghost runs to tell the live dude to go help her. Yeah, how nice to have an asspull of a disease being the only reason the plot can move forward. How about some free will instead? How about hiring an exorcist? How about telling her the truth instead of letting her think he was stalking her all day and night?

For a romance, the story is never character-based and that ruins everything. Every single event is based on the whims of the author and not the will of its characters. For example, while the ghost was still alive, the only reason he proposed to the woman was because he found out about his illness. The only reason he asked for a divorce is because he found out it would be incurable. The only reason the new guy asked her to go steady is because the ghost started getting in his way. Although you can say the characters are simply adjusting to life’s everyday problems instead of acting autistic to their surrounds, it still feels like they are completely passive and weak-willed. The scriptwriters controls them as he likes and not as they should behave.

CHARACTERS

Even if we put that aside, everything in this show happens without much emotion, since the characters seem to be very cynical about everything. And not just because they are adults who have control over their emotions. They don’t seem to care much even about supernatural stuff like ghosts, or about serious stuff like proposing to marry someone. There is nothing worth anticipating. There is no way to like such passive and weak-willed characters; most people today prefer dynamic and active ones. Not only that, but as the episodes go by the characters become more and more annoying exactly because they don’t care.
- The heroine does ridiculous things such as trusting a guy who knows where she hides the keys to the house and when she is in need of help. What kind of mature woman would tolerate a guy who seems to stalk her and talks to thin air? And for someone who is an expert in decorations, her style in clothes is terrible! What is wrong with that hat of hers?
- The ghost nags all the time, kicks things and acts like a spoiled brat, surely not something a married adult would ever be. Later on he possesses the live dude and tries to seduce his woman again, while the spirit of the live one is in some dreamland. What is this crap? Mature romance my ass.
- And the living dude… well, he doesn’t care or does much; he passively strolls through the events like nothing much matters. Why is he even blocked from kissing the heroine just because a ghost was in the way? Just close your eyes and go for it man.

PRODUCTION VALUES

If there is something nice in this show, that would be its looks. The atmosphere is nice for a josei anime, as it takes place in a flower shop with lots of fancy colours, and the two main males are hairless chest bishonens. Of course even that can only mean it is just tired rehash of the same old stuff we get for over a decade. As for the music part, I found it too soft and unnoticed, while voice acting doesn’t excel anywhere exactly because the characters are so cynical.

VALUE

The whole thing is basically a ridiculous supernatural ghost romance where common sense flies off the window. I know many who found that awesome in Dusk Maiden of Amnesia but lets be honest here; this is all crap. No sane person would want to spend his life jerking off to hot air… And yes, anti-social otakus are not sane so of course and they would choose hot air as their waifu.

I have seen what those who liked the show have to say in its defence and pretty much they all repeat the same thing. “The mature romance of the summer season”. Meaning, just something to watch for the summer and as soon as fall kicks in they will dump it for the next mature romance that comes out. And wait a second, mature? How the devil is it even mature if it has such a retarded story? Ghost romance? Seriously? Is this the legacy of Twilight? Improbable couplings between a human girl and a random undead creature? What is this, did normal romances all of a sudden got dull and beyond salvation? Or perhaps are all modern romance anime totally crap to the point you grab at straws?

Ok, how about this? The guy is lost in an accident at sea and everybody think he is dead. His wife grieves for a year but eventually moves ahead in her life and gets into a relationship with another man. So the guy finally manages to return and finds her now in love with another man. Wouldn’t THAT be an awesome hook for a show? What is this bullshit with ghosts? There is no room to create any decent plot. Bring an exorcist and move along with your lives dammit!

So in all, it’s a shitty show for fujoshis. The conflict is bollocks, there is no hook to interest you into watching further, the characters are cynical, everything runs on convenience, and the ending is dull and predictable. Go watch Nana instead.

And now for some excused scorings.
ART SECTION: 6/10
General Artwork 1/2 (generic)
Character Figures 1/2 (generic)
Backgrounds 2/2 (pretty flowers)
Animation 1/2 (basic)
Visual Effects 1/2 (basic)

SOUND SECTION: 6/10
Voice Acting 2/3 (corny but fitting with the feeling of the series)
Music Themes 2/4 (average)
Sound Effects 2/3 (ok I guess)

STORY SECTION: 2/10
Premise 0/2 (boring right away)
Pacing 0/2 (dull)
Complexity 1/2 (not much)
Plausibility 0/2 (none)
Conclusion 1/2 (cheesy)

CHARACTER SECTION: 3/10
Presence 0/2 (annoying)
Personality 2/2 (cheesy but well founded)
Backdrop 1/2 (generic and simplistic but it’s there)
Development 0/2 (random)
Catharsis 0/2 (no free will to get any)

VALUE SECTION: 1/10
Historical Value 0/3 (none)
Rewatchability 0/3 (too stupid to bother rewatching)
Memorability 1/4 (nothing special to bother remembering)

ENJOYMENT SECTION: 1/10
Art 1/1 (pretty flowers)
Sound 0/2 (sounds meh)
Story 0/3 (feels stupid and does nothing to redeem itself)
Characters 0/4 (they are annoying)

VERDICT: 3/10

When I saw this title and saw that is was based on a Josei series I thought to myself this might have the potential to be the best of the 2012 summer season.

The series initially intrigued me to watch more but I was disappointed however as I progressed thought the series and I started to feel that the series was repetitive and the characters personality would only change to move the story along. I feel that the series did not put enough effort to making you like the characters and instead focused straight on the drama of the story and made me not care ... for the series.

The art and animation are middle of the road nothing bad but nothing particularly good either. The OST of the series was forgettable for the most part but it never irritated me at any point. I enjoyed some of the visuals on the later part of the story where a few things visually changed slightly.

My advice for watching the series is to watch about 3 episodes of the series and if you like it then go and watch the rest if you don't then don’t bother with it. I would recommend this series to people that regularly watch Jdrama series and are used to the conventions that they use.

I will make it SPOILER FREE and SHORT

I thought i will never give an anime such a low score but this one deserves it aand i will tell you why.

Story starts pretty solid from first episode, you get some introduction and actually has a potential to be something promising. Aand it lasted whole episode, in the second one plot is turning to a flat line of nothingness. Does not develop from that in any smart way. Plot is full of illogical twists, besides, it has link to wonderland (it is not spoiler but you have to be prepared, you need special mind set for that ... and i am not even joking).

Art is just poor, unfortunately it was nothing special to me and animation was often blurry. In one episode i almost got seizure when image per second dropped to 0.5ish.

Sound was also something poor, it is like putting icing on a ruined cake, in a few moments it did emphasize melancholy but other than that it had no 'character'. It was as plot, just a strait line.

Characters... Oh my.. where to start. Well we have some basic 'stereotypes', like boy in 20s who has split personality between obsessed teenage boy and sexual predator. Another boy and that one is definition of pathetic dude in every way possible and in the end a retarded girl who don't know how to express her feelings, sorry for expression but i am so mad writing this... THERE WAS NO CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, NO SIDE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT.

I did not enjoy single second of watching after 1st episode.

This anime is illogical, unreal and so twisted up it makes me sick. It has no point what so ever, except to kill yourself or be immoral and stupid. Anime which relies and has base on reality and relationship between people in one second and few minutes later makes contradiction without explanation why in the first place and then continues expanding deeper meaning in opposite.
The only good thing in this anime (for me) was the idea how it all started and that is why i watched till the end. I would have dropped loong time ago. This was just waste of my time.

If anyone says that this anime make sense please do private message me explaining me how. Maybe i missed something or i am just too plain stupid for this one. I would write more but i will stick to that spoiler free part.

I will throw a bone here, just to explain my claims. How can u differentiate love from obsession? Can human have no emotion seeing girl he think he loves?

Hope this helped,
have a good one