Kurage no Shokudou

About a year ago, I saw this while searching for some romance anime. Lured by the cover (a different one, in which he is walking with the female character) and tags, I bookmarked it.

The summary explains you how the story begins, how the main character lost his twin brother and how he fakes amnesia. So far, not the most interesting setting in the world, but not bad either. Little did I know...

Pros:
Although the plot presented in the summary isn't really what's presented, the alternative isn't that bad either, although it tries a bit too hard to be emotional.
(SPOILER AHEAD) Although it's a small detail, after ... watching the anime, the jellyfish in the tank gains a new meaning (makes you wonder whether that's his brother or not).

Meh:
The art is pretty mediocre. Its obviously better in certain scenes but in some others it's pretty bad.
The music isn't outstanding, at least in my opinion. Watched it 5 minutes ago and I don't even remember hearing music, so yeah, it's pretty bland.

Cons:
I spent the first 20 minutes (out of 30) wondering if this was shounen ai.
Then I spent the next 5 minutes cursing the NTR.
The female VA is very cringy.

For the lazy; nope, jellyfish syndrome does not exist.

I will start by saying that this anime has an open ending and I haven't found yet a place to continue reading the light novel it comes from in english, so if you're looking for a conclusion, this OVA is directly not worth the time.

Kurage no Shokudou is based around Misaki, a boy who's found in the beach by Arashi, the owner of a restaurant nearby, called Arashi, decides to take care of him because he says that he can't remember anything.

The story is based around the interactions between both of them and Natsuko, a friend of Arashi, soon drama unfolds while we discover more ... about why Misaki is there, and we see the situation Arashi and Natsuko are in, sadly, like I mentioned, the anime doesn't finish the story and leaves the viewers with a frustrating open ending just when it picked a good point in said drama.

The backgrounds are visually appealing, but sadly the same can't be said about the characters, that look quite terrible, anyways, the clear worst part is the sound, most of the time we only hear background sounds, and when we don't, the music never stands out at all, there are also lots of overly long silent moments and, specially, Natsuko's voice was awful, I looked for her seiyuu, Satomi Koorogi, and I found that she only voices child characters like Ushio from Clannad After Story, Himawari from Shin Chan, or even Togepi from Pokemon, and I'm completely clueless about why was she picked to voice Natsuko's character.

Overall I have to say that the OVA of Kurage no Shokudou is not worth watching due to the lack of clear ending and for overall being of poor quality.

Kurage no Shokudou is a brief 30 minutes story about dealing with the loss of someone significant to you. It is told through a few slow running scenes where up to two, sometimes three, characters interact. The biggest problem I have with the story is that it seems like it is setting up a premise for a story that it wants to start and due to that reason it doesn’t wrap up what it begins. If this was the first episode of an anime series or the first 30 minutes of a movie, this could’ve been a somewhat decent setup for what is to ... come, but as things are, the story merely presents you that two of the characters have unresolved issues about who they have lost and their situation at large, but doesn’t resolve those plot points because it does not have any time for the pace it has chosen to have. It presents a bunch of ideas in a fairly decent manner, but does not wrap up any of them. Its conclusion is that the characters presented are finally ready to start the process of dealing with their issues, making the whole thing seem unresolved.

To me it seems as an attempt for presenting a pilot to a board of directors to see whether or not they would decide they want a long running series or an experiment on whether or not this type of story is gonna get any traction. But if you just present the premise and reach no conclusion in a short story, the viewers will only consider that they have wasted their time and be thankful that it was not more than 30 minutes they have lost.

The scenes were structured in a way that presents a bunch of information and interactions in a relatively comprehensive way, with each scene slowing down to make sure you grasp every moment presented to you on screen. Which is fine if you have enough time to present the events you are trying to. It’s very nice to go far and beyond and ensure that the outcome of each of your scenes has the intended outcome, but if you cannot achieve that outcome, it’s a safer bet to focus on the process rather than the outcome. In this case, an approach where each event flowed dynamically into the next and the pace was faster might’ve helped in more ways than you would expect. First of all the setup would’ve had less information, meaning that the story would have less things to wrap up and more time to focus on an worthwhile conclusion and make it seem like there is more going on in the story by presenting less information. Second is that by having a faster pace the 30 minutes could’ve felt more eventful, and not seem like it was filled with a bunch of really slow running scenes, which while visually and cinematographically decently executed, I can summarize the events probably in less than four sentences.

There’s no payoff for experiencing this story. If you watch an action anime, the payoff is that after you see a confrontation unfold you see who is the winner and how that changes both characters. If you watch a drama, the payoff is that after you see two or more people experience an issue, you see how that impacts their lives in significant ways moving forward. And there are countless other examples. But here, no payoff is given.

I don’t recommend watching this story because there’s really nothing you can obtain out of the story in a plain manner. This type of theme has been explored as a subplot in various other media and stories and probably have seen the payoff a bunch of times, since it is a relatable topic and the characters can only be defined by the issues they have. You understand who they are quite clearly, but that is not enough to make them distinguishable. As a story, it is forgettable and nothing you have not experienced before.

However if you are interested in storytelling, you can go for it. It is interesting to see a story that makes no glaring mistakes that presents you with a good deal of details, but ultimately fail as one because of the fact it has no payoff. It highlights unintentionally that any story in order to have felt worthwhile, it needs to have a payoff. It needs to offer you some satisfaction. It can present you the full picture with as many details as possible. If none of the threads presented are concluded or explored beyond „they exist” then there is no point to even presenting any of the information to the viewer. It is a relatively easy to digest example, so give it a shot if that is something that interests you. But if it is for entertainment value, I wouldn’t bother.

I really struggled with how to rate this one, it had a lot of promise, but it fell way short of what it could have been. The story needed to be elaborated a lot more than what it was, and it felt like nothing was really explained to the audience (N.B. this might be better handled in the Light Novels, but in the OVA it was handled poorly). I feel like if this was a 90-minute movie it would have been better paced. I can get where others were seeing a bit of shonen-ai during this, but since none of the characters were completely fleshed ... out, it was impossible to know. All in all, it could have been done better, but I have definitely seen worse.