W: Wish

For a short series, W Wish is actually a very good anime. Considering that there's only 13 episodes here and each episode contains only 9 minutes of actual story content, I am absolutely blown away just by how well the pacing was done here. It is flawless. This anime doesn't feel rushed in any way whatsoever.

The story itself is fairly simple, a young guy named Junna Tono lives his days blissfully with his twin sister Senna. They go together to the same school, live in the same house and share every moment together. Beyond this blissful setting however lies a dark past that revolves around ... the day his parents died in a car accident. What exactly happened? Lo and behold, the central premise of this anime is born. From there on the story will almost exclusively revolve around Junna, his twin sister and one more character - Inohara Haruhi, as he struggles to remember the past.

So the story, while simple and often predictable, does have a certain element of novelty to it. It is a decent story, through and through. I also applaud the fact that 'W Wish' did not lose its focus at any time, it solely focused on the premise, had brilliant pacing and in the end managed to answer ALL the questions. All too often series like this will start dishing out fillers or plot irrelevant episodes. Not here however which is a positive considering the short time span of each episode.

The characters were likeable and realistic portrayals of teenagers. I felt that Junna, especially, fit perfectly in to this kind of story. Surprised by his memories of past, he not always knows what to do. I found that to be a nice break from male leads that are always in control of the situation, which is fairly romantic but not always consistent with reality - depending on the situation. Likewise the female characters nicely contributed to the story, even though for the most part the anime focuses only on Haruhi and Senna. Some viewers might be disgruntled by the implied romantic vibes between Junna and his sister but then again we are dealing with a different culture here. This wouldn't be the first time siblings or otherwise close family members are shown to have romantic feelings for each other in Japanese media.

The art fairly good and accurate. The style itself is very appealing and attention was paid not only to the characters but also background, static objects etc. The only issue here would be long distance drawing; the characters are over-simplified at certain distances but that is common to virtually all animes.

The music itself is nothing special to be honest, I found the OST to be lacking slightly. On the other hand the voice acting was authentic so I guess the sound department as a whole can be considered fairly good.

All things considered, a very good anime. Predictable but nevertheless decent story, flawless pacing, realistic characters and an OK sound department. As I mentioned before the romance aspect can be off-puting to some but even with a slight knowledge of anime, one will know that incest is a frequent theme in Japanese media. I for one enjoyed it as it was presented in an innocent, non-lustful way.

Altogether, "W Wish" gets 8 points from me.