Tsurezure Children

Your usual highschool romance.

Except it's not.

Tsurezure children represents an interesting pattern that no anime did before, instead of havinga main character, and the story around him/her, you have tons of pairs, and all of them are "main characters".

Some of them get together early, some later, some don't at all, you have so many options to see, that's why it's unique.

If you like one pair, it sucks when you know you'll barely see them, as there are many more pairs, but if you dislike a pair, you know you won't be seeing them much.

Overall I enjoyed Tsurezure children. I think the strongest point of it ... was the interesting and huge cast of characters. Instead of the usual "dense MC", "Tsundere" and such tropes, you have more complex characters, each with his or her own tricks.

The only problem is that it didnt have enough time to really cover up much, if I choose one pair and take all the time together, they barely have even one full length (24min) episode. And Tsurezure Children's episodes are only 12 minutes. While it was interesting seeing many pairs, at some point I felt like I want to just erase a few pairs so I can focus on the ones I love.

Some pairs just stopped existing, and I wish I could've seen my favorite pairs instead of the pairs that stole screen time. Each minute is important.

I RECOMMEND it, it's also half the time of a normal one cour series, so it shouldnt take much time to watch, 9/10

Romance is a universal theme in the lives of many people. It’s something almost everyone must face at some point in their adolescence, whether they choose go through with it or not. How would you confess? How much do you love someone? How do you hide your crushes? What forms a successful romance? Are you shy or do you prefer to be flamboyant about it? In what ways, do you communicate with those you care about? Watch these questions and more be answered in Tsurezure Children, a playful set of comedic shorts all centered around one thing, the struggles of young love and budding relationships.

Each ... episode is only 12 minutes long, about half the length of your average anime episode, and in these shorts, there is usually 4 different stories about the hardships and struggles of young love. With 12 episodes, there are 48 different scenarios around one general subject. You might think this results in playing the same joke repeatedly but surprisingly, no. Almost every 3-minute story has its own subject matter relating to the general base to show that yes, love and early relationships are rarely handled the same way for anyone. These shorts can be about anything from awkward text misunderstandings, the aftermath of on-the-spot confessions, trying to help a friend talk to a girl, trying to say how much you like someone in a unique way, escaping the friend zone and many more. While not all of these shorts were comedy gold, and a few were kind of annoying, a majority them did get me to chuckle while watching, due to some of the character quirks and very unexpected outcome in a few more. The plots in general feel written for this format, to have a beginning, middle and end for every one and in doing that, the writing is really solid, even if the characters sometimes fail to distinguish as well as the plots.

The show features a decently handled cast of those in their adolescence, with about 5-6 character pairs and two main recurring ones in every vignette. For the most part, characterization is pretty basic, with many of the plots being defined by how much a character is feeling love anxiety for another, but there are a few exceptions. The inquisitive Akagi and the incredibly flamboyant Shinichi were standouts for their more eccentric nature going beyond the simple idea of love anxiety. Props to their voice actors for making their personalities come alive. Everyone else is generally fine. They seem to act like typical teenagers with the whole “anime reaction shot” gimmicks, but are less memorable for their characters and moreso for the stories they are a part of, and towards how the animation conveys their feelings. At the same time, this is another credit to the short format of the series: that no one character overstays their welcome. If it ever gets close, you’ll shift to another pair for the comedy to continue.

As far as presentation goes, it’s generally pretty light. The animation by the have-yet-to-make a mark Studio Gokumi isn’t standout, with very typical designs, colored hair, typical scene composition and face structure (with exception to Takao Yamane’s frog face), as well as the school setting. At most, it’s functional, but I won’t go too hard on it given what it wants to convey is with writing and not visual spectacle, and that it does, along with the voice acting, help in playfully exaggerating the nervous and the flamboyant personalities. In terms of music, it’s also generally typical. The OP is a basic pop tune that isn’t too memorable or exciting, background music is generally fine, but I must give credit for the handling of the ED. It is fashioned like a typical climax moment song in most romantic dramas, but the usage makes it more special than that. Rather than it having separate visuals once the plot resolves, it plays as the last scene of the episode plays out. The expressively dramatic song both helps the romantic resolutions made in each episode’s last short, and also serves to oxymoron if the scene is bombastic and silly. It’s a nice touch that makes certain scenes funnier than they would be otherwise when sending off the episodes at the end.

Conclusion
In a season remembered less than fondly by horny psycho gambling nonsense, the most boring and derivative Fate entry yet, and the insipid lewdness of Hajimete no Gal, this was a bright bulb. Not the most original or creatively animated series, but for shorts, they were very charming and pleasant. I would recommend the series if you want a nice sweet time passer that reminds you what your teenage love life was like. Next time I’ll be covering the season’s biggest critical darling Made in Abyss. See you all then.

(the final volume for the source material should be out sometime this Summer - it's a good time to read the series if you hadn't already. And please, ditch this mess)

To simplify the issue: they removed half the cast through-out the series solely to focus on four couples - but in doing so, it removed 3/4 of what made "Tsurezure Children" so good in the first place.
And then BEYOND that, they chopped up scenes and mostly reorganized them so that the pacing was trash and ... wait, why is it only focused on two couples now? Wasn't it supposed to be four? Weren't ... there tidbits of a few other couples? What??


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STORY (7/10)
The source material is nearly-flawless, if not completely so. If you want to actually enjoy this series - you REALLY have to go and read it. And then you might as well treat this adaption as a plague because, really, it was given so much to work with ... and then ignored everything that could've made this bearable. I'd far prefer a lower art score than a truly well-written series get treated as trash.
Oh, yeah, the reason it's a 7 is because they DIDN'T ADD ANYTHING to the story. They chopped it up horribly and glued them back in an inconsistent mess; minus 2/4 couples the opted to keep (Chiaki/Kana, Sugayan/Takano). If I didn't know the actual story from the source material, this series would have a story grade of 2/10. Because, yeah, no. No.


ART (5/10)
To be honest, I'm mostly biased because I dislike this overly-bright art style. It's not very fun to watch animated. But it was mostly consistent so that was nice. But, nah. Quite boring to look at. And very distracting without much shade variety.


SOUND (5/10)
It... was noticeably a poor budget. Half the reason I suspect they chopped half the series out was because they couldn't afford a larger cast. Which I can get, but it still sucks they didn't instead lower the art quality some for the broadcast so they could've tried doing a better job.
But yeah, the music and sfx were fine. Basic, but fine. Main issue was the mics - some lines were clearly said so low they came with static, some were so painfully close to the mic that it never sounded realistic, and even one line I recall was shouted so well that the (tiny) room's reverb was louder than the lines themselves. So it got distracting there, but the team DID choose good VAs for the roles they (eventually) animated.


CHARACTER (10/10)
THIS IS IN NO WAY THANKS TO THE ANIME ADAPTION TEAM - THE WRITERS HAVE NO PART IN THIS BECAUSE OTHER THAN CHOPPING THINGS UP TO HAVE A LACKLUSTER ADAPTION, =THEY= DIDN'T DO ANYTHING.
AGAIN: READ THE ACTUAL SOURCE MATERIAL BECAUSE THIS ADAPTION RUINED EVERYTHING SO GOOD ABOUT IT.


ENJOYMENT (2/10)
I'm being UNREASONABLY generous here. I... really couldn't enjoy it. They chose great voice actors, but the fact they removed so much of the source material for this... and then pretended they didn't do as such in the first and final episode... yeah, no. I don't trust this team. I feel personally attacked from watching this mess.

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OVERALL (3/10)
Screw it - just avoid this series if you're able to read the comic. Everything that makes this series so good is hardly transferred into this adaption. Which is a shame BECAUSE THIS ADAPTION DIDN'T DO ANYTHING BUT CUT THINGS OUT. Oh, and they paced things horribly 'cause I guess they didn't know wtf direction to take this; should they include more cast, or include only the four couples? Short answer: I regret them making adapting this.

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TL;DR: Ditch this adaption because nothing worth watching it for was included. Unless you absolutely only liked the source material for Chiaki/Kana and Sugayan/Takano. Then by all means, feel free to rate this 10/10 loll