Sasameki Koto

If you’re a girl looking to good sapphic representation- please look elsewhere. Like Citrus and NTR: Trap, it’s very obvious that Sasameki Koto was written with men who like to watch girls kissing in mind other than actual sapphic women. This anime features a large breasted (and often objectified for that reason) airhead that has a crush on a girl solely for her looks and is coveted by her socially awkward and somewhat perverted best friend. Most of the side characters are uninteresting or disturbing like the only boy in the series who has a crush on Sumika but was forced into cross dressing by ... his little sister. There is a scene in a restaurant where he and Sumika go out to eat while he is still dressed like a girl and it’s very difficult to watch. He goes to open a packet of creamer and it splashed on his face while he whimpers and winces (on one hand to show femininity and the other as an innuendo which you can probably assume by now). The whole story is a will-they-or-won’t-they between Ushio and Sumika and by the end of it, I could only think “they’re perfect for each other because they’re both bad characters”. I’d give this show a 3/10 at best (because the soundtrack was pretty decent and it had a fine art style for it’s time) but as for characters and plot, it was abyssmal. I do not recommend.

I didn’t understand why this was rated so low at first, and then I discovered it was because people were mad at the sudden ending. Then I read the manga, and was much more satisfied after that.

Sasameki Koto is one of those yuri shows that I feel like deserves more attention. Nice art style, good music (although, a bit lacking at times,) and the comedy is great. As a girl who like girls myself, I can safely say I enjoyed it thoroughly.

This is one of those rare yuri anime that caught my interest more quickly than the others, because the plot isn’t just “new ... shy and meek transfer student girl has a crush on the strong and powerful school star girl.”

Sumika Murasame is portrayed as strong due to her karate skills, but she’s also portrayed as a total dork trying to get Ushio’s attention and it’s adorable. (Also, these sorts of yuri tales are almost always shown in the point of view of the “softer” girl.) Ushio is great because she’s wonderfully oblivious of Sumika’s love, and she’s quite overt about her feelings for girls that’s both comedic and empowering.

I also enjoyed the side characters. Kiyori is cheerfully blunt and Tomoe’s particularly interesting for a princely type.

On the other hand, I despised Miyako and Aoi. Their existence brought down my score a little, actually. Aoi especially grinded my gears with her over-the-top persona.

Another thing that brought down my score was the fact that the last few episodes (aside from 11, I suppose,) were pretty filler. There’s even a few filler chapters after that in the manga, which I believe could have been cut completely and replaced with the ending from the first manga omnibus.

As for sound, hit or miss. The soundtrack was nice at times but boring at others. The main song “Kiss,” is delightful, and the theme song in my opinion is amazing. But the music at least never feels overly out of place, even if boring at times.

I suppose that’s all I really have to say for now. Hope you agreed with some of my points.

Sasameki Koto is a unique hidden gem in shoujo ai anime.
There are common tropes that most genres eventually fall into and cycle through beat for beat, but Sasameki Koto takes it's story into a unique direction and gives you a breath of fresh air.

There are tangible moments of heartache and longing that this series really makes you feel, and often they can come out of nowhere right after you were just grinning at how ridiculous the scene before it was. The set up is always pretty perfect to bring you up and then send you crashing back down. This made Sasameki Koto kind of an ... emotional rollercoaster at times.

The OP song is beautiful but gets overused in the show itself. The art sometimes has some weird CG and characters suffer a lot from same face syndrome but they handle the ugly cry scenes so well that it makes me want to give it a pass.

There are different levels of relationships explored throughout, but the longing, lonely feeling you get from wanting something you can't have in fear of losing what was there in the first place will hit home for almost anyone who has ever been in that situation.

Sourpatch!

Sweet sour candy!!

Sour candy!!!

Refreshing...

Now Whispered words is everything.

... Plot: Good story.

This is an unrequited love story and one I could deeply relate with. I saw sasameki Koto sometimes last year and I loved it so much, i distinguished it with Aoi Hana and found that I choose it over the latter.

Shoujo-Ai is my second favourite tag, held the top spot for years but I grew older and crazy he he. But this, when I saw this it melted my heart.
I rarely watch anime at a go, when I started I couldn't stop till my battery ran dry, yeah I watched it on phone.
The progression of the story is an ordinary everyday life sequence in school, plenty you might have seen if you've watched many anime like this. it hurts so much you know? I mean I just think back to school, highschool and honestly I have no fantastic memories whatsoever. Lol, I don't even contact any of my ex-classmates, talkless of friends or even much crushes cause I never was in a relationship like that.
Lol, enough about me, I suck! This anime is really good, great carry out of the story, nice dialogues and heavy nolstagia for me, I just feel it so much.
I could watch it again but I wouldn't, I'll just be so sad seeing it again.

The ending of the anime was golden; unfinished, beautiful, and just freakin nolstagic.

Art: Good Art.

I liked the Artstyle of this, was refreshing watching it. Not much to say here.

Sound: Masterpiece.

I never skipped the Opening of this song like once. The music used throughout is so fucking good, the feels and all. This anime has one of my favourite soundtracks, I just love it all.

Characters: 8/10.

The Characters are great. Although the one who liked cute girls was annoying a bit I got over her, I learnt she was real in a sense. I mean a lot of people like the cute ones lol.

The others were superb.

Enjoyment: 10/10

Ate this shit up. So good.

Overall A fucking good anime.

The score for this is tragic lol, but I don't care, my opinion is all that counts.

Whispering Words has some decent aspects, but all in all, it doesn't do anything to really stick out.

Story: Whispering Words is a Shoujo-Ai, taking place in a high school where we meet our main characters, Sumika and Ushio. They've known each other for a while now, however, Sumika's developed a pretty hard crush on Ushio, who is completely oblivious to this. We view the everyday lives of these characters, and those around them, until we see what ultimately comes of their relationship. The beginning starts out strong and we get a strong sense of how our two characters are and where we ... want to be.

The main problem here is that the plot doesn't proceed save for some baby steps. Don't get me wrong. The finale is great and was really touching. But it feels like the type of episode that should be somewhere in the middle. This clearly shows that they know what makes up a good episode, but there just aren't enough of these moments. The characters get very involved and I honestly enjoyed it. But they explored Sumika and Ushio's relationship at such a slow pace, that there wasn't a satisfying conclusion at the end. Series like these tend to have very long term stories and unfortunately, they just can't fit together in a thirteen episode series. This is what the entire anime felt like it was suppose to aim towards and it didn't get close enough. (5/10)

Characters: The characters as a whole are mostly hit or miss for me. Sumika's the class representative, though she doesn't really come off as super popular to us. She's very athletic due to her previous involvement in the karate studio that her dad runs. As previously mentioned, she has a crush on Ushio, but has a very difficult time summing up the courage to tell her. She is actually pretty reserved until one of her friends does something that would make her outburst, akin to a character like Naruto. It did get on my nerves a few times, just because it was getting more frequent the more the series went on. However, she does have strong morals and does look out for her family and friends. However, the finale does not do justice to her character.
Sumika's best friend, Ushio makes it pretty well known that she likes girls, which is already different from many other series within the genre. However, she openly makes it known that she likes, what she calls, "cute" girls. She clearly judges more on appearance than anything else. This isn't a problem really, as this doesn't interfere with the plot too much. She lives with her brother, where she mostly acts as the responsible one. However, past these, we don't get a ton of insight into Ushio's life.

Kiyori is a strange one. She's one of Sumika and Ushio's friends, and she's in a lot of scenes but... she doesn't add much. Her personality is somewhat predictable and she doesn't even act upon what she sees between her two friends. Introduced about halfway through, Azusa is an aspiring writer that Sumika helps shortly after she's brought into the main story. She isn't noticed much in school because of her mostly reserved nature, but she has great aspirations. In the middle of the story, her and two other characters act as observers to Sumika and Ushio's complicated relationship with each other and while she makes a key observation on the bus once, I wish they followed this up. Tomoe & Miyako are a pair of Sumika's classmates that are (but not really, secretly) dating, they attempt to form a "Girl's Club" as a passable club. Miyako's kind of a follower, while also being a little nosy, but Tomoe's a perfect compliment to her, Tomoe, like Azusa, notices Sumika's problems about halfway through, but again, this doesn't accelerate the plot as much as you'd like. This makes me wonder what the point of introducing this pair into the plot was because they don't add much if the end goal approaches so sluggishly. Masaki is another minor character and his point to the plot is actually very clear. He adds an interesting layer to some of the episodes and I actually found myself liking him quite a bit. I kind of wonder if they had more to his characters should this series have continued, but he had some comedic relief in some small spots here or there. Sumika's really the only one who interacts with him much though.

This cast has some fantastic characters and some... less than fantastic ones. The problem is that character development on a lot of them was absent in places I would have liked to see more. Some of the side characters are introduced well into the series, so this limits room to develop them, but Sumika and Ushio didn't develop nearly as much as I would have liked. (6/10)

Art: Keeping in mind that this series is over ten years old, the art was mostly fine. They did tend to use still-pictures during the transition scenes, but it never got in the way of anything. There were no obvious problems here. (7/10)

Sound: I really didn't care for the short track that reoccurred in the the OST. It obviously felt like a light track, but I felt like it stuck out too much and didn't add enough - or wasn't used in the right spots. Furthermore, I didn't care for either the OP or ED. The voice cast were fine - as with most Japanese voice cast. Like the art, no obvious problems there. (7/10)

Overall Enjoyment: I have a hard time giving this a strong rating, just because it had such potential and very little of it was followed up on. We've had a few series where the plot feels stunted due to the short series length, and it's really tough to swallow each time. When you develop your characters so little, especially together, you're going to have a tough time engaging your audience. (6/10)

Sasameki Koto definitely was a hell of a slog to finish. The show was so slowly and poorly paced, and it's not hard to see why. A mere chapter was adapted per episode, and when you compare the manga to the anime, you can see various embellishments and utter useless scenes being put in the anime to have a frustratingly slow paced show whose sole purpose of being slow paced was to make sure the animators needed to animate as little as possible.
Unfortunately, Sasameki Koto suffers more than just poor pacing. I actually kind of enjoy the main cast of characters in the Girls club. ... Tomoe, Kiyori, and Tamae are fun additions to the story, but the other side characters are superfluous and fail to make an impact on the story other than pitiful attempts of drama and comic relief.
I assume that Sasameki Koto is more of a romance and slice of life show than a slapstick comedy show, yet why is it that it borrows so much from the latter? For a show to be all about unrequited love with Sumika hopelessly in love with Ushio and the story making a big deal about it, why is it that Akemiya, who is in the same situation, being trivialized as comic relief for the show? Sumika and Akemiya are both in the same boat, yet the show does not really care about Akemiya at all other than for him to make a fool of himself as a crossdresser and being pushed around by Sumika, who also is uncaring and lacks empathy for his situation.
The same can be said about Aoi, who is a complete waste of space and time in the story. Her introduction into the story can be said to be unnecessary, and only brought it because it accelerates the plot and brings in a level of jealousy for Ushio. Her conflict is barely relevant to the plot, and you really wonder why she ever got introduced in the story to begin with.
As for Sumika herself, she too, acts like an idiot half the time. Remember what I said about slapstick comedies? Sometimes, Sumika acts like a lovestruck idiot that goes beyond being infatuated with Ushio for the sake of "comedy" but all it does is make me lose any interest in her as a character since the show tries to portray her unrequited love as a painful thing, yet also tries to create low-level humor out of it as well.
With all my complaints, I'm probably still going to read it later, just because I am a bit curious as to what happens. As for the quality of the show? Not great. I think that the yuri theme of the story fits a decent bit, but at the same time, there's not too much involvement with the seriousness of that particular theme, but the show doesn't tokenize the characters and doesn't try to milk the genre, so you got that going for it.