HaiiroTama said:More of the same this week, I see. Still has awkward editing at times, awkward moments where it stays on someone's face for too long, awkward scenes where people laugh at things for way too long... Still too slow of a pace, Naho is still way too passive and frustrating about everything. Still too much generic small talk that still hasn't made me care about any of the characters. Kakeru is starting to get more talkative but he seems to just be looking down on Naho a lot of the time, if this is supposed to be a romantic interaction it comes off more as "Kakeru is being annoying and Naho just kind of deals with it because she has a crush and can't possibly respond to things in a prompt or direct way." Seriously, I can barely tell the difference between when she's trying to make any kind of decision regarding the letters and when she's sad because Kakeru accepted that random girl's confession, she has no range of emotion and doesn't do anything. And at the end they reveal that Kakeru probably killed himself, which I'm pretty sure most of us were expecting from the start. His letter was pretty generic, yes it was interesting that they revealed his suicide by making him address his letter to everyone else rather than himself, but like he talked about how Naho is modest, that one guy is good at soccer, and just meaningless stuff about the different characters. Maybe if I was part of their friend group it would have mattered, or maybe if the characters themselves were interesting it would have mattered, but as it is the letter wasn't sad, it just reminded them that he's dead and now they know it was probably suicide.
So far the only things that I can understand as being potentially interesting are Kakeru's dead mom and the fact that he kills himself later. But those things aren't inherently sad, the mom story was told so dispassionately, it was so matter-of-fact and had nothing serious surrounding it so I don't see why people would be sad about that. Kind of like, that's just more information, the scene itself wasn't set up to evoke any emotion. The scene where they find out that Kakeru committed suicide could have been sad, but so far characters have only had boring small talk so I don't know or care about any of them so seeing them get sad does nothing yet. Maybe once the series decides to start giving personality to the characters I'll be able to come back and watch this and it'll seem more sad, but for now it was just a predictable twist that showed the characters crying. This anime does a lot of showing the characters feeling emotion without evoking any emotion in me. As someone that regularly cries while watching even somewhat mediocre anime, I'm really surprised at how emotional people say this is when I feel nothing but annoyance towards it.
I'm still trying to enjoy each episode though. I set aside my annoyance while I'm watching and only start focusing on it after I finish the episode, besides that I'm trying really hard to get invested in the characters but it makes it so hard to do that when the characters are so flat and don't say or do anything. Words come out but none of it matters to me, it's not important to pay attention to because unless it has something to do with the letters it won't progress the plot and none of it has built up any of their personalities.
I feel like I've stumbled upon an anime that for me does everything wrong, but has a community backing it that thinks it does everything right. My "boring" is other people's "realistic," my "annoyingly passive" is other people's "relatable," my "predictable and dispassionate" is other people's "feels." I'm gonna have to drop it after this episode, clearly this anime was not meant for me. I may read the manga though, I can read through that at a pace that is nearly 4x as fast as the anime goes, which feels a little bit more natural considering how little the dialogue matters so far. I hope everyone that likes this anime enjoys the rest of it though.