Story - 5/10
The story begins with a group of four high school friends. Takayuki has just recently become friends with the star of the swim team, Hayase Mitsuki. Mitsuki introduces him to a shy friend of hers named Suzumiya Haruka, who happens to have a crush on Takayuki. Mitsuki helps set the two of them up (see where the School Days aspect is coming in), but Takayuki is still a little unsure about his feelings for Haruka and causes her some trouble due to his indecisiveness. It's clear that he has some feelings for Mitsuki which he has kept hidden, and it also is shown that Mitsuki has some for him as well. Nevertheless, not wanting to hurt Haruka, he finally manages to start acting like a good boyfriend.
However, tragedy soon strikes which sends Haruka into a coma for three years. And here comes the first of the many problems in this show: when someone comes out of a coma, it is not a good idea to lie to them about how long they were asleep. You can ease them into the fact that they slept for several years, but making them believe that they are still in high school for several weeks is just ridiculous.
Not only that, but Mr. Indecisive finally managed to move and ended up with Mitsuki. Everything seems to be going well until they hear that Haruka has woken up. And then (along with the lies from Takayuki that make Haruka believe he only has feelings for her), the love triangle resumes full force.
The show held up at around a 7 overall for me until around halfway through. While some things annoyed me earlier on, the real problems (and where the School Days part really comes in) around halfway and until the end are where I believe this show fails. The soap opera drama and dumb characters who make dumb decisions just destroy all of the romance this show originally had and instead leave a jumbled mess of lies, alcohol, and confusion.
Art - 7/10
Considering that Kimi ga Nozomu Eien is ten years old (it came out in 2003), the art is actually quite good. While it can't quite compare to Fullmetal Alchemist (sorry I haven't seen many other shows from around this time), it is by no means bad, and I actually like some of the characters designs quite a lot (especially for Akane, Haruka's younger sister). It does a good job of setting up the scenery and mood for the more dramatic scenes (even if the drama of the story often fails).
Sound - 5/10
The voice actors do a pretty good job throughout, but there's hardly any music that's noticeable. I noticed an interesting song in the second to last episode but other than that, paid no attention to it. For many scenes, there is just no music at all.
Character - 3/10
By far the worst category, while none of the characters seem bad initially, around episode 3 when the real drama starts, the characters slowly begin their journey towards the train wreck awaiting them. Takayuki (who probably inspired the indecisive Makoto from School Days) is by far the worst character in this show with the two main females characters following him for second and third place. After the tragedy that struck Haruka, Takayuki fell into depression for around a year and became a shut-in instead of going to college. Mitsuki was finally able to help him overcome his depression and since then he had not visited Haruka at all. He began working part-time at a family restaurant and began dating Mitsuki.
Mitsuki seems to have a phobia of people swimming after she lost an important preliminary race in high school after Haruka's accident. The whole drama surrounding this is kind of strange because they just drop it at some point without ever really addressing it at all. Mitsuki is also a bad, indecisive character except that her problems are pretty much all caused by Takayuki. Almost every problem in this show can be traced back to Takayuki due to the fact that the problems he causes Haruka and Mitsuki have a domino effect and strike the people around them.
Haruka is really only a bad character due to the writers' stupidity in deciding that it was a good idea to have the other characters hide the information that she was asleep for three years from her. They also added in some memory loss thing to try to explain why she didn't find it strange that her younger sister had grown half a foot and finished puberty during the time she was asleep or why Haruka's hair had grown to twice the length it was before. So she just continues on in the hospital fully believing that Takayuki is studying for his exams and loves her the same way he was before the accident.
The supporting characters are the one place where this anime does not completely fail. I actually like Haruka's sister, Akane, as she goes from a bratty middle schooler who enjoys teasing Takayuki about his relationship to a mature high schooler who truly loves her sister and tries her best to keep Takayuki from hurting her with his indecisiveness. The girls at the family restaurant where Takayuki works (Daikuuji and Mayu) are also good characters and are mostly there to provide some nice comic relief.
Enjoyment - 4/10
I did enjoy the first half quite a bit, but this show just dies and becomes a drawn out romantic mess after a while. Things slow down and I believe this anime might have been better off with a couple less episodes (maybe 11 or 12 instead of 14). You could get rid of some of the stupid, meaningless mistakes the characters make by doing that.
Overall - 5/10
While it has plenty of problems later on, Kimi ga Nozomu Eien does have a fairly good start. The art is also pretty good for it's time and some of the supporting characters are interesting. Still, the main characters and the idiotic decisions they make throughout the show keep this from being enjoyable and instead make it downright annoying. It's one of those shows where you just want to yell at the characters and tell them to stop being morons.
If you did enjoy this, then you may like School Days and Suzuka, which also has a similar love triangle and drama. If you want a much better anime that is somewhat similar to this, try Clannad (especially Clannad After Story).
