Welcome to a journy full of overused and completely misplaced standart jokes and tons of other failures!
Welcome to a still somehow enjoyable time!
A few months ago - I was searching for new series for my List - I incidentally saw the Illustrations from Nourin and was at least a little bit impressed. I thought that just maybe this would turn out as a pretty good series ... and I was wrong!
To be honest the farmer clothes and the tractor already made it look kinda suspicious but I didn't know anything about the story so there was a little hope left in me. Unaware of the thruth I was really looking forward to watching this so my impressions of it are probably even worse right now.
Well let's get down to the point! I'll first describe the cons, then the pros and then the whole thing in short!
Have you ever seen a series where each Episode has various different contents and none of them are properly finished? I haven't before so i was extremely shocked! You don't even understand what I'm talking about? Makes sense! Let me explain it:
Just like many other series most Nourins Episodes aren't connected to each other except from the story background (all four main charas together in the countryside, fields, tractor, tomatos, whatever ... ). So the main story of Episode X has no deeper connections to the main story of Episode Y. The makers of Nourin probably thought this wasn't enough and doubled the No-Connection-Effect. Now in almost every Episode the first half is completely unrelated to the second half so basically every little story gets about ten minutes. Of course it's nearly impossible to finish a story in ten minutes. So what did they do to end every of these storys? They just cut them off somewhere in the middle of the end - time lapse for the win!
Unfortunately that's not the only problem! Almost every comedy series has it: the standard anime jokes. From the unmarried lonely teacher to the typical BL jokes ... you know what I'm talking about! Even though these jokes are completely overused they still can be kinda funny if they're placed at the right time and with the right context. About 99% of the jokes in Nourin are these kind of jokes. Unluckily they are completely misplaced and the context isn't funny either! It's not true that I never laughed while watching this series ... I can even remember one slightly funny moment! But still for a Rom-Com the jokes are just way to generic and misplaced.
Another thing is the placement of Oh-so-epic-Moments. You can say what you want, farming is NOT epic! It's impossible to take to take the typical School-Roof-Epic-Weather-Epic-Quotes or the Epic-Romantic-Encourage-Talk-Through-Door scene whe all know from various romance animes seriously when the characters are talking about farming! There are so many topics that can be made epic in the right moment. However tractors and soy boans are a entirely different matter!
Just as incomplete as the the ending of the most story parts is the ending of the whole series. I don't want to spoiler anyone so I won't tell the details but i can say that almost everything in the last few episodes sucked. Even the good moments sucked because there was still no solution of the bad moments. To make it even worse the finally appearing solution is completely half-assed and can't really be called a solution. So in short the current ending sucks and is incomplete! If eventually a few years later another season has been finished with a real ending I'll increase the rating to 7 or more according to the new ending.
There are a lot more aspects to complain about but I described the biggest problems so let's leave this aside for now!
The best thing about Nourin is definitely the Artwork. Both colours and illustrations are beautifull. Even for a 2014-series it's still breathtaking! However at least in my opinion it's too much hentailike for example the breasts of Minori or Yoshida are way too big. You could argue that it's like that because the story says they have big breasts but in my opinion this is more than just big breasts. I think it's a bit disgusting but okay ...
Another Pro is the sound. The OP and ED are a bit corny but I've seen far worse. The background sound is stereotypical but that's normal. The best thing of the sound are the voice actors though. Top actors like Yukari Tamura bring live into the plain story. One exception though is Wataru Hatano (known from Mikakunin de Shinkoukei, Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu or Papa no Iukoto wo Kikinasai)! In my opinion his voice is completely out of the place here and to be honest in his previous roles i thought the same.
The characters are okay too. While I'll better ignore the main character Hata and his childhood friend Minori I have to say that the character of Kinoshita was really likeable! Her emotions and inner conflicts are expressed pretty good. She's nothing really completely special though so don't except something you've never seen before!
The last pro is the enjoyment. Believe it or not this series is enjoyable! It's neither one of the series where you laugh all the time or one of the series with heartbreaking moments but except of the last two episodes you have a constant feeling of happyness while watching it. The reason for this is that Nourin constantly shows an ideal world. Every problem, every fight gets solved in a few minutes! Because of this you shouldn't expect really exciting moments though ...
Everything in short with a few more pros and cons!
Cons:
- horrible story cuts
- misplaced standard jokes
- misplaced epic moments
- incomplete ending
- way too big breasts
- Wataru Hatano
- rather lame plot
- romance? sou ka ...
Pros:
- breathtaking Artwork
- neat Soundtrack and good voice actors
- a few good characters
- a few funny moments
- enjoyable!
Overall this series IS enjoyable but that doesn't change the facts that it's sometimes at the borderline to stupidness and also incomplete! I'd definitely like to see another season - with a lot of improvements and a real (hopefully Hata x Kinoshita) ending!
