Ef: A Tale of Memories is the anime adaptation of the adult visual novel "Ef: The First Tale" and is a romance anime revolving around two primary storylines. The first follows protagonist Hiro Hirono, a professional manga artist, who works his way into a love triangle with a girl whom he meets on Christmas Eve, Miyako Miyamura, and a childhood friend of his, Kei Shindou. Hiro becomes friends with Miyako one Christmas Eve when Miyako steals his bike to chase after someone who stole her purse. However, she soon gives up and Hiro finds her unconscious with his bike completely ruined. After Miyako wakes up, the two spend the rest of Christmas Eve together and end up developing strong feelings towards each other. When Kei finds out about this relationship she has a hard time dealing with her own feelings towards Hiro and ends up making a tremendously dramatic time. In the second storyline, we have protagonist Renji Asou who meets a girl at an abandoned train station, Chihiro Shindou, and promises to be her first and only friend. He finds out that she can only retain thirteen hours of memory due to a tragic childhood accident and has a hard time finding ways to keep a meaningful relationship with the girl as he becomes very fond of her. These storylines and concepts are far from unheard of, and have lately become quite common at that, but the way that the story is written is more powerful than what I initially expected. The show does its best job at making genuine conflict as well as fitting in a perfect amount of character development that makes you form very strong feelings and opinions about every character, but I digress. The way that the story and character interactions are written is so perfect at moments that it's impossible for your mind to be focussed on anything other than the events currently happening. Both Hiro and Renji's stories are unique in their own rights but find ties to each other and make both stories relevant towards a common storyline. Along with the visuals, the story helps create an incredibly addictive property that the anime holds to its name, making you want to come back and watch it as again as soon as you can. Though, with the positive said, there was still plenty wrong with the way the story was presented. This was mainly in weak moments that felt incredibly awkward to watch and left me feeling that the scene could have been far better written. These moments are easily overbalanced by all of the positives that this show has to offer, but they are still present enough to affect the overall experience of this show.
As far as the characters are concerned, we're given a moderately large cast that are all (more or less) unique...or at least are presented this way. When initially presented with each one, you get the feeling that you've never experienced a character quite like them before, but as the show progresses they begin fitting more into the usual tropes. This isn't to say that ALL of the unique qualities that every character originally had completely vanishes over time, but they do fade to the point where you can label almost every character with one of the dere types. If I had to pick a weakest suit that this show has to offer, the characters would be my go-to decision. Despite the way that they transform into duller forms of themselves, the way that the characters are initially presented is nearly perfect. No character introduction feels awkward and no two introductions are remotely the same. The same goes for the characters themselves. While they do fit into archetypes as if that was that they were written for, each one feels solid and no character is like another. Both of our protagonists feel unique in the way they go about everything and all of the supporting characters fit their own unique ways to help support the show. The way the show kept the cast nice and diverse in ways, helped the fact that half of every character was an archetype. This way, despite that we've already seen every character in the past (if we're avid anime watchers) they were spread out enough so that it didn't stick out and wasn't a real problem unless you're extremely picky about those types of things.
The animation in this show was something that caught me off guard and will continue to have that special place in my heart as the first anime I watched by Studio SHAFT, and I have yet to see a single show out-do the extremely unique animation style that was done in both of the Ef series. There was something unique and symbolic on the screen at all times and every last scene popped out. The animation was unique to the point where it dictated the mood of the scene and amplified already existing moods beyond that which any other aspect of presentation could ever do. The animation is something I've yet to even see SHAFT do again and looks like all of the aspects of animation they were practicing before later dividing it up into the different animation styles the perfected for shows such as Monogatari and Madoka Magica. While many might argue that the sheer amount of CGI usage was completely unnecessary for the production, I beg to differ as in my eyes it added to the presentation in an absolutely perfect way. Nothing was ever flat, nothing was ever static, and every setting was clear and impossible to mix up with any other. I would try to describe the animation, but the only real way to understand how unique the setting is animated is by experiencing it yourself. The characters were animated in a way that everyone looked gorgeous to a point that's better than modern anime character animation. I, honestly, would go as far to say that the animation in this show was perfect. When watching through the show for the first time, I saw absolutely no flaws in the animation and was awed by it in a way that only ufotable has been able to do since then.
The soundtrack in this anime wasn't too special. It fit the scenes well but not in any way that was drastically outstanding. The opening is a nice "Engrish" song that is one of my favourite anime openings to date, but nothing else in Ef: A Tale of Memories' soundtrack was special in any way. The voice acting was superb, every voice sounded as if it fit its character perfectly with the exception of one character: Chihiro. Chihiro’s voice actress, in my opinion, was a terrible casting choice. This isn't to say that her voice actress, Natsumi Yanase, is a bad voice actress as some of her other roles I found were perfect for her character, but when voicing Chihiro her voice felt like an awkward last-minute casting decision that could have been given to a number of better voices for Chihiro's part.
With all this said, I personally enjoyed Ef: A Tale of Memories a lot. As a matter of fact, Ef is my personal favourite romance anime to date. Something about it just appealed to me in every way shape and form and lead to me having a very good time watching it, even with all of its flaws. It has appealed to me in a way that even makes me interested in the visual novel it was based off of. For anyone with a soft spot for drama and romance shows, this one is perfect for you. Everything was done in a way that still holds to be good at the time of writing this review and is an experience I would gladly suggest to anyone. Every aspect of the presentation works perfectly together and if even one piece was slightly lacking or slightly overdone then the show wouldn't be as perfectly flawed as it is now. Studio SHAFT did an outstanding job with this series and if you haven't yet, I suggest watching it very soon. I give Ef: A Tale of Memories a 7 out of 10.
