Watching original White Album anime is not required at all. This is a separate story. Interesting production values, environments and everything except characters and animation are great, and characters aren't bad at all either. But sometimes there are noticeable inconsistencies between scenes, and character animation that feels a bit static and not lively enough. But it's definitely passable and doesn't detract too much from the experience. First half was pretty great, it made me expect at least 9/10 and a potential 10/10. It's one of those shows that's hard to stop watching as you really wanna know what happens next. There's some great music, great romance and solid writing. I especially loved how it was actually about music, unlike 90% of the so called music themed shows out there,*khm*K-On!*khm*. Another obvious plus is that it takes itself seriously, so it's pretty much completely free of romcom anime logic and animeisms. Despite not being a comedy, it often made me laugh or chuckle out loud using rather tasteful and subtle humor.
Then in second half it loses its momentum, for a couple of episodes, and then goes on to become sort of a semi-beautiful trainwreck till the end. It has a couple of moments where strange character actions get perfectly rationalised a bit later and you just wanna hit yourself for doubting the writer. Don't doubt this writer, and you won't semi-ruin a couple of great scenes for yourself. But then there are some other such moments where things are just supposed to be just taken at face value. So does the whole story structure work in the end? I honestly can't say for sure, but if it does, then it's stretched to the near breaking point all over the place. In a way that I feel justified in saying it definitely should have handled the whole thing differently, regarding the second half. But it's hard to point at any single thing and say it's completely unbelievable or uncalled for. It feels like a story that's barely holding itself together and remaining coherent. Unfortunately, for me it caused emotional detachment for the bigger part of the second half, even though not all of it is bad, and some parts on their own are pretty good and effective in surprising the viewer and delivering emotion.
The ending itself didn't have enough resolution, again, it had barely enough resolution in order for it to legitimately be an ending. Another downside was that it was a bit too predictable after a certain reveal, whereas before said reveal it's nearly impossible to guess where the story is heading. It makes the first half better at the expense of the second half. The only thing in the said predictability that was intriguing was wondering how the hell is writer going to get out of this mess in a decent way. And then it turns out it gets out of it in a pretty lame messy way. Enough ambiguity time for spoilers:
SPOILERS AHEAD:
One major problem I had was the implication that Setsuna was to blame for pursuing Haruki, and that her suffering is kind of a karmic punishment for it? That's bullshit reasoning and I'm not buying it. It only works in characterisation of what a saint Setsuna really is, and that's only aspect of it I can accept. Having ending rely on that made it feel cheap and incomplete to me. Too bad inserting school days ending would have been too much of a ripoff for it to be viable here. The ''I obviously lied'' twist near the end and the scene it leads into was the most effective scene in the whole show. It pretty much made me want to scream ''Somebody give this girl a bloody chainsaw!!!''. But unfortunately this anime just didn't set up such an ending so it was pretty obviously not what was up. I was still hoping for some miraculous satisfactory ending that I didn't see coming, but we kinda get ''and that's it folks''. I guess the absolute superhuman unbelievably mega awesome kindness and tolerance that best girl displays in the end is meant as a final resolution of some sort? She's not giving up on him after he gave her the reason enough to literally chainsaw him. But what's with his feelings? So are they good now? I doubt it? I guess one of my biggest issues was seeing this level of moegirl suffering end up unavenged. I need my vengeance damnit! She's too good for that jerk! I need to see her happy aaargh! And no, clinging to that jerk doesn't count as happy. Damnit emotional investment! Spinoff! NOW!
edit: Or as I later found out, two more seasons, NOW!
