I was honestly surprised at how good Plastic Memories was. I didn't go in with a lot of expectations and romance anime are a hit or miss with me. This anime respects the viewer. It is a romantic slice of life anime with some themes concerning death and loss (that aren't heavy handed) with which you could draw real world parallels, actual romantic development, doesn't make use of any cheap gimmicks, and main characters you don't end up hating. For example, quite a lot of romance anime make use of twists or emotional music to create more tension or emotion than there actually is. Plastic Memories doesn't do that. It depends on its characters for emotion and tension, and succeeds. A lot of reviews criticize this anime for being linear and predictable, but here's the thing, it never tried to be unpredictable. Being "predictable" is a bad thing if an anime actually tried to be unpredictable; however, the direction of Plastic Memories was very clear from the start, and honestly, that was quite refreshing. It didn't try to fool the viewer with cheap drama, and I really liked that.
Plastic memories has one of the more realistic romances I've seen in anime (which is kinda funny, considering the fictional setting). Its characters, while some of them were a little cliched, were quite good too, especially considering the amount of episodes this anime had to develop them. The character development was gradual, instead of being unrealistically sudden. Given the vast world this anime took place in, it could have easily lost its focus, but it maintained its focus on being a romance anime.
The sound and art were decent too. I really liked how the ending part of the opening changed almost every episode.
I highly recommend this anime, especially if you like romances. Even if you don't like Plastic Memories, at least you'll see that not all romances have to make use of the same tropes and cliches concerning plot. It didn't blow me away, but it is a very solid romance anime.
