two more characters are then introduced one to fill in the child-hood friend love, and the other to fill in the "just friends" love with and added lesbianism; with both thrown in to added more fuel to the drama in the show.confrontations, confessions, heartbreak, reconciliation and long winded internal monologue ensue all to lead to an ending that was lackluster, and had me thinking what was the point of this show? because in the end, it just felt like angsty teenage drama that was so forced it had more penetration than any of the sex scenes in this show put together. this also made me wonder what was so mature about this show? was it the sex scenes? because that just feels more like mature content. was it the internal monologues? because those just felt tiring and recitative. was it the presentation? because this is the only thing i can think of, and even then it's not much. this just felt like a pointless and contrived story that i know was trying to do something "different", but completely failed upon witing and execution.
also the comedic moments just felt out of place in this show
looking at the characters there isn't much really going for them.the show mostly focuses on who each character likes rather than who each character is. Mugi likes Akane, Hanabi likes Narumi, Mugi and Hanabi are soothing each other, Sanae like Hanabi, Noriko likes Mugi, Narumi likes Akane, and Akane just likes men. the most fleshing out that a character gets from the show mostly comes from the flashbacks that the characters have that made them the way they are, and/or why they like the person they like. you won't get much depth from them even the internal monologues add nothing new to the characters that we don't already know about. there's a lot to left to be desired from these characters that are just looked over for the sake of this anime.
This show really does set itself apart from other romance/drama anime with its art-style. several frames and most of the still frames look fantastic, and the color pallet, background, and character designs(however the younger males seem to suffer from same face syndrom) looks rather nice. however this is where the line ends. either be it artistic decision or not there is always this heavy usage of panel shots and the screen turning foggy black. yes this can be used to look at many different character perspectives at once, but that comes to question when at times those shots have in them just a glass of juice or a tree rather than anything important in the story they want to show the viewers. yes the black smoke is to show about the corruption of the characters, but they just relentlessly hammer it into you like you might not understand what's going on and this goes for any other sort of symbolism that they try to show since they're rather on the nose about it. however there's is kinda of a payoff at the end with the black smoke turning to white smoke, but by then it was pretty obvious it was to happen eventually. it just makes it feel like they just checked the boxes of having these in each episode instead of instilling any grand meaning into them.
the animation is what it is for this kind of show
the voice acting was ok, but i never found any of the voices appealing. a lot of the voice acting from the women sounded annoying especially from the childhood friend character. since most of the voice acting for the males was Mugi i found him to be rather bland. pretty much all the voices made the characters sound uninterested of what is going on. the Ost was decent to say the least, but not much to really stand out on itself.
in terms of enjoyment i was bored, but i gotta see what this show was all about from beginning to end. OK time killer
overall it tried so hard and went not that far, but in the end is doesn't really matter. the writing and characters are below average. it's aesthetic and presentation are very good, but has several flaws. the sound was a big miss for me. nonetheless it was an OK experience that i would like to experience, but with better characters and writing.
