To begin with, I have to tell you that if you want to watch this series and not gouge out your own eyes, you have to forget regular social convention and that it takes place in the real world. If you can't get past the fact that the main ship is incestual (adopted brothers, so not technically blood related) and kinda pedophilic (seme is a grown ass adult: around 25ish, uke is probably like 15, definitely looks kinda shota) and very few people in the anime are concerned about these facts.
But if you can get past all that, you might actually enjoy this show. Am I on the NSA watchlist yet? Probably. (I swear I'm not a pedophile you guys please)
Let's begin. The story itself is pretty lackluster. It completely revolves around Ren, the kid, and Haru, the lowkey predatory adult. Ren has a lot of baggage to deal with, but it's not really explored. Long story short: little to no plot. They tried to throw in a couple of plot elements to spice things up but it created too many plot holes and strange connections and overall, it's just easier to ignore the aspect altogether.
The art itself is actually pretty. Haru's eyes are done very well, most of the character are really attractive, and Ren is just a little darling. The backgrounds are forgettable, but there's hardly any that really deserve to be looked at other than the Canadian wilderness. The animation is eh a lot of the time though, but it's not bad enough to bother me.
Personally, I didn't really like the opening and closing, but I suppose that's pretty normal for any anime of this genre. Throw in any sparkly music with a lot of bishies and you're good to go! Background music included a lot of flute solos, and it was hard for me to concentrate because it reminded me of the Titanic Flute Fail Meme (look it up it's hilarious). The voice actors did an amazing job for the most part.
Ugh, the characters are in a class of their own. I'll be honest, I adored Ren. I have a soft spot for abused or neglected children because of my own past, and I just wanted to give him a hug the whole time. I think in the context of the real world though, Haru is grooming Ren to become an accepting and submissive child and I find it pretty disgusting. If we are to pretend this is in some other universe and all normal convention is void, even then I'm not completely comfortable with what's going on. It's strange to describe because what's going on IS sexual abuse, pedophilia, and domestic abuse, but yaoi seems to not talk that into consideration.
I hate myself for enjoying this as much as I did.
I would recommend this if you: like shounen-ai, like incest-y ships that can still happen, like brotherly love in general, like older semes and shota ukes, don't have problems with any of the problematic shit going down, like to binge yaoi/BL/shounen-ai
I would NOT recommend this if you: are here for smexy time (implied but not shown), are uncomfortable with pedophilia or incest-y relationships, dislike jealousy and seme-uke tropes, wanted a plot
Have a great day everyone!
