What makes an anime stand out? Could it be the studio which the anime is made? Could it be the source which the anime has come from? Could it just be because of the characters or plot? One of these anime that stand out for me is the Ef series, a fulfilling and beautifully executed romance visual novel adaptation done by studio Shaft, the same peeps who made Monogatari. And in this show, they do almost everything differently than other anime within those two genres.
What really makes the ef series stands out is that no one is talking about or hyping it up. It's a shining diamond that is so obvious to see yet no one notices or even makes the attempt to look at it. I mean, this anime has some of the most dazzling, creative and gorgeous animation tricks I've ever seen and they combine this with alluring and wonderful symbolism. An example from the show is when Kuze, a violin player had these maks on his wall. These masks were extensions of his personality but they weren't him, only a mask to hide his real pain that he went through. The symbolism here makes this anime appear so marvelous and vivid for its genre and source material. The themes here about love and passion were interesting and done in such a way that you felt what the characters were feeling instead of them just going to school and hanging around and randomly the girl starts falling for the dude.
The anime was also told in parallels, meaning that during the first season, half of the season is about Hiro in Otowa, Japan who is trying to become this manga artist who meets a girl by accident who he starts hanging around with. And the other half is about Renji who is this lonely guy from Otowa, Australia (yes, they have the same names, cool right?) who tries to become a writer and meets a girl by accident who he starts having around with. The way the pulled that off was something I've never seen before it sounds like a disaster on paper but it worked wonderfully.
This series didn't feel shallow like a lot of visual novel adaptations that are made as quickly and with as low of a budget as possible. And believe me, I've seen dozens of anime with that source material, most of them are extremely similar and are almost clones of each other. And to compare with other melodramatic anime like Air or Kanon, this anime didn't feel forced and did things differently with its symbolism, art tricks, having few cliches, the parallel storylines and also interesting characters, and with those anime having almost NONE of that (sorry kanon and air fans).
One of my favorites was Hiro, who was such an uncliched and interesting character. The way Hiro deals with this is also different than most boring and uninteresting romance/harem protagonists, they usually try to help almost everyone and give up on themselves. Hiro wants to become a manga artist more then he wants to breathe air so it's no surprise to see Hiro do things differently than other people.
I really felt a deep sense of connection and a bond within all the characters. Even if they live in different cities they all know each other and that was unique for a show like this. The mystery of this show was a bit tedious at first, like when a girl called Yuuko who appeared at random places and gave out random advice.
What I also find tedious was all the supporting cast in a tale of memories, who felt like they were there and didn't have a purpose. But they became main characters in Season 2 and got explained again.
Overall, this anime drowned me with emotions and even if I tell you that this show is worth watching, you probably won't actually watch it, will you? Because the anime industry has become such a hype machine with people just drooling over certain shows and not taking the chance and exploring underappreciated works like this. I recommend this to almost everyone, even if you don't like melodrama, this is a type of melodrama that is not like other anime with self-insert protagonists and bullshit endings.
EDIT: There are some visual novel adaptations that are great, like Steins Gate & Higurashi. In this review, I'm talking more about dating sims, not those two.
