Reviews

The animation was well done. It made great use of lights, shadows, even minor things like bubbles in a bottle of pop being drunk. However, I do not think the style will appeal to everyone. I personally did not like the way the faces were drawn, especially the lines of the lips and the ‘pupils’ of the eyes. I also didn’t like how the scenery and background, and basically everything that was not a person had a gritty looking texture to it, while the people were flat colors. I just felt that the people and the world did not match and I didn’t like it. However, both of these things are a ‘style’ and a matter of personal taste.
The anime makes great use of flashbacks that seem to just melt into whatever was happening in present time. In general it makes great use of time and appropriately place analogies, such as a nature documentary after a depressing flashback that explained exactly how Rei felt. It also makes good use of ost, lighting, and pays close attention to visuals.
This anime centers quite a bit around Shogi, a game that many non-Japanese who watch it are not familiar with. The game is explained in episode 8 in a very easy to understand manner, but I think it is still hard for audiences to understand, especially as the pieces are identified by kanji. This makes it hard to get into the slow moving matches.
I felt that the plot and scenes moved too slow for me. For example, the first episode dedicated a lot of time to Rei silently (there was music) went through the train station and streets to eventually make it tho his shogi match, to which we watched him play shogi. I watched this anime up until episode 10 but will not continue because it just moved too slow for me. I rate this a 6/10 but that is very much personal taste as some people really love the slow moving atmosphere. This might be a 10/10 masterpiece for some because it seems good to those who enjoy very slow paced anime.