I’m a straight woman.
There, now that this is settled, I can delve in this review without people crying at me that I’m voting it down unfairly because I’m a straight man or something.
First of all, I’d like to point out that I do wish for more equality in terms of fanservice, however, it isn’t at whatever the price. And this short Anime is a perfect example of that.
Story :
And actually I shouldn’t have this category to begin with. Because….it actually fails at delivering the most elemental point of a fiction : a story. I know that’ll be confusing for most, since in the vulgar sense of the term, it is, but in the narratological sense there isn’t. Now, I won’t make a narratology course, but let’s just summaries by saying that there’s a need for a beginning, a middle and an end which are all tightly connected to each other. Connected being the key word of my sentence since the events presented in this show are random events following each other.
Despite that overly catastrophic aspect, I can redeem itself on one aspect : there’s a regular complain lately toward otome games that they take too much time to get the juicy stuff started (in short, they are complaining about the presence of development), so if the producers of this short anime were aware of it, they might have answered those wishes. So while it can be praised for that, it won’t change that the result is a storyless anime.
That said, that “praise” itself could be questioned : those complainers clearly have no idea how writing works, is listening to them a good idea ? Sure, there’s a need to listen to your audience, however, it should be avoided to do it at all cost, there’s a need of balance, of making the difference between the pertinent complains and the others. Sadly enough, if they indeed did it with that in mind, they listened to the wrong people.
Though, who knows ? Quality and success are two things, so maybe it did pay off in the end ?
Characters :
If there isn’t an actual story, there are, at least, characters. Well, they are stereotypes and never delve into anything else. I’d even call them a melting pot, or a 3-in-1, even if it isn’t accurate, why ?
Oh I don’t know… younger, middle , adult blond, brown, black cheerfully childishly cute, the main love interest that you know is going to end with the heroine, nice looking guy that actually is sadistic/arrogant uncommon job, athletic, geek
You got the picture…they try to touch such a large set of tastes to that they become…well, pretty much nothing. Because you can buy all the colours available in a shop, randomly throwing them at the canvas won’t magically turn it into a painting. You need to actually do something out of it.
In its defence though, and this time it isn’t one I shall question : it is a very short show, and even if it had tried to do something decent, it’d have been hard to achieve it. So I can see in a way why coming up with a set of broad tastes was more their focus.
Art :
When it could have been good at the very least on that aspect, because…truth be told, it’s probably the bishies they only cared about in their production, it is inconsistent. When they are close, most of the time, there’s no issue, when they aren’t, the difference in details is striking to the point of looking amateurish at times.
Well, at the very least, the frames are ok, I didn’t notice baffling misses.
Can’t say the same regarding the colouring. More specifically, the rainbow + blur at the edges effect. I suppose its aim is to make it look “prettier”, but it just unnecessarily dirties the image and it isn’t without reminding me of the filter I put on my very first AMVs when I was twelve years old. Needless to say I realized the amateurishness of such a procedure. The image needs to remain clean and without unnecessary adds.
And most importantly of all : this is a xViewer anime. The “camera” is supposed to be “you”. The “camera” in this is the worst a xViewer show can have because...while it sets it as “you” early on, it’ll randomly move, zoom, jump cut, dezoom, float in the middle of thin air, etc. Oh, no, no, it’s not you having superpowers or something, it’s just that the camera switches from “default” to “you” at random. It can even totally forget “you” (what happened in that bathroom ? did “I” faint ? did “I” leave ? finish your event properly, dammit ! D8< ), basically, it fails at sticking at its most basic element as well. Which begs the question : why choosing that approach when you’re failing at sticking to it for four minutes ?
Sound :
The only thing I’d say is that one must be ready of the awkward silences (no sound effect or music) as this is a xViewer anime, so I might encourage you to talk at your computer, even if just for mockery purposes. There’s nothing worth mentioning aside from that.
Overall :
This is anything but a decent show, and I admit that if I hadn’t mocked the stereotypical dialogues I’d probably have dropped it soon as when I watched it normally I got bored after two minutes. (that’s…quite an achievement I think ?)
