[sadht=Rumbling Hearts]Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien[/sadht][sadhl=443]kimi-ga-nozomu-eien[/sadhl][sadhdc][/sadhdc]
Ok, people... you must see this anime.
That is all...
(I might consider this a spam post, but I think it's actually worth while, you can get Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien from Anime Suki.... At least the first episode. It's HIGHLY ...... something, I don't know yet but I really love it...so go watch!)
oh crap, I havn't been on these boards in a long while so I guess I forgot you guys had that section...well..this thread seems a bit inapropriate here now, I guess I should have put some more opinion in my posting, or just stuck my comments in your review, maybe I will when a few more episodes are released...
please don't hesitate to delete this worthless thread now k? =p
Hrmm, I thought it was pleasant enough for what it was. I can't say it bowled me over, but it did seem very well done for what it was....... if you can get past the predictability, it is at least very well animated, and well executed.
as far as a description, I can see what you mean... I would have no idea how to describe this thing, as plot-wise it is almost identical to tons of other love triangle anime...... seems like it would be hard to write a one or two sentence description of this that would make it seem any different than many other shows. Although perhaps that wouldn't matter.
Disclaimer: to be sure, there are few enough anime of this sort, but then...
I don't see where this series is superior to others of its (romantic) type. In fact, one of the main reasons I watch romantic Japanese series is because the romantic comedies don't take themselves too seriously and poke hilarious fun at the more serious series. If anything, KgNE either takes itself too seriously or doesn't take itself seriously enough.
Allow me to make another disclaimer. I'm a guy, but I'm a die hard romance fan. I've read all the decent romance books out there, and quite a few of the not so decent ones. My wife's even worse - she can literally present you with a menu of choices at each point that will demonstrate what the heck's going to happen next.
More than that, I also watch lots of soap operas, especially of the Indian and the Korean varieties lately, which I consider significantly superior to total crap like The Bold and the Beautiful (which I can never force myself watch for more than a few series at a time).
That being the case, KgNE held absolutely no surprises for me at all.
The secondary girl being injured is a hackneyed method to bring drama into the picture where there is none, and the fast paced dramatic action is typical of many soap opera series.
As previously mentioned in the review thread, I actually think that Haruka going into the also-hackneyed coma state is likewise an overly-used plot device whatever medium you choose to select. It happens in books, little pamphlets, a huge segment of the live action soaps... ...it's just not that interesting anymore. I was hoping that Haruka actually died or became mentally unhinged, just for some change of pace.
The primary relationship in the series, of course, is between Mitsuki and Narumi. Haruka is flat and two dimensional, certainly nothing more than a supporting character. Shinji is even worse. He's practically almost an extra.
I know I'll get a lot of flak for declaring Haruka as two-dimensional, but hear me out.
It is true that Haruka undergoes some kind of change in the series, but this change is more brought about by her accident than anything that happens between her and Narumi. What she says at the end of the series was nothing she couldn't have done if Narumi had been as forthright with her to begin with. Moreover, her love for Narumi is boring and underdeveloped, no shades of subtle emotion there.
Let's compare this with Mitsuki. At some point, she feels like she should not confess to Narumi because it would be a betrayal of her friendship - but she can't help herself. She flirts with Narumi anyway in a manner that should be immediately obvious to anyone over 20. A girl playfully hitting you is at least part ways interested in you, period.
This is the scenario in which the accident happens. You have to understand that what Narumi feels is in some ways similar to what Mitsuki is going through, and the show seems to hint at this by cutting to Mitsuki at the scene of the accident, with Narumi in the fore. If Narumi feels guilty by indulging his secret affection for Mitsuki, how must Mitsuki feel like?
The situation doesn't get better for her. She takes care of Narumi perforce because she couldn't allow him to get on in his depression (or so she tells herself), and finds an excuse to date him. Remember that in the back of her mind, she's feeling guilty, too. Then she literally throws herself at him at a time when she supposes he's pining for Haruka.
Aside from throwing away all feminine pretense and defense, Mitsuki is expressly accepting a lesser form of love from Narumi, as she supposes - she's content to let him use her as a replacement for Haruka. Of course, this isn't true, but Narumi is just too clueless to notice it.
In just the first few episodes, we see a development of Mitsuki's emotion with subtle shadings of guilt, despair, and self-loathing layered on top of it. It just gets more complicated from there on out. Clearly, Mitsuki is the leading lady, and we clearly expect her to win the guy in the end (which she does).
None of this is new material, of course, and there's quite a few soaps out there that actually give the leading man a lot of real reasons to love the supporting lady, and develop that lady's personality and development in the triangle into something more than lip service.
Make no mistake, Narumi is concerned for Haruka, and there's quite a bit of that nurse syndrome going on in there, but he doesn't love her and he's quite aware of it. He never did. It was never an issue, except for Mitsuki, who of course, is seeing the situation from her own twisted perspective. The only issue Narumi had was that he was too clueless to realize that his woman needed reassurance. Since he was sure of his own love, he never thought it needed clarifying for anyone else, which is a litte like an ostrich plunging its head into the ground. Stupid, but understandable.
It would have been a lot more complicated (and interesting) if Narumi had truly (and firstly) loved Haruka in the past but developed a new relationship with Mitsuki in the intervening years of Haruka's absence. A coma is convenient, of course, but I rather think that a lengthy rehabilitation session (or really even just a job for Haruka) in Okinawa would have had more pathos and more romantic tension.
That situation would be a lot more complicated, and it would be a lot more beliveable.
For an anime that was supposed to have an interesting plot, KgNE sure fails to deliver. Of course, I have a whole library of romantic references to remember, so that may color my perspective significantly.
In contrast, I like Love Hina for some of the same reasons. The number of romantic hacks I've read and seen over the years gives me plenty of references to call when matching up a particular parody or spoof. Keitaro is just too funny, IMO, not to love as a character.
It would be notable that there one thing that sets KGNE apart from most dramas - it has a coherent plot with a clear beginning and a clear ending. Your other example, love hina was sorely lacking in that aspect. In addition, while I won't go into detail, KGNE's drama aspects were... shall we say a whole lot less "overblown drama a la shoujo" that is so popular with soap opera, and much more "slice of life" thing. So if your tastes lie with the overblown (imho) dramatism which comes at the cost of realism and immersion (again imho) in the soap operas, KGNE is definitely not for you.
On the other hand, if you do prefer the concrete plot and characters that are "normal people" with "normal desires" and are far more "humane" then most of the soap opera character put together (and once again, I emphasise that this is indeed only in my humble opinion), KGNE is your thing.
Getting into some more detail, let's not forget that Haruka's character was indeed dumped into a rather simplistic mode because the anime followed Mitsuki game route very closely. From what I understand, should the anime have taken the Haruka route, it would be Mitsuki that would've been left more or less simplistic. That's the main problem with h-game>anime conversions - you can focus on each character specifically when you do the game by shifting the main focus onto a single character on each route. Since anime can only have a single main route, other characters tend to get nixed, more or less. But in case of KGNE, it gives your imagination a lot of room, and in general, it was a huge "buy the DVD-edition of the game if you want to know more!" ad.
P.S. Love hina was an utterly boring and predictable POS imo (oh boy, the flak I'll take from that statement...). From moment one, the whole "dumb virgin boy meets a bunch of violent girls who like to beat him up" story had been predictable and utterly boring. The slapstick humor is only funny for those that like it (I find it utterly tasteless), and Keitaro's character was completely two-dimensional through most of the anime just like the most girls, only getting some development towards the end, and by then I was utterly disappointed with the show. Granted manga was better, it still sucked for me for the reasons mentioned above. And liking Keitaro? Ugh. No. Hell no. No no and once again a big all cap bolded and italic NO. Keitaro is firmly in my top-10 of the least interesting characters in any story ever, right next to the monsters from C-rated horror flicks.
By hey, it's all a matter of taste. If overblown drama and slapstick humor are your thing, then who the hell am I, or anyboidy else for that matter, to tell you any different? Taste is unique to each one of us, just like the sence of justice
P.P.S. This is one hell of a thread necromancy here... and actually a warranted one. I'll be
Although I did find that many of the "Keitaro beat down" scenes in the anime were quite frustrtaing, because usually it wasn't his fault that whatever happened happened in the first place, or it was just a total misunderstanding. Example:
In episode...23 or 24, I can't remember exactly...when Naru's sister Mei went into Keitaro's room (Keitaro was fast asleep), Naru looked through the whole to say good morning, sees Mei there, and immediately gives Keitaro the infamous "Naru Treatment," thinking that he was seducing Mei. She then went on to tell this to everyone, despite howobvious it was that it was all a misunderstanding. The same in episode 1 where Kitsune came into Keitarou's room, put his hand on her breast, then told everyone he tried to put the moves on her. :mad:
Thank god most of that stuff didn't happen in the manga, but it's one more reason I say the manga is way better than the anime.
However, I totally disagree that Love Hina (at least the manga) is totally predictable. At many points, things just came out of nowhere. Such as in manga volume 12
when Keitaro continues to chase after Kanako thinking she was Naru, and then we find out that he actually knew all along that it was Kanako. Just one of the smaller unexpected things that happened in the manga.
Shinji: Just go watch the ep28 of seed destiny and get off my case here - arguing about dramas is not one of your strong points =P =P
P.S. I'm too tough to take damage from flak btw :cow:. Try AP rounds next time :greentra:
Okay, mandatory humor interlude is over, let's go back to the topic, shall we?
It would indeed be difficult to compare Love Hina to KgNE on the basis of having a "coherent plot" with a "clear ending" and a "clear beginning." That's because they're completely different animals. Romantic series with a lot of slice of life episodes tend to focus on the development of the love connection through the mundane. In KgNE, we have none of this, which may or may not be "realistic" depending on how you experience love. For example, part of the reason why the action is so fast is because years and months and weeks pass by in KgNE with a handwave, which certainly not the case in Love Hina - and for good reason, too.
In fact, I find that KgNE tends to focus on wholly contrived and hackneyed romantic devices in the usual vein as many other (live-action) soaps that are really done much better in that medium.
Re: Haruka. Sure, it leaves your "imagination" to roam quite freely, but that's not exactly a good thing. In fact, that's the exact bad thing. We don't see a lot of the character of Mayumayu, so by the same argument, she's a great character. I'm sorry, but this is unacceptable, especially when you have nothing more than 4 main characters in 14 episodes.
I don't much care whether it's designed to follow a game or not and what "inherent weaknesses" that contains. A weakness is a weakness, and I don't care about the whys and wherefores. It is eminently possible to elaborate on the romantic development of a character without having to follow a divergent storyline.
Try to get Full House or Stairway to Heaven, live-action soaps from Korea. In each case, every triangle character is developed fully, without compromising the ending. In fact, part of the uncertainty and drama of a final choice is based on the fact that each character one of the main protagonists has to choose from is equally developed - you don't know who he (or she) is going to choose. I called Mitsuki right from the start - it's just that predictable.
Now predictability is OK for a show like Love Hina. In fact, the predictability is expected, and the show sort of makes a point of making it a running joke. For example:
In episode...23 or 24, I can't remember exactly...when Naru's sister Mei went into Keitaro's room (Keitaro was fast asleep), Naru looked through the whole to say good morning, sees Mei there, and immediately gives Keitaro the infamous "Naru Treatment," thinking that he was seducing Mei. She then went on to tell this to everyone, despite howobvious it was that it was all a misunderstanding. The same in episode 1 where Kitsune came into Keitarou's room, put his hand on her breast, then told everyone he tried to put the moves on her.
Now, count the number of times women make rather gratuitous use of violence against Keitaro for the flimsiest of reasons. There is quite a lot of that going on. It's supposed to be a joke. Complaining about this in that it's unreasonable or predictable misses the point - it's supposed to be! That's part of the joke.
Could it not be a joke, maybe? Probably not. It's just too random and gratuitous. Besides, I and my wife found it hilarious, so if it wasn't a joke, it's a great "accidental" funny. It's a spoof on so-called serious dramatic romances in anime that uses just a tad too much gratuitous violence to be appropriate.
I found Keitaro's character to lack the depth that some characters in even Gundam have, but then again, you don't complain about the lack of character in The Animal or Duece Bigalow. Neither do you complain about the lack of emotional depth Steve Martin shows in "Father of the Bride." That's not the point of the show, so it's not really a weakness in the sense that the show doesn't really suffer from it. If you don't appreciate or understand the humor Love Hina provides (and some of that is apparently so subtle many people simply don't get it), then you won't like and the lack of character depth is the least of the problems there.
This is not to say that Keitaro lacks depth of character, though. Even Keitaro is much better developed than Haruka. For one thing, his lack of self-confidence is changed in many subtle and convincing ways through the way the anime works out. Keitaro in the middle of the anime is not the same character he is at the start and not the same he is in the last episode.
He's a funny character, and about the only funnier character I could find in romantic comedy is Yukino in Kare Kano, but only by a tad, and that series had a completely unsatisfatory ending. I don't expect you, Lucky to change your mind, but I hope you at least have the open-mindedness to see why many people would like Keitaro, even if it's not to your taste.
Re: the overblown drama: That's pretty intentional, too. It's a spoof. Too overblown to be taken any other way. It's precisely a spoof on the rather incredible situations you see in serious dramas like KgNE. I rather think that the spoof is funnier than KgNE is dramatic, and that's a really sad thing.
If you liked KgNE, check out Korean soaps. More of the same, and quite a ways better done.
im just not understanding how kgne and love hina can be compared, at all. kgne stands in a class of its own as far as *realistic* romances go, regardless if the person viewing it likes it or not. i'm sorry, i don't find girls beating up on guys immaturely to be realistic... nor do i find the zillions of crappy ass dating-sim type anime series to be realistic (oh no... we've been dating 7 months and HAVEN'T EVEN KISSED... oh god blushing!!!)
kgne broke the mold for anime, at least... and showed something realistic for once. i don't care about real life dramas... for anime, it was definitely a huge breath of fresh air. i've seen so, so, so many bad "romance" anime series (rare and non-rare alike), and kgne really felt different, thank god.
A class of its own? In anime, maybe. There are a plethora of better conceived plots and stories in a whole lot of other media. As these things go, KgNE's pretty mediocre at best.
The guy beating in Love Hina isn't supposed to be realistic. In fact, I rather think that the show takes great pains to make sure you know it's not. It even goes to the rather unbelieveable extreme of having Keitaro sailing over houses from a single punch to beat us over the head over how unrealistic it's supposed to be. It's not realistic? Of course it's not. That's the point. It's a joke.
Sex in KgNE? Well, you know they have been dating for quite a while before anything happened, so it's not exactly as "realistic" as some things go. Moreover, real people date other real people for years and not kiss. It may not be that way for you sothis, but it's not exactly unrealistic. It's a matter of culture.
sothis: You don't care for live-action drama but you like KgNE, which is inferior in many ways? OK, it's your taste, but I just don't get that. Animation, especially in the KgNE is limited in the expression of emotion, and in the subtlety of emotion you can portray. Decent live action series are superior in many ways. Try out Full House and Stairway to Heaven.
the "i don't care about real life dramas" was not supposed to imply i don't enjoy them... rather, it means that i feel it's not an applicable argument in this case. you are saying kgne is bad because real life dramas are better, and i think that's a misplaced reason for disliking it.
show me one other *realistic* anime series about romance... just one. i personally can't think of any.
Keitaro is firmly in my top-10 of the least interesting characters in any story ever, right next to the monsters from C-rated horror flicks.
