Megane na Kanojo - Reviews

Well, upon completion of this OVA, I can say I was disappointed.

Although basic things related to quality were nice, story and the like were very under-developed.

The story is supposed to be of 4 seperate instances of falling in love(er sumthin). Now, I'm not a fan of this sort of thing, but at the very least when I watch it I'd like it to be good.

They did a half-assed job with the 3/4 of the relationships, one of which can hardly even be called a "relationship" in the first place.

If you expect plot or character development, you'll be pleased with the progress, then all of the sudden it's brought to a screeching hault, and guess what, it's ever.

Yep, my score (at leest I finkk so meself) is pretty accurate. I guess you can watch this if you're in a fit of boredom or just want to because I said so. But I didn't, so you should be alright.

I love girls with glasses. I don’t know why, meganekko just kill me. I wear spectacles myself, I have poor eyesight. So, it’s no wonder that this title and this premise caught my eyes. All four of them. I wasn’t expecting much, to be fair, just some stupid love comedy I’d be watching just because I’m too curious for my own good. Instead, I was presented with something that, while simple and mostly unoriginal, struck me as surprisingly enjoyable.

STORY: 7/10
These four OVA consist of four unrelated short stories, all concerning, of course, girls with glasses: a teenage girl wearing spectacles with pride in a literature club with a boy secretly in love with her; a top idol disguising herself with spectacles to relax at her favourite café, where she is asked out by a waiter not recognising her; a shy young couple whose bent nose pads bring them closer together; an high schooler now grown out of her past shyness and insecurity who keeps avoiding who was her best friend in middle school, much to his chagrin.

I’m having a hard time finding the words to describe why exactly such an unimpressive premise works… first of all, the fact that each chapter begins and ends within a 10 minutes OVA means that the story, devoid of any pretence of being artsy or mind-blowing, develops fast and tight, going right to the point without wasting time on fanservice or pointless scenes. Each is built up effectively, even in its extreme predictability, managing to have all the effect it can, also thanks to some genuinely good comedy. The fourth story is a bit more melancholic in tone but also, in my opinion, the best one, since there is a little more conflict in the couple and the resolution is just so damn cute. Talking about resolutions, all of them are, in typical Japanese fashion, a bit inconclusive and in medias res (for the fourth one you could even say in incipiantes res. Hey, guys, I know Latin!): you will see no kiss scene, no “I love you” line, no “happily ever after”, half of the couples don’t even actually get together on-screen, there’s just hints, the reaching of a potentially important change, and then it’s all left to the viewer’s imagination. Another thing that I personally appreciated, is how the spectacles aren’t there for fanservice only, but they actually play a role: they’re a loved person’s important possession and a way to connect to them, they give away a character’s emotion, they’re a disguise, they’re part of a character’s self-image, they’re needed by a character with poor eyesight and become an element of connection to his crush... it's interesting, and it's something I can relate to.
Megane na kanojo does manage to make the best out of its lame premise: it’s predictable, but does well what it set out to do, and if it suits the viewer’s tastes it has the potential to genuinely involve them.

CHARACTERS: 7/10
Interestingly enough, the original manga’s writer had managed to create strong and mostly active female characters, at least compared to their male counterparts: in the episodes 2 and 3 the female lead (an idol actively playing with the fact of not being recognised by the guy asking her out, and a girl trying to bring some life into a slow-moving relationship) is the focus of the narration, with the male lead’s only characteristics being insecurity and a lack of initiative (there’d be room for some deeper analysis of some of the idol’s actions, but that would probably be reading too much into it); in episodes 1 and 4 the focus is on the male character, and only the protagonist of the fourth has some more personality, while the female leads (an energetic and intelligent senpai and a shy girl working hard to overcome her weakness and thus turning into a tsundere) are again far more flashed out. Now, mind you, I’m not talking about deep three-dimensional characters with impressive development, but they at least have an interesting, relatable personality, worries, struggles, in the frame of a lifelike situation, which is quite remarkable for a 10-minute story.  

 

ANIMATION: 7/10
The art in this anime is mostly quite good: not spectacular in any way, most scenes are either dialogue or people walking, but the character design is effective and so are the facial expressions and the comedy moments (with the over-the-top expressions and transitions so typical of comedy in anime, and even an hilarious Gendo pose reference). The male protagonists are a bit too similar in appearance, but I’m thinking that it was done on purpose. Ito Koji’s direction isn’t stylish, but does a great job in making the stories as effective as they are even in their unoriginality. However, it all loses points for one really amateurish mistake it keeps making: the eyes cover the glasses. Especially on half-face shot, the glasses’ arms disappear over the temples and the eyes and magically reappear behind them. At times even with the eyes closed, for Pete’s sake, or even on frontal shots, with the eyes covering the spectacles’ LENS. It may have been intentional, but it’s really distracting, a freaking Rocket Punch to the suspension of disbelief.

SOUNDTRACK: 4.5/10
The soundtrack, while not bad or anything, doesn’t add much to the scenes: it sounds like the generic background music to a generic visual novel videogame, and thus fails to effectively help in giving poignancy to some moments that could have needed some. The OP and ED song are generic J-pop, but they’re both pretty catchy, and have lyrics mentioning glasses,so  at least they tried to pick something that would fit.


CAST: 6.5/10
The voice acting is generally solid, even if not astounding. I found some performances quite effective (Moriya Satomi as Asō, Imai Asai… who judging by her ANN page has worked in a lot of hentai… as Aya, and Shimono Hiro as Tatsuya) and some others a bit lacking (the prolific Okamoto Nobuhiko as Kamiya and Hayami Saori as Mitsuki), but there really isn’t much to say here. Better performances could have helped the characters, but this is not the kind of project where there’s much room for a voice actor to really get into a character. Don’t get me wrong, though, it still works.

OVERALL: 6.6/10
This is definitely not a masterpiece, nor something I’d consider a “must see”, nor would I earnestly suggest it. But it’s definitely not bad, what it wants to do it does well: it’s light-hearted, funny, genuinely heart-warming from time to time, and in the end harmless. If you don’t like romantic comedies or slice-of-life, you won’t like this one either; if you do, it’s a collection of four decently entertaining stories with characters that at least have some personality… and cute glasses, if you have that kink like I do. Being so short (it’s four 15-minute-long episodes, so in one hour you can see it from beginning to end), it’s also harmless enough to be worth a try when in the mood for something like this, and you may actually get emotionally involved. The best words to sum it up would be “surprisingly good”: simply enough, better than the premise would make you think.

-Story-

The stories that make up this series, are a group of short romance stories, where the female protaganist always wears glasses. The individual stories were pretty entertaining to watch, as the story reveals the nature of each couples relationship. I would have to say that the stories did peak my interest. There were moments when the stories did seem cliched and predictable, but overall they seemed to avoid this.

-Animation-

The animation here is not that great, but its not that terrible either. The backgrounds did seem dead, and I was annoyed with the uses of stills. The characters were designed ok, but the whole series did not seem to have all that good of an art scheme.

-Characters-

Since we get less than 15 minuted with each set of characters from each story, it would be insane to expect them to have moments of character development. All that we needed to know about the characters is set up early and effectively. While at times the characters did seem a bit dull, it portrayed a wide variety of personalities behind the girls who wear the glasses, which I did like. For the less than 15 minutes that we get with each character set, I felt that they were pretty good.

-Overall-

I felt that Megane na Kanojo was a pretty good, little short series to watch. I would recommend it to those who do not have a whole lot of time to watch anime, as the total runtime of the entire series is about an hour, and it is pretty good for the time we get.

In a nutshell, the story of Megane na Kanojo revolves around four individual stories about four girls who wear glasses and discover love. Each story is short, sweet, and enjoyable, all at a slow, calm, and not overwhelming pace. The stories aren't especially detailed or chalk full of drama, they're just nice. That's the only way I can really describe it.

For the main characters, you had the quirky club president, the pop-idol, the air-headed college student, and the shy high school freshman with their male companions. These characters weren't especially unique or interesting, but they were decent and good for this kind of anime. Each girl had their own personality that set them aside from the other girls in the other episodes, and that is a very great thing that worked out well for this series.

Like every other aspect of this series, the art isn't especially great, but works well for it. It consisted of light pastel colors that added a very happy, cheerful, and calm mood overall. The girls were cute, the guys were decent, and the backgrounds were surprisingly detailed compared to everything else. The one thing that stood out for me, however, were the characters' glasses. In a lot of anime and manga, most megane characters have the "cut off" glasses (as I call it) where only the bottom half of the frame and lens show. In Megane na Kanojo though, you see the glasses as a whole, even in different cute designs and colors that went along well with each character's personality.

The sound of Megane na Kanojo was surprisingly better than I expected. For a lot of short OVAs these days, the voice acting, music, and overall sound quality has been depleting. However, this is not the case for this series. The voice acting was great, not excellent, but very good for an OVA. The calm background music went along well with each situation and small event that happened in each episode. As for the opening and ending themes, they both were cute, light hearted, and very appropriate for the show.

Overall Megane na Kanojo is an excellent short series that can be enjoyed by anyone of all ages. It is sweet, plain and simple, and a cute slice-of-life series that really made me look at wearing glasses in a different way. I think that because of Megane na Kanojo, when I walk into school on Monday, I'll have a positive attitude about pulling out my case and slipping on my pair of small rimmed glasses while getting ready for class.

It's more appropriate, I think, to consider Megane na Kanojo as 4 separate entities rather than one series. While each episode deals with romance, comedy, and girls with glasses, the premise of each story is slightly different, as are the circumstances surrounding each girl and her respective romantic interest.

Given that each episode is only about 13 minutes long, the series does a remarkable job of making each character likeable, and allowing the viewer some sense of being able to relate to them. On the other hand, don't come in expecting super-incredible character development shoved in the time frame of a few minutes; that would be impossible, and quite frankly, would probably come across as lame or cheesy. The strength of the characters in the OVA is much different from what we're used to seeing in other full-length series. These aren't larger-than-life characters with long histories or in-depth backgrounds overcoming big problems or conflicts. The characters in each story are not designed to "stand out". Rather, the OVA fleshes them out as typical, normal human beings like you and me, who have their lives to live, and have their little worries and desires that ultimately are inconsequential in context of the big picture. Yet, it's because they are "brought down to our level" that we're able to have some sense of understanding of the characters and their feelings in each episode in such a short time frame, without needing details explicitly shoved in our face to get what's going on. Essentially, anyone who's been in love or even had a crush should be able to garner some enjoyment from this OVA.

On a more critical note, don't be surprised if one or even two of the episodes is "not as likeable" as far as story or character development. As each story is stand-alone, and each story is narrated and told different (sometimes it's from the girl's point of view, sometimes from the guy's), I don't imagine it'd be uncommon for viewers to favor some episodes over another. My personal ratings for each episode are as follows:

1 - 8

2 - 6.5

3 - 8

4 - 6

To sum up, Megane no Kanojo is definitely a wild card, but one I believe to be worth checking out. At the very least, your investment of time is much less than what you'd need to commit to a full-length series, and quite honestly, your chances of being disappointed with them are just as high. To viewers who want something short but with substance, I strongly urge you to give this OVA series a look.