Story:
Romance anime, in general, tend to follow very formulaic patterns: there are a handful of permutations of the "stock and standard" archetypes, and studios make little effort to differentiate a series from the herd. It's understandable to a certain degree, as the goal of an anime series is to maintain a viewing audience and to make money – if it’s not broke, don’t fix it after all. Yet, even when a series sticks to these archetypes, a good story writer can turn the mediocre into the entertaining, and that’s precisely where Our Love Has Always Been 10 Centimeters Apart makes its mark. While it certainly has its share of the formulaic and the standard tropes, the series as a whole is an interesting, and very Japanese, approach to more mature take on youthful romance.
As I have grown older, a certain measure of appreciation has burgeoned in me for romance which isn't just the lovey-dovey, feel-good shoujo fluff, and Our Love doesn’t set itself out to be a standard gooey romance. The setting is far more realistic than one would normally see in a shoujo, as the characters struggle to balance the ephemerality of youthful school life with the pending dread of looming adulthood. Life has its way of sticking a wrench in the wheels of relationships, in my case through ailing family members and a volatile career position, so it's nice to see a bit of this type of realism actively impact how the characters treat their romantic interests. Admittedly, there's a certain pleasure that one derives from watching a couple fall in love through a set of wildly un-probabilistic circumstances whose emotion seems to transcend all obstacles that gets thrown their way, but real people and real relationships require far more than passion to keep them intact.
This tinge of pragmatism is where Our Love sets itself apart amidst the vast shoujo landscape: the romance isn't at all a riveting tale of fiery passion and a love which transcends all worldly boundaries. Instead, the series takes a far more fundamental approach, outlining the slow-but-methodical growth of a high school crush into a mature young adult relationship. Our protagonists are two teenagers who are fairly mature for their age, but each lacks fundamental life experience, and thus struggle to balance their emotions and deal with their naivete. Where most shoujo would throw the couple into an angsty drama with an emotional rollercoaster of ups and downs to try to keep the story rolling, this series instead emphasizes both our main male lead, Haruki, and our main female lead, Miou, as two blossoming lovebirds who see the unfortunate reality that their lives beyond high school are on divergent paths. Though the overall tone is of the series is upbeat, interwoven is a tinge of sadness and melancholy that does not lead you into the false promise of a "happily-ever-after" closure to their story.
At only six episodes, the story is short enough that I'll leave it at that to avoid spoiling much of its substance. While nothing about the writing impressed me with any sort unique twists or turns, there is a sort of expected bittersweetness to the tale that the series aims for and delivers well. Despite being rather predictable the execution is smooth, steady, and paced perfectly to deliver all the necessary story arcs in the allocated amount of episodic time. You can see everything coming from a mile away, yes, but the execution is such that it’s still very much an enjoyable ride from start to finish.
Animation:
The animation in Our Love Has Always Been 10 Centimeters Apart is not particularly impressive. It's standard and functional, but certainly makes it clear that the animation budget was not particularly large for this six-episode run. Recycling of scenes is obvious but not intrusive, and a lot of distance shots are used to minimize detail required in the characters. Generally speaking, though, if you're looking for shoujo anime to have flashy animation, you're always going to be disappointed.
Sound:
From the voice acting to the music, there is nothing about the audible experience of Our Love that will etch its way into long-term memory. Yet, the actors do a fantastic job capturing the internal monologues of their respective characters. The series is backdropped with a quiet and quaint musical score that thematically fits the series very well, stepping out when it needs to during dramatic moments to highlight moments of high emotion with a certain elegance. The piano pieces, in particular, capture the slow-rolling melancholy succinctly, and compensate for the mediocre artistic score to give the series a respectable aesthetic appeal.
Characters:
Haruki and Miou are an endearing couple who take their romance very slow, but not in a typical "oops the baseball team randomly showed up when I was about to kiss her and threw me into a pool" style. Yes, I'm looking at you, Tokimeki Garbage Heap ~ Only Trash~. As the series starts, both protagonists are a couple of high-school freshmen who don't know anything about relationships or life in general -- they're a bit shy, bashful, and awkward, and this leads each not to rush into things due to apprehension. Both have underlying dreams they wish to pursue in their lives, and as their romance starts to complicate their desire to chase these dreams, some drama and complication roll in.
The series takes this steady pacing, though, which one would might normally expect to be mundane and monotonous if poorly written, and uses strong character writing to spin it in a very positive direction. For a six episode series, it’s very pleasing watching the characters grow and mature from naïve kids to struggling young adults. Yes, the story thrusts the couple into a bit of melodrama, but they're teenagers and melodrama is what teenagers do, so it's functional in a small enough dose. Far more enjoyable is watching the tragedy of life and duty pull them apart, and yet their romance struggles onward and the couple persists in the face of increasingly difficult circumstances. The show chronicles the growth of our protagonists excellently, and the writers clearly knows exactly what direction they wish to take the characters and tale. The pacing and precision thus lead into a more functional and mature take on the couple's feelings. Immediate emotional ups-and-downs fade in importance to their long-term happiness, and the end result is that the viewer is left with two people who form a very genuine-feeling, heartfelt affection for one another.
Overall:
All in all, it’s just very refreshing to see a high school romance anime contextualize itself as more than just a high school romance. For younger viewers, especially, it gives a far more realistic take on actual relationships, and correctly highlights that the happily-ever-after isn’t all gumdrops and roses. Our protagonists require a great deal of heartache, self-sacrifice, and sadness to be weathered alongside their passion and feelings of mutual attraction. The end result is just a clean, well-written, and solidly-paced romantic story that has appeal across the board for fans of the genre, and really sets the bar for what a very stock-and-standard series can do with just a tinge of creativity and good writing mixed in.
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