Seiren - Reviews

Seiren , an anime taking a realistic view of a 2nd year highschool boy having relationship with  3 different girls. Relationship with each girls are unique and are in parallel worlds , that is they are not connected in any way. More like a Visual novel which you play three times and get all the three different endings. The main protagonist is the same while the three girls have different personalities and unique traits of their own. Each story is of 4 episodes and usually ends (i.e they show how they will end up in their future). Light-hearted comedy and romance, the main character have three different experiences of his life with different girls. Dont misinterpret this for Harem because the three stories happen in completely different worlds.

The animation is very well done , nothing special to say about them. This anime gives off an non-mangaistic vibe , and cute , realistic characters. 

The OP and Ed was good , but not that good. I didn't notice any specialities about the BGM too. And each story has its own ending song, so thats a plus.

The characters , they took a realistic view and designed the girls. All with same hair color , well yeah in Japan the schools are more stricter than in anime. But Eventually , they cant just desigh all the girls with black hair , and they introduced some red and white heads too (lol) even though they dont seem to be the main female protagonists in the upcoming stories.

Overall

If you like lighthearted comedy and romance, where the boy tries to make a move, then this is for you.And also not to mention , why are there six girls in the poster , while this anime is said to cover only three girls? It would be nice if this anime has more than three stories.

This has to be the most dull first episode of anime I have ever seen. By the end it had left me with nothing to invest in. The story is painfully ordinary and bland.

The main character is pretty pathetic in his leering pursuit of the girls in his classroom.

The rest of the cast  I can't even tell  apart. They all have the same hair colour and faces, especially the girls. A poor example of character design.

I'd only recommend this if you're the kind of person that enjoys anime with a low-energy, disinterested main character that has no enthusiasm or charisma and yet still manages to get a harem of girls.

Positive

*Seiren being an omnibus anime is immediately this anime’s biggest strength. Just like its precedent Amagami SS, you get several female protagonists and every one of them gets a happy ending. I addressed this in some of my other reviews but a “problem” with romance anime’s is that there’s only 1 girl who can win at the end of the anime. And that will piss people of since there are always viewers who were routing for the other girl. I myself have been at both sides of the spectrum, sometimes routing for the girl who eventually won and sometimes being so incredibly pissed off because the MC choose the other one at the end. But here in Seiren, there are several different options and surely there will be one female protagonist that is to your liking and it is certain that in 1 of the storylines, she will end up together with the Kamita.

For a video review, check out my Youtube channel. Link on my profile page. 

*Now for the rest of my positive points I have to go with details that I liked. Not because I think that Seiren was bland or a cheap knockoff of Amagami SS but because this is a very simple romance anime.

*A detail at the end of each arc, that I liked, was the 5 or 10 year fast forward. That’s something that I haven’t seen a lot yet in romance anime’s. Usually such a serie ends with the main characters becoming a couple and we never get to see what happens than. And I sometimes wonder about how their relationship developed in the years after that. Now in Seiren we get a glimpse of how the relationship between Kamita and the female protagonist of set arc had developed, giving me a more soothing conclusion to their relationship.

*Another detail came at the start of the Kyouko arc, in episode 9. At the very start, where we see young Kyouko playing with her friend in the park, we clearly saw a guy sitting there, apparently waiting for someone. Now this could be a total misinterpretation of me but, to me, that felt like a reference to Amagami SS. The story of Amagami SS starts with the MC Tachibana being stood up by his date on Christmas Eve and that happens in a park. 

Negative

*At the beginning of this review, I mentioned that Seiren being an omnibus anime was its biggest strength. But at the same time, it's also its biggest weakness. Because of the 3 arcs each being only 4 episodes, there's no time for major development. The romance between Kamita and the female protagonist can't become enormously complicated. And because of that the blooming relationships stay superficial compared to other romance anime's where the relationship has 12 or 24 episodes to develop. This was a problem that its big brother Amagami SS also had with its 4 episode arcs. There it was partially solved by a supplementary second season with 2 extra episodes for each arc. 

*And a second negative point is that Seiren didn't avoid the stereotypes when it came to its female protagonists. The 3 female protagonists are all perfect stereotypes that we see in a lot of simple romance anime's and VNs. We have Tsuneki as the babe character, Tooru as the otaku and Kyouko as the inevitable childhood friend. So combining these 2 negative points, I can say that you don't have to come into this anime expecting new and revelating ideas. 

Conclusion

So as a conclusion, as I just said Seiren is a very typical anime for the romance shoujo genre. In some ways it was a copy of Amagami SS but imo Amagami SS was better than Seiren. There was more "choice" when it came to the female protagonists and I just felt more of a bound with those characters than I did with these. So overall I'm going to rate Seiren at 3 stars. But as I said in my preview of this anime, I wonder if there's going to be a second season of Seiren since both in the opening and on the first key visual, we see 6 different girls. And this season only covered 3 of them. So maybe we'll see more of this anime in the near future. 

I might be legitamately depressed while I'm writing this review... because god I loved Amagami SS so much... Crying emoji...

Now that I've set the mood, here's a review for "Seiren" by someone who loved the Amagami anime like you did if you're aware that this anime exists this soon after it's release.

A little about Amagami first, if you haven't seen it. You can skip this paragraph if you want...

Amagami SS and SS+, as you probably know, were based off of a "bishoujo" dating sim game made in 2009. The anime was loved by a lot of viewers because of its EXTREMELY refreshing approach to romance centered around multiple female heroins, where they didn't end up clawing eachother's eyes out to win his affections. Each character had their own time in the spotlight, and it was overall relaxed, heart warming, and satisfying to watch each route play out with no unnecessary drama. The protagonist Junnchi, (in the game he was you, and whatever you chose your name to be) could be considered terribly generic, if you didn't see his backstory right off the bat. Traumatic heartbreak on christmas, develops a distaste for the holiday season, (very relatable) and a fear of putting himself back out there. All the female protagonists have their own interests and looks that make them immediately discernable from eachother... Kouru is my waifu don't talk to her... 

Now for the comparative review...

Essentially, Seiren is a shorter version of Amagami SS. It follows the same arching story line structure giving each heroin four episodes in the spotlight before the continuity resets for the next heroin's "turn."

The male lead in "Seiren" is named Shouichi. (Rhymes with Junnichi, kind of seems like a cop-out already) Unfortunately he doesn't have an interesting and relatable backstory like Junnichi did. In fact, he might as well be a randomly generated sim. He and his buddies like video games... relatable, but not interesting. 

You know what? It kind of seemed like the whole thing was randomely generated in a prototype computer with algorythms for writing romance anime.

The pacing for each plot is sporadic, and it seems like alot of the "cute" moments you're familiar with in romcom animes are awkward or lacklustre for lack of a better word. They just suddenly happen and suddenly end... it's uneventful and hard to describe. Like there's no "tact" or "nuance" to any of the events in any of the archs. Sometimes things like that can be "lost in translation" meaning it just doesn't translate well in english, but it didn't seem that way. It was just generally boring and awkward. Like the writers just gave up.

**BRIEF SPOILER**

There's also occasional... jarringly cringy jokes. Like in the first arch there's a part where they're (Shuichi and first heroin) in the mens bath in their swimsuits, and she says it feels like wetting herself. (bing in the bath in cloths) He proceeds to get a boner thinking about her peeing herself and eventually chases off a teacher who almost busts them, with it... gross dude.

**END SPOILER**

Are there any pro's? Yes, TONS of Amagami SS nostalgia.

You'll see familiar places and faces, and they'll be drinking tons of panda choco.

I guess an "overall" for this review would be...

"If you're expecting an Amagami SS level series for 2017, you'll be very disappointed."

So, this anime depicts our very normal hero having three relationships with three different girls, with two of those relationships being dead on arrival.  It’s not very action-packed in the slightest, but its beauty comes in the form of overall inner reflection.  Seiren has a, somewhat, “choose your own adventure,” approach, not unlike, ‘A Bridge to the Starry Sky,’ and ‘Yosuga no Sora.’  Unlike Mass Effect 3, you don't have to revert back to an earlier save, all the endings are unlocked and you get to watch them back to back.  However, the sequence you watch them in is the real trap - Because Synergy was always the real ending.  So true is this for the dishonesty of Seiren.  Although we are watching three separate stories, the last story is the true ending.  It's the one you see last, it’s the one that leaves the overall impression of the series as a whole; it is the ending the creators intended for you to receive and remember; Just as in Yosuga no Sora.  Yosuga no Sora had an almost identical story structure: separate, compartmentalized, unrelated; they actually try to make it seem like the events you JUST WATCHED in the previous episodes didn’t happen - but most people I’ve spoken to, tell me Yosuga no Sora is about a dude who bangs his little sister with weak constitution, and runs off to have a life with her… After he goes around banging every girl in the village.  Was Yosuga no Sora, that?  -Not if you believe that each story was self-contained and unrelated. Would people still describe it that way if the incest story was not the last story told?  What if the incest story happened at the beginning, and the final story was about him bangin’ the large breasted, trailer trash, neighbor girl who raped him?  Would people still describe it being about a dude who ran off with his sickly sister to go make children who look like horses?  You tell me.  Seiren does make an effort to tie all the stories together, but only just AN effort - its peak into the future makes it clear that these are three separate, unrelated stories (but not).  It’s the only way the creators can justify continuing the series after the second girl ended her story.

As stated, our hero is a normal high school boy with a slightly older sister, who is very popular at school.  They have a very real and loving sibling, relationship – not the creepy kind (-which I am all about, by the way).  They go to the same school, they interact with each other like normal siblings do, and his sister genuinely looks out for him.

In our first story, our hero interacts with Tsuneki Hikari, a beautiful, popular girl in his class, who happens to idolize our main character’s older sister.  Hikari seems to represent an unattainable dream girl, bursting with healthy beauty.  She’s friendly to him, but extroverted, in contrast to our introverted, reserved protagonist.  Our hero thinks Hikari is so great and beautiful, he is inspired to be a person that she would be interested in.  He gets an idea to actually try and study, in hopes that he can make something of his life, and maybe have her, truly, look in his direction.  However, no matter what he does or how hard he tries, she always seems to be always out of his reach.  I feel that they are just too different from each other.  As an outsider looking in, you can see the dissonance that would exist between them, if they were ever in a relationship.  I believe that deep down, our hero knows this, but he cannot help himself from wanting her.  She just seems too wild a horse for the likes of him.  Even at the close of their story, there remains uncertainty in a future with them in it.  With my mind’s eye, I can imagine her breaking his heart, making a bunch of bad decisions in life (like buying a Dodge), THEN realize how great our hero was, and then trying to come back to him in their late 30s, with a kid in tow.  I generalize, but that’s the gist I got.

Our next story involves Miyamae Tourru.  She’s a year older; beautiful, and good at everything.  Our hero’s in, is that she is a closet hardcore gamer and he just happens to play the same game as her.  His appeal to her is, also, that he is genuinely a good guy, and she’s probably never experienced what a good man by her side can be.  The relationship between our hero and Tourru is the most fleshed out and most satisfying to experience.  She is Best Girl in this series.  The anime could have just been about them and it would have been a masterpiece.  The creators gave her a few quirks, to spice things up.  She has an alleged brother-complex, which seems unnecessary, and it is implied that she is probably, sociopathic-ally, obsessed with games because her brother was into games as well, and she wants to get Aki Sora shwifty with him.  I would have passed this off, but they made an effort to shoehorn that notion in AGAIN at the end of the arc, which was uncalled for and jarring.  In the end, the creators had no good reason for this relationship to not keep going; they just ended them… probably to get to the ending they wanted you to see. 

Our last girl is the childhood friend.  She is the least captivating of our leading ladies.  I’m not sure why the creators chose her.  The only thing I could think of is that maybe they felt like she deserved to win because she put in the most time with our hero? – really, that’s what it feels like.  Honestly, that notion is bullshit.  They want us to believe that what our hero has been looking for has been right in front of his face the whole time?  -If she were a better character, I would buy that, but, honestly, she sucks! -and pales in comparison to what he's been chasing the entire series! Her qualities, and their dynamic do not even add up to what we were just shown in previous episodes with the other girls.  She’s not pretty, she’s a closet tsundere, and she really just pouts the entire time.  They don’t even portray a dynamic between them that even suggests that they are meant for each other.  You expect me to accept that the childhood friend wins, when you just showed us two knockouts who were, hands down, better fits for our hero?  No. I reject that.

-I don’t know, guys.  Maybe Seiren is a dark commentary on real life.  Your dream girl, truly, is not a someone who would spend the rest of her life with you, and no matter how hard you try, you’ll never get her -and if you do, she would just feel you were holding her back.  A girl who is a better fit can be found in the most unlikely of places, once a chance happenstance reveals to her that you were meant for each other- but in the end, she’s emotionally unavailable.  Then, a girl you’ve known your whole life comes along, who’s not your dream girl, offers you a life that isn’t exactly what you want, but ISN'T terrible, and you settle for her instead. That's right. In the end, you don't get the powerful, sexy Ferrari, you don't get the feature rich, luxurious, elegant Beamer with plenty under the hood; They were false choices all along.  -You were always meant to get the affordable, fuel efficient, reliable, purposeful, practical Toyota Corolla. -Maybe I’m just being cynical.

Overall, these girls end up growing as people, and fulfill their dreams because of the relationship they had with our hero.  Our main character, on the other hand, is just a stepping stone on the way to greatness and fulfilled dreams, and is given meager gains in each of our peaks into the future with these girls.  I gave this anime a high rating because, its portrayal of real life is actually quite good… to the point where (and even I’m ashamed to admit this) I actually felt shame and embarrassment and pain, when the stories depicted something similar to my experiences in my life. – So, there you have it; some of my dirty laundry for you. -May the 4th be with you; always.