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Rec is a rather short adult romance anime with some comedy, set in the world of business, PR and voice acting. By adult romance, I mean there is none of that trope highschool kid stuff, just a couple of individuals who are brought together by work and more besides. This turned out to be unique and great. Don't judge a book by it's cover, this is certainly true here. Initially I expected it to be generic, trope-filled tat, but turned out otherwise. This is the first anime in a good while that has had me glued to the screen, it's actually quite interesting. There aren't too many great romance animes, but this is one of the more unique and ineresting ones and should be commended for it. It's mostly sensible and not many things annoyed me, so well done for that. It reminded me of decent romance anime like Please Teacher and Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien at times. Who is it aimed towards? I'm not really sure of that, since it does have a rather grown-up storyline but is appears in a colourful youthful style. If you've enjoyed romance anime before or just like romance or unique stories, give this a try. It's pretty short too, 10 episodes at 13 minutes each.

Animation

The animation quality was surprisingly good. I watched it in 480p (couldn't find any better), but it seemed just as good as HD quality. Things were very clear, however the colourful style seems to juxtapose the rather mature nature of the anime. There is the occasional good use of filters and colour to help portray a particular atmosphere. Facial expressions and the like are also sometimes used to comedic effect. A bunch of curry leaves fall on the main character and remain on him during the next scene, for example. Or during a scene meant to show despair, it's raining and the rain above the character is more intense like a waterfall. The colourful sort of style usually goes hand in hand with 'terrible' romance anime which usually go for the ecchi/harem option. Speaking of which, this anime doesn't contain ecchi scenes or any pointless offensive stuff either. It does reference eroge, porn and sex, but nothing obscene appears on-screen and these subjects are relevant to the plot points when they appear. Don't get the wrong idea, I'll mention it in the story part of this review. Character designs seem okay, I initially hated the design of the female protagonist since she looks half her age, but things were put into perspective for me and I was able to forgive it for that. The animation of the outro seemed very artistic, despite some okay half-nudity. Not bad.

Sound

Sound is fairly important given that this anime has voice acting at its core. But the intro song is one of those thigns that give off the wrong vibe about this anime. The intro seems generic and cheesy, the sort of thing one would expect of a much less tasteful anime. It's not exactly terrible per se, but it doesn't do the show any good. As I said, don't judge a book by its cover, the outro is much more appropriate and chilled out. The backing to the anime is comedic, which works fine given the comedy aspect of the anime. However, during the serious scenes, music didn't really stand out too well. Perhaps it shouldn't and it was just being used at opportune moments, I'll give it the benefit of the doubt. This anime is only available in Japanese and the voice acting is pretty good, as it should be for an anime where voice acting is a major part of the plot. The voice actor for Aka Onda hasn't been in many anime, the only role of note is Ayumi Tsuwabuki in Kaze No Stigma. Perhaps they purposely used such a voice actor, who could relate to the character better. If so, then well done. Matsumaru's VA Makoto Yasumura has been in quite a lot more anime, though I haven't watched many of them, besides Overdrive, in which he did the voice of Yousuke. On the other hand, Yoshioka's VA Megumi Toyoguchi is a bigger name in voice acting, as Revi from Black Lagoon, Winry from FMA, Dawn from Pokemon, Chihiro from Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo, Rosalia from SAO and many more. Quite a surprise how they did the roles here. I must also add, the references and quotes from Audrey Hepburn movies add a unique flavour and further proves this anime as a sensible adult romance.

Characters

The male protagonist of this anime is Fumihiko Matsumaru, a 24 year old who works in the marketing department of a snacks company. Just the average salaryman then, his ideas usually don't get approved, but one day things go well and his idea for a mascot character for the new snack 'Ha' goes through. He isn't perfect and things don't usually work out for him. He is often driven by his feelings and emotions, sometimes being a jerk because of it. As a guy, he is subject to certain desires and this can also make him do stupid things at times. However, when it matters most, he holds true to his feelings and doesn't do anything to hurt anyone. On a few occasions towards the end when he's being a meany, he regrets it instantly as if he has a split personality and genuinely feels guility about it. At a first glance this appears to be a bad character, perhaps playing on tropes, but look further in and he turns out to be a very human, relatable character. Heck, at times he reminded me of myself.

Aka Onda is the female protagonist of this anime, a 20 year old up and coming voice actor. Her house gets burnt and she moves in with Matsumaru. Early on in the anime she gets simple roles like voicing the Nekoki mascot created by Matsumaru. She does make bad decisions that end up making things awkward or causing misunderstandings, especially towards the start. Her sense of moral and personal respect comes into question when she gets a job to voice a character for an Eroge (hentai game). Her favourite actor is Audrey Hepburn and she aspires to be like her. She's also memorised many lines from movies Hepburn has been in. She does look very young and has a voice that could be mistaken for a teenager, but that's the thing. This aspect of the character is realistic, often Japanese voice actors appear very young and have voices that suggest they are young too. At one point she is voicing a young male character in an anime, also something realistic. As a voice actor, she is very flexible with her voice. She's a bit reluctant and slightly shy at times, she hits Matsumaru for doing silly things like walking in on her when she's in the bathroom. I don't know how I feel about that, since it reminds me of terrible trope characters from bad anime. But overall, Aka is a great character who is also somewhat realistic.

Other characters are not so important obviously but a few honourable mentions. Aka's manager Yoshioka is a somewhat emotionless, yet sensible and to the point character. She can read Aka like a book and helps out, giving her good advice and such. Matsumaru's original crush and colleague Tanaka 'from accounting' is a terrible person, yet realistic too. She stands up Matsumaru at a date to hang out with her real boyfriend, some big tough guy who looks like he's in the mafia. Later on she gets dumped and complains about it. I have no sympathy for a woman who chooses her men, based on superficial attributes. However, when she does realise she might have messed things up between Matsumaru and Aka, she takes the initiative and explains that nothing happened between her and Matsumaru when she got drunk and he had to take her home. Matsumaru's friend and colleague from the same department Yoshio Hatakeda is a very happy, boisterous man, who has an obvious infatuation with Aka as a fan of hers. Matsumaru's attempts to hide his relationship from him can be funny at times.

Story

In the first episode, the two meet at a cinema where Matsumaru is stood up by his date Tanaka 'from accounting' and ends up watching the movie with Aka who stops him as he is about to discard the movie tickets. Aka feels bad for him and treats him to a beer and Yakitori (Japanese pub grub) at an Izakaya (Japanese pub). Later that night, Matsumaru is woken by sirens and goes out in the rain with his umbrella to find that the same Aka Onda from before, has lost her home to a fire. He takes her into his flat to shelter her from the rain, where she sobs in his arms and make the bad decision of sleeping together. A realistic start to the next morning, Matsomaru wakes up to find his one night love has gone and both are put in an awkward position. They end up living together and going through much that tests their relationship. I'll say this, there isn't any love between them at the start, but feelings are developed throughout and finally realised. This is how love should be written in fiction (and how it should be IRL). No love bullshit liek love at first sight, just true-to-heart romance. And I commend them for writing it as such. There were cringeworthy sections at times, like the bit about Aka having to voice an Eroge, but they treated these parts of the story rather sensibly with professionalism, instead of falling down the hole and trying to make pervy comedy or ecchi fan-service bullshit out of it. That said, there is some comedy at times, like Aka getting jealous when they bump into Tanaka 'from accounting.' There were many realistic parts of to the story, things that I can relate to like casual drinking, getting drunk and having to take care of someone, taking them home and looking after them. That may be just me showing my reckless youthfulness. The anime ends with a satisfactory ending, wrapping up the romance plot. This is something that never happens in many romance anime, especially harem anime. As with all good anime it left me wanting more and being sad that it wasn't longer or that there wasn't a sequel. Also like all good anime, it wrapped up the story so well, that it doesn't need a sequel, yet it still makes me want one. One thing I have to say, the one night stand was my least favourite part of the story, even if it was adding realism. I disagree with such things and they don't do any good for relationships, the fact that they even continued to hang around each other afterwards is surprising and it did make things awkward between them at times. Normally that wouldn't happen, but given the situation, I guess the realistic event of her return was inevitable. I do like how ideal the romance is, this is how romance should be. Well done.

Conclusion

A surprisingly good, if short romance anime then. Even though it looked like a trope-filled generic anime at first and if the intro was cringy, it turned out to be rather sensible, realistic and relatable. Both the characters and the story were relatable, therefore realistic too. The romance was depicted and developed in the ideal fashion and it reminded me of good romance anime I've seen before like Please Teacher and Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien. I'm glad to have watched this one. I'd give it a better rating if it didn't have some minor flaws here and there. Heck, since this is so short, just over 2 hours total, I'd recommend it to anyone. Especially, people who can relate (working adults) and those who don't normally enjoy anime or the romance genre, simply because there is something to learn here. How does love really come about?

Family-friendliness Rating: 3/5 There is a lot of inappropriate implications, nothing visual (lower is better)

Overall Rating: 8.5/10 (higher is better)