Notes
Good flow, very straightforward. Nothing really makes your heart sing, but it's chock full of that youthful wistfulness the Japanese write so well.
After episode 5, I wondered how many more twists we were going to get before they finally settled on ONE conflict. And by the end, they still hadn't done it, so I gave up. Nothing drags on forever or gets too little screen time, but for most of the series, it does have Absent Hero Syndrome, a la
Hana Kimi. Mei flocks around with friends and gets full development, but Atsushi gets stuck with story exposition and personal drama he has to brave alone. The time jumps just weren't that fleshed out.
Characters to like, and characters to
really not. Call 'em as you see 'em, 'cause they're going to inexplicably change into abusive and/or suicidal psychos in the next episode. Seriously. The main couple is a standard cookie factory pop-out: caring, friendly heroine and reserved, sweet hero.
Daaaang, I love them, but I really need to quit watching these fate stories, they just feed my fantasy to a dangerous level. Anyway, I have to talk about the abuse themes, because they came as a surprise to me. When I first started watching the drama, I was pretty much expecting
Koizora 2.0. Lots of teenage angst, school woes, and a tragedy or two, but overall, nothing too grimly dark. And then! All the emotional and physical abuse that clouded so many of the relationships... got pretty hard to watch. The overall themes ended up very different than I expected. In a striking way.
Not really.
Overdue closure. Honestly, the amount of time it takes for the entire story to connect and resolve is
ridiculous. Now, having said that, I'll also admit that the last scene is the best thing about the series. It finally had some SINCERITY!
The film filters even fooled
me for two episodes. That was partially due to the fact that I first watched the drama on My Soju, and streaming sites always kill a few frames, but still, it was quite convincing. All throughout the first episode, I kept going, "Is this film? It's lit like film... It moves like film..." I was psyched to witness an industry breakthrough, but once I started downloading, all 30 fps came out in full glory. And aside from the fancy filter, the direction's actually pretty standard. Some scenes look really nice, good moving shots and everything, but too many others are wide angle happy with half assed editing. If you're going to filter it like film, then shoot it like film!
I love the verses in "366 Days," but the chorus becomes an overcomposed circus. BGM, good.
Minamisawa Nao and Mizobata Junpei have kind of a... quiet quality about them. I mean, hell, their characters don't even get
that much stuff together. A conversation here, completely tame, another conversation there, also completely tame, but suddenly there's an impromptu kiss and very, very strong feelings. For most of the series, they weren't really convincing me it was "red thread of fate" level attraction. But (there's always a but) I will say that they were sweet. They gave it what their reserved characterizations could.
Apple's Tier Ranking: 3rd
