Anime: Kimi ga Nozomu Eien

Review
Kimi ga Nozomu Eien (Rumbling Hearts) had the perfect set-up to be a disaster. It was based on a erotic game, it was animated by a secondary studio, helmed by a newcomer, and presenting us some annoyingly average character design. The standard of the industry by then was that almost every game-based animation was a trainwreck too. Damn, it even had the balls to be released along a season boasting some of the best shows released until then. What could save this eroge adaptation from disaster? Wait. What, this was a major hit!? How?

Content. Yeah. Bear with me a few spoilers about the first episode to understand. It all begins as Rumbling Hearts is a sad tale of romance where our main guy, Narumi Takayuki, sees his teenage love, Haruka, suffer a near-fatal accident, going into coma for the next few years. During this period Narumi moves on, falling in love with another woman, Mitsuki, but does he really? Can he really move past seeing his first love brutally taken away from him? This is all put to test when she wakes up from the coma, her mind still seeing Narumi as her young boyfriend.

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1. Fuckn Sad
   Rumbling Hearts is a tragic piece of romance and does a great job at that. It give us a lot about the weight to the cast's relationships on the first episode, setting up the debate for the reminder of the show as you see Narumi remembering his past, trying to decide if he keep on with his current life and move away from Haruka or if he gives a chance of retracing his teenage years and corresponding to Haruka's love. That is a damn heavy thing to do, and our three leads do a superb job showing how tough of a decision that can be for everyone.
   
   It forgets about the eroge
   Although having a decent plot with a heavy theme is certainly the biggest hit of Rumbling Hearts, let us not forget this was originally an erotic game where you can date everyone and see pantsus all around you. Fortunately, the direction of the show forgot that, truly focusing on the trio's love drama instead of qualifying every girl around as a potential bang partner for Narumi. Yup, there are many other girls around, such as a loli nurse, sexy doctor, young loli sister, and some others. In a regular game they could all be possible romances for our lead, but here they only do what they need to do: support the tale.
   
   It's mature too
   It tackles a heavy theme, yes, but it also does with a decent maturity. The very start shows that as Narumi and Haruka hang around and have sex quite early, avoiding all those annoying shy-tropes of anime romances. This is a good romance show, and that means telling us about what happens after the people are in a relationship, not just trying to have them kissing each other. This line of thought is consistent along the reminder of the show, always pondering about the choices as responsible adults would, even if from some time to time the eroge-heart seems vibrant with cute girls popping around. This carries around even towards the very end, when Narumi's choice can be backed by common sense and understanding and not only some fan-decision about the game.
   
   Cute but...
   Generic. Rumbling Hearts' character design is quite forgettable as everyone looks like a copy of a character from some other show in the last few years. The protagonist is the default visual novel lead that can be seen everywhere, Haruka is Sakura from Card Captor's all over again, and Hayase can be identified as a tsundere right at the start. The cast's older versions gain some weight, but they still suffer from a subpar art quality and animation that can only be saved by a colorful palette and an outstanding sound direction that manages to improve dramatic sequences with the right theme.
   

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Comments
I find it hard to evaluate Rumbling Hearts. This is a tale that had a big impact on me as I could see a certain character's point of view as a replica of events around me at the time of its release. Because of that I held it in high in my favorite charts for many years until I could watch it again without that much bias. The result is that I could see more of the show's faults, but still held the superb impression I had of it.

Rumbling Hearts manage to pick a dubious original material and turn it into a heavy, powerful romance tackling serious themes and following a mature line of thought. It avoided all the tropes of being an eroge and held every plot element together to form a tale worth being told and with a cast that mimicked real-life people and not only cliche's common to the genre.

It can feel cheesy with its artwork and a few sequences, but as a whole it does a marvelous job. There are few tragic romances in the japanese industry better than this.

All in all this anime is a brilliant story that is carefully constructed and delivered, it is a very good Tragic Romance. The first thing to note is that this series is a Tragic Romance not a Romantic Tragedy. The primary difference being that at the end of this series you are not made to feel comfortable with the situation and the couple involved (eg. think Romeo and Juliet). I would not recommend watching the series if you are really looking for Romance and not Tragedy. The story is brilliantly constructed and there are a lot of subtleties within each of the characters. One other thing to note is that since the story originated from a PC Ero Game the main protagonist "Narumi Takayuki" is quite indecisive and passive throughout major portions of the series, especially when he should have been proactive and this is one of the core elements used in this anime to make the tragedy effective. (There are a lot of examples of him being proactive but just with his job and the related co-workers but not with important parts of his life.) Another method that made the tragedy in this anime more effective is through the lack of communication between the characters, if the reasons that we had caught a glimpse of, had been given to other characters a lot of, if not all of, the agony and angst would have dissipated. One other thing to note is that we, as the viewers, are never made to understand why the girls love the main character, it is just self understood that they do, so you never feel any particular attachment to either girl and the feelings toward them remain relatively balanced.

Spoiler Alert: Ordinarily i wouldn't include spoilers within a review as it would be best for everyone to form their own judgements but i feel this is a special case because i was looking for a Romantic Tragedy, so i included it for those that were looking for that as well. At the end of the story when Takayuki chooses “Hayase Mitsuki” to be the one he wishes to be with, the story feels incomplete. We reach the climax of the story where he acknowledges in some respect all the things that she has done for him, but the denouement never lets us feel relaxed about what had occurred. We see that the other women in the story go off and are successful one in writing children's books and the other in swimming but what of the happiness of the main protagonist and his partner? We see them breifly which almost makes the ending all the more heavy. We Takayuki buying a copy of the children's book and we see Mitsuki crying over the achievements in swimming that she never got. There is no indication that they are together, and there seems proof to the contrary as well neither of them seem particularly happy. Which left this story as a sour note for me. But there is more because how the game, this was based off of actually ends is that Mitsuki is reading the children's story book that the other woman wrote to her daughter. This ending seems to tie all the final elements up nicely and would have made me enjoy the story as a complete package all the more.

Overall
Usually I don't feel like watching the stuff that's on top of lists, like Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien is, but when I differed from the formula this one time, I found a pleasant surprise.

Animation
If there is one weak point to pick on in Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien, it would be the animation. It's not bad, but doesn't leave as strong an impression as the other aspects.

Sound
This anime has like the best opening and ending themes EVARRRR. The soundtrack itself is kinda melodramatic, but it fits the mood.

Story
The story is good, and takes itself very seriously. Some flashier characters break out the serious mood, but they do it at a gentle pace, and don't start annoying the crap out of you.
Ending was amazing and memorable.

Character
All the major characters are interesting and well developed, and this is all packed in 13 episodes.
Charactervice this is goddamn impressive.

Value
I don't think it has that much rewatch value, but it's possibly the best traditional slice-of-life series I've ever seen, so it has a lot of collectible value.

This is my second review. Once again, for my own purposes so that I don't forget the impression this series left on me, or before my brain starts suppressing the memories of it. Whichever comes first.

Animation
The Animation for this series was fairly well done. The background artwork wasn't overly complicated to be distracting, but detailed enough to draw your eye from time to time (appropriately so). The characters weren't as well done as the background in my opinion, more could have been done to synchronize the characters with the background (sometimes they seemed a bit out of place) but it's manageable.

Sound
The sound for this series was well done. The audio was clear and the background noise was appropriate at the appropriate times. Water is featured frequently in this series (some of the characters are swimmers) so that part was good. I really don't have much to say about the audio besides the fact that it wasn't obtrusive, but it was good.

Story
The premise of this story is about a girl who falls into coma after a tragic accident, and the preceeding events that follow. It's not an original story but rather one that's been beaten a couple of times, and the creators of Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien felt it was necessary to explore once again. I was told after watching this that it was based on an H-Game, and after asking a friend what a H-Game was, I figured that it did well enough for being based off of it.

Character
In reality, those who I would call "friends" tell me that I don't get mad easily, which I like to think is true. Maybe that's a human interaction thing that doesn't equate with watching anime, but I like to think it does as I find I can tolerate a lot. However, with Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien I found myself wanting to throttle the character's animated necks or lock them in their respective homes. Maybe get an intervention going, tell them to seek counselling, something... anything! Takayuki, the protagonist of the story, is constantly being told that he's a "kind" character, but really, he's not doing anyone any favours. He just mopes around constantly, pretending to be kind when in reality he's just using his kindness as a sort shield to avoid his own reality, and damaging others around him. His inability to realize that his own issues and sort through them only inflicts pain and suffering on those around him. The remaining core characters of this series, as a result, suffer unduly because of that, making Takayuki an unlikeable, even detestable character, though in his small defense, they're not doing themselves any favours.

Value
This anime series would at most deserve space on a rental shelf, not on someone's book shelf unless you're doing a research paper into the psychological aspects of anime characters who emotionally batter one another and fail to use any portion of their cerebral cortex. In short, you can watch it, if you're so curious to do so as I was, but it's not worth the extra bucks to buy it.

Enjoyment
Okay, here comes the rant, so brace yourselves.... Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien is not the masterpiece that everyone claimed it to be. I was anticipating something that wouldn't, at the very least, want me to gouge out my eyes and shriek at the characters. But that wasn't the case. Lucky for me, I can multi-task, and surfed the internet, IM'd with my friends while they were watching it at the same time (and ranting to one another about it), and did some studying. If I had actually just watched this series from the start, I probably would have just dropped it. Perhaps that's where I went wrong though, going into this series with any kind of anticipation and from now on, all forgone conclusions made by my friends, or other reviewers, should be treated like trash, but such predispositions aren't likely. However, my compulsive desire to finish a series once I've watched it, combined with the encouragement of friends, kept me going, and thankfully it did. Episodes 1-3 primarily go to establishing the premise of the plotline, girl falls into a coma, and the result of said coma. While I couldn't for the life of me figure out the motivations of any of the characters, it was still tolerable. Episodes 4-9 however are a different story. They're six episodes of agonizing, repetitive, brooding, rubbish. All the characters seem to do is run around from one place to another, fooling themselves and others into thinking that the world will simply fall into place if they let things be and take no action. They lack motivation and control, with the only sane character being the orange haired dude it seems. The only way this part was remotely tolerable, were the hilarious antics of Ayu and Mayu, waitresses at the cafe where Takayuki also works. They probably saved the show for me at least up to that point, as I would have probably dropped it if not for them despite being an obsessive compulsive completionist. Finally, the denouement. After finishing episode 9 and taking a break from the show for a day, I decided that I needed to watch the rest and just get the painful series over with. But, to my great surprise, I wasn't utterly repulsed by the ending! In fact, I was shocked at how good it was. The horrible setup finally gives way to meaningful plot, and the series begins to redeem itself in the final episodes with actual character development and plot! If you've suffered through the first 9 episodes like I did, please continue on to the end! While the abhorration of the first part of this series raises it's ugly head for a few seconds from time to time, this series really does redeem itself in the last few episodes. The ending was thougtful, and more endearing, and almost made you forget about it's dreadful origins, almost. Though it was cliched, it was still good and ultimately made me realize why it was so highly rated (while I still wouldn't rate it as highly as many others have). Perhaps a better analogy at the end of it all would be this, you've been on a diet of salad for 9 days, not the good salad mind you, something that's plain and not really palatable, and so, after all of that, you relish for the next 5 days the taste of a real meal. You don't relish it because it's extraordinary, to the contrary it's a meal you've had before that you liked and didn't think was the best thing you've ever tasted, but rather because you've been on a mediocre diet for the previous 9 days. That's pretty much how I felt about Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien.

That's my review, time for a snack.

Overall:Extremely well composed anime. A must-watch for drama/romance anime fans!

Animation
Flowing animation, well-touched and designed characters and clothing. Nothing to complain in terms of animation.

Sound
Some very smooth music and blends well with the animation. Character voicing reflects the characteristics well, nicely done!

Story
The story may be a typical tragic romance/drama storyline, that also often appears in H-games where this was based off.. but the beautiful animation and character design takes Kimi ga Nozomu Eien to a higher level unlike other animes of similar genres. A very touching plot that should get many viewers attracted to the anime.

Character
Character development not as well as some other anime. Characteristics were not as well shown through the looks, although voicing helped a bit. That said, the character design was superb, and their emotions were well expressed as the anime progressed.

Overall, while a decent but sub-par series, I would first like to say that while I can understand how it became one of the top rated animes on this website, I don't believe that it is worthy of the title.

The animation was above average, as expected of an anime this recent. The lighting, character models, background models, and even the wheather models were all very well done. However, there was a bit of a problem with the anime's fluidity, and the character designs were a bit bland and cookie-cutter like.

The soundtrack is always spot on; cheesy songs when cheesy songs are neccessary, depressing songs when depressing songs are neccessary, etc. Just hearing the sound will get you in the neccessary mood to watch the scene, always a good sign in any anime. As for the voice actors; the waitresses were extremely annoying and unrealistic, and the I couldn't really feel the emotions of the characters at times through their voices.

The story, I thought, was very cliche: this type of thing has been done a million times in soap operas and romance novels and movies. While in anime it might be a newer concept, this story has been done a million times in movies and television around the world. I was also a little bit disturbed over how they glossed over one particular event later on in the series, which I won't mention here because it would ruin a bit of the story. I can't believe Mitsuki gets away with what she does while blaming Takayuki for it; even his friend tries to blame it on Takayuki. Also, this anime, even though it is only 14 episodes, has an extremely slow pacing. It felt like it took me longer to get through these 14 episodes than I take to get through 50 episodes of other anime.

Don't get me wrong-- the story had all the makings of a gripping and emotional story, but maybe because of the pacing or the fact that it was so depressing, I just couldn't get into it or enjoy it too much, partly because of some unrealistic events that seem to occur fairly often. This includes the relatively mild muscle dystrophy and barely haggard appearence of Haruka, Takayuki becoming so hung up on Haruka after one date and some puppy love, etc.

Also, the whole relationship between Takayuki and the girls seems forced and unrealistic; I can never really tell if he has feelings for either of them, or if he just lets himself get blown around by the wind without a care.

The main characters, as expected in a series like this which is fairly shallow and relies upon shocking events to invoke emotions, were, for the most part, lacking in development. Each character reacted to the situations in the most over-the-top manner possible. The biggest drawback of the series' characters were a few side characters like the waitresses and the nurses whose shallowness takes away a bit from the mood of the series. I mean really, how often do you see a waitress beat up a customer and be allowed to stay as a waitress?

Also, because of Mitsuki's afforementioned actions, I despised her by the end of the series. And for Takayuki's indecision, I despised him as well.

I wouldn't reccomend this to any of my friends or anyone else. This is merely a bad Soap Opera that you could watch any time at around 2PM on the Network television channels. I tried rewatching this anime in order to try to see how everyone rated it so highly, maybe to catch something I missed, but I was even more dissapointed with this anime the second time than the first.

Overall, I can see why it is rated so highly: it is hard to rate an anime like this low, so it gets a lot of high reviews: this isn't a niche-based anime like vampire animes or mecha animes; this anime has basis in real life that many can relate to. However, maybe because it is based in real life, and maybe because I could relate to the characters, Takayuki with his struggles with Mitsuki near the end of the series in particular, I did not enjoy the series as much as I do other animes.