Wow, amazing opener, and this time it’s not just under the pretense that True Tears is better compared to the relative crap of the rest of the season, I genuinely enjoyed this for all its worth. The characters were well introduced and brimming with potential for interesting back stories, not to mention with three girls at the center of focus, they should get ample screentime, regardless of the short 13 episode duration. Also, the animation was breathtakingly awesome, it was more fluid than anything I’ve ever seen before. Oh, and the x-ray vision…I’ll get to that later.

True Tears, at first glance, appears to be your typical high school anime centered around the life of Nakagami Shinichiro and his interaction with three girls: Yuasa Hiromi, Isurugi Noe and Ando Aiko.

Hiromi has been living with Shin for about a year now, her father was a close family friend so when tragedy struck and he passed away, they took Hiromi in. At school she’s popular, well liked, athletic and always smiles, a huge contrast to how she acts when she’s at home. At Shin’s house she’s quiet and reserved and almost never lets out a sincere smile. Shin seems to have a thing for her but can never bring himself to approach her at school nor at home, but he knows that she’s holding back tears deep inside her. As an artist he spends his time painting pieces of her, wishing he could do something to help her, yet too shy to do so.

Noe is new to Shin’s school, well recognized as cute around the school, but equally as weird. Of the rumors floating around, apparently she’s able to summon pink elephants when she whistles and has the ability to curse people with misfortune. And on his first run in with her, Shin manages to be the recipient of one of these curses after teasing her for her lame analogies and quick to judge personality. After hearing about her aptitude at cursing, Shin makes it up to her by crafting a tissue box to look like a chicken, it goes over well with her, one of her hobbies being tending to the chicken coop on school grounds. That day when they go to check up on the coop they find that a raccoon managed to get through the wiring and kill the chicken she was watching over. However, in spite of that, Noe does not cry, she stands tall and walks forward with the same cheerful attitude, saying that she’s sad but can’t cry since she gave her tears away.

Lastly is Aiko, or Ai-chan, one year older than Shin, his sempai. She works at a nearby restaurant bar and from the ease of conversation and the comfortable atmosphere between the two, she and Shin seem like they’ve known each other for a long time. Shin’s best friend Nobuse appears to be interested in Ai-chan, Shin backing off in consideration when the two of them have an opportunity to be alone, but it remains to be seen where Ai-chan’s feelings lie…

First Impressions

I don’t know why, but it seems like there’s something different about this ‘romance drama’ as compared to other ones. Not necessarily a supernatural element or anything like that, I just have this weird gut feeling that it’s going to be really good. Maybe I’m just going crazy, who knows.

Again, it’s characters that are selling this series to me. Hiromi looks like one of those girls who put up a facade in front of others and suppresses any pain she may feel. I was in awe of the animation quality the first time I watched it and wasn’t paying attention to story and characters during my first run, with Hiromi’s hair style change and major personality 180, I didn’t even know she was the same person comparing her act at school to her behavior at Shin’s house. It could be a number of things causing this, it could be something as corny as Shin and his family being the only one she can show her true colors to, seeing as they know her story or it could be that she’s reminded of the pain of losing her family when she’s in Shin’s house and her true self is at school, away from the worries. Either way I’m curious to see how she develops, I just hope she breaks out of the stoic personality she has, I’m getting sick of ‘teh Rei’ clones.

Oh, and here’s where the x-ray vision deal comes in. LOL @ this scene. After seeing Hiromi half naked in the bath the night before, when he sees her at breakfast the next day, he mentally pictures her half dressed. I didn’t notice it on my first watch but when I went through a second time, taking note of finer animation details as well as character development I noticed the opacity on Hiromi’s clothes take a dive in this scene and realized it was intentional. Bricks were shat.

Ai-chan got the least screen time out of the three girls and it looks like her story will be a simple matter of choice. Shin’s friend Nobuse is obviously pretty close to her, what with Shin teasing the two by leaving them alone. But Ai’s reaction made it seem like she has a thing for Shin instead, asking him not to leave and generally being a blushing mess when he’s around. I think she’ll be inconsequential in the end though, Shin doesn’t seem to feel anything but friendship towards her, and if they were to end up together it would be a huge betrayal to Nobuse.

And finally, Noe, who is my fav so far, one of those batshit insane girls with a deeper story. She’s quick to judge, quick to anger and just as quick to turn around and be perfectly cheery seconds later. Out of the three girls she got the most concentrated screentime but left me with the most questions. Unfortunately, there’s not enough known about her for me to venture a guess as to her true personality or how she will develop. But damn she’s cute as hell, and I like her shoes o.O

Technicals for this series need to be seen and heard to be believed. The animation was stunning. Everything from lip movement to facial expressions to character movement was VERY fluidly animated. The scene above is what would normally be a filler shot, a cutaway from the main characters having a conversation, but is filled with movement: the dude txt msging on his cell, the guy in the middle flipping pages in his book, the two girls on the left carrying on a seemingly uninspired conversation and a whole slew of students passing by in the background hallway, incredible. I just hope it wasn’t just a special case for the opening episode, I’m going to be disappointed if the animation nosedives later on.

Character designs were simple yet well done, while I like the whole rainbow haired cast as much as any other harem fan, it’s nice to see plausible hair colors for once, and they managed to keep the female character designs unique and attractive at the same time.

Lastly, music was surprisingly good. I’ve had the OP song on loop while writing this entry, it’s fitting for this type of series and the vocals are great, all backed up by a beautifully animated OP sequence. I might even download the song and throw it on to my mp3 player, which, otherwise filled with metal and progressive rock, is a great achievement for an anime OP. ED isn’t as good, but I still listened to the whole thing.

So now I don’t know whether I should blog Wolf & Spice or True Tears, both look like they’ll be great shows. I guess I’ll have to see another episode of each and check how much coverage they’re each getting elsewhere. I’ll throw up a poll to see what you readers think too. I probably won’t be blogging Gunslinger Girl II seeing as I didn’t like it that much (given, I watched it raw) but I’ll get to that when it finally gets subbed and I get to do a first impressions post.

Be honest, who else thought of something completely different when he reached for the tissue box?

~ Shirukii ~