Final Approach

Ever since their parents died a few years ago, Ryo and his sister Akane have been living alone together. Despite their difficult situation, they are still living reasonably happy and normal lives. However, everything is about to be flipped upside-down due to a secret government project. Due to increasingly low birth rates in Japan, the Japanese government is testing a program in which two young people are forced to marry. Ryo wants no part of it, but he is given little choice in the matter; his new fiancée, Shizuka, comes to his home late one night with several dozen government issued bodyguards, who are there to ensure the success of the new couple. Unlike Ryo, Shizuka couldn’t be more willing to go along with this new program, and eagerly goes about her wifely duties, despite his objections. With meddling friends, pushy bodyguards, and an overenthusiastic new fiancée, Ryo’s life has taken a turn in a direction the young man certainly didn’t expect.

(Source: ANN)

Masuda, Shizuka Main

Nogawa, Sakura Japanese

Mizuhara, Ryo Main

Kishio, Daisuke Japanese

Mutsu, Emiho Supporting

Takahashi, Chiaki Japanese

Mizuhara, Akane Supporting

Matsuki, Miyu Japanese

Mukasa, Haruki Supporting

Okano, Kousuke Japanese

Moriya, Miki Supporting

Tamura, Yukari Japanese

Meno, Yurika Supporting

Minaguchi, Yuko Japanese

Oomiya, Saburou Producer

Yamamoto, Takashi Director

Iizuka, Kouichi Sound Director

Nanba, Hitoshi Storyboard

Reviews

Jun 19, 2009

cheriipai

Recommended

Either bashing my cranium against a solid, brick wall because the main character, Ryo Mizuhara, is ceaselessly making stubborn and defiant choices -even though he is completely aware of hurting his fiancée's feelings- or because his fiancée, Shizuka Masuda, is almost annoyingly hell-bent on receiving affection from someone who obviously does not care, I'll have to admit that (most-importantly) my head seems to be in relatively good shape, despite a solid beating(s). And since my skull-bashing proved to be ineffective time-after-time, I could actually sit and enjoy some of the finer moments that Final Approach had to offer.

Yes, it has the long-running and omnipresent anime ... cliché of "making horrible, dumb decisions in a relationship," almost to the point where all of us in real life actually start feeling better about our relationships.

Yes, I've already said it, but they really did make "horrible, dumb decisions in a relationship."
Regardless, I (somehow?) still had a little sympathy for our destined pair. Maybe it was that pitiful? Maybe I'm starting to get weak? Maybe it should not have taken 10 or so episodes for them to realize their callow mistakes? Who knows...

But even so, being trapped within a torrential vortex of "stupidity" still brought a tear in my eye (I'll have to admit, painfully) and made me laugh like the little schoolgirl I most probably am.
But hey! Final Approach was intended as a mixture of comedy and romance, and it certainly lived up to those expectations.

The cast of characters: simply hilarious. Maybe I, in fact, enjoyed the head-bashing (masochist?). Even so, it was practically random, unprecedented fun which stemmed into bouts of laughter.
There was no telling what would happen next between the zany characters, and that is simply what separated this "typical" romance anime from the rest, but not enough to noticeably distinct itself and turn into something absolutely amazing.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Apr 24, 2011

rosenkavalier

Mixed Feelings

Foreword
Found the torrent from Tokyotosho RSS feed. Yes, it's another release from Jumonji-Giri. They've been around re-encoding old series,those that aired when .mkv format was not so widespread, and widescreen broadcast was uncommon. After a quick look on AniDB, I downloaded this series. FYI, this time too, J-G peer swarms were small, and up/down speed was so low, around 8 kBps.

Story
This kind of theme has been recycled again and again for romantic comedy (particularly harem, and ecchi) anime. Although there's not much similarity between them, I am tempted to compare FA to Daa! Daa! Daa! (UFO Baby). No... no... don't ask me anything if you ... feel this comparison is not really relevant. I just feel like it.
On both anime, the hero and heroine live together like a newly wed couple, with less intensity in FA, for there is another girl with close age too. There, the driving force for this whole series are Shizuka's naivety and our hero's coldness. Many incidents here and there, could only count as really standard slapstick jokes. Each episode just passed away, with few laughters (sometimes rather forced ones) and went by, hardly leaving any traces in my mind.
Several story elements' in FA also made me drop huge sweat from my chin. Those 'Agent Smith(s)', really freaked me out, feels like I'm seeing artificially bred and cloned human beings. I don't wanna think that they're cloned from Shizuka's DNA, for it's too gross. The arranged marriage, and a girl soliciting herself to a boy she never knows. It makes me feel really sorry for Shizuka. Really gross plot, I think.
To sum it up, FA has many things any average (or better) romance anime offers, but it fails to deliver them well.

Art
I'm not really familiar with romance anime art from that era (the time when this anime was aired, I have no access to any anime except those that were aired in local TVs). I could scarcely remember School Days or Daa!3x tho, and I could confidently say, the art is not superior compared to those latter two. The hero was poorly designed, his shoulder being too wide and his eyes too sharp, as if he was from an average beat-em-up' action anime. The girls were not particularly interesting, too.

Sound
Not really paying much attention. Not much special, but the insert song for the last episode (is it the same song as the OP Theme?) is quite good.

Character
Not much to say. Average characters, you'll most likely meet characters like those in FA in other countless titles you've watched, and other countless series to come.
FYI, although she's not appealing enough to be admitted to my anime harem, I never refuse a girl like Shizuka, and Emiho's sanguine friend is interesting too (I always like that kind of voice character).

Enjoyment
At least, worth for spending your free time.

Overall
Right now, out of about 400GB storage space (I'm poor, huh?), I'm considering freeing up more. Maybe, I'll delete this one, but I'm trying to keep this series. It's worth archiving.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Aug 30, 2008

mcjazzman32

Not Recommended

Final Approach is possibly one of the most demented, impossibly defunct anime I’ve ever watched. Not only does it strangle the viewer with absurd, illogical plotlines and unexplainable (and oftentimes incomprehensible) conclusions to cap 10 minute long episodes, but the characters can go from annoying to lovable in 0 to 60 without breaking a sweat.

The story is supposed to be about a guy, Ryo, who is forced to marry this girl, Shizuka, because of a government program meant to up the childbirth rate. But the anime completely abandons that premise half-way through in favor of some kind of twisted love triangle between Ryo, Shizuka ... and Emiho (who is truly this anime’s saving grace.) that makes no sense and refuses to lean one way or the other.

Now I will admit the story does have some interesting twists and surprises in a few of the episodes, originality that I would have thought was impossible for a series that basically spans a grand total of 130 minutes of viewing time. However, the bad often times far outweighs the good. It’s unrealistic on every level and Shizuka is half the time, the most annoying character I’ve possible ever watched. Her cheerful ignorance and gung-ho even in the face of obvious lack of interest from Ryo really started to piss me off after a while. For a little icing on the cake, the anime takes a few turns at tearful emotion at such terribly inopportune times that are so laughable that I actually DID cry!

So watching this, I realized that the difference between my watching and then forgetting this anime completely in a year or regarding this as one of the worst anime I’d ever seen all hung on the ending. If they did what I thought they were going to do, it was going to be the latter and I was going to have to throw my computer out the window so I could somehow be satisfied with not getting the opportunity to personally hitting Shizuka in the face. So what was the result? Well, let’s just say the review you’re reading right now was written on a brand new computer.

However, the worst part about this anime is that midway through, it hinted at something that’s possibly good. They just barely touch on something I could really get into and I was happy for maybe 20 seconds and then they took the final 6 episodes or so to crush me into oblivion while I was watching. THEN, the makers of this anime had the audacity to shove the fact that they squashed that mid-point possibility by reminding me of it in the 13th “bonus” episode.

This is by far the biggest waste of time in my life and I thank God that it was so short. Do yourself a favor and stay far away from this trash and stick to a good romantic comedy… or even go with more sanitary garbage. It’s better than this curse on humanity.

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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