Yesterday wo Utatte

Rikuo Uozumi has all but resigned himself to a bleak future, aimlessly working at a convenience store in Tokyo after graduating from college. His monotonous life is interrupted when the peculiar Haru Nonaka makes a lively appearance, frequently dropping by his workplace to befriend him. When Rikuo learns that an old college friend and crush, Shinako Morinome, has moved back into town, he reaches out to further their relationship. Unbeknownst to Rikuo however, Shinako is carrying painful memories from her past that were holding her back from accepting his feelings. Meanwhile, as Haru continually opens up to Rikuo, he discovers that she, much like him, is living by herself and wants to step out of her comfort zone into an uncertain future.

The past lingers long in the mind, and the future remains elusive. At a crossroads along their intertwined paths, these three experience what it means to let go of their feelings of yesterday and embrace the change that tomorrow brings.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Nonaka, Haru Main

Miyamoto, Yume Japanese

Morinome, Shinako Main

Hanazawa, Kana Japanese

Uozumi, Rikuo Main

Kobayashi, Chikahiro Japanese

Yuzuhara, Chika Supporting

Kitamura, Eri Japanese

Kansuke Supporting

Maekawa, Ryouko Japanese

Hayakawa, Rou Supporting

Hanae, Natsuki Japanese

Kinoshita Supporting

Suzuki, Tatsuhisa Japanese

Minato, Kouichi Supporting

Ono, Yuuki Japanese

Sayama, Kyouko Supporting

Sakamoto, Maaya Japanese

Fukuda, Takanori Supporting

Terashima, Takuma Japanese

Kamata, Hajime Producer

Kudou, Masayo Producer

Kabashima, Manami Producer

Mori, Yuuki Producer

Reviews

Jun 20, 2020

dlxuniuniu

Recommended

Life is complicated, especially when it comes to love.
Who do we have feelings for, are they enough for a close and familiar relationship or is it more of a friendly nature? This anime focuses on these aspects and presents them in everyday situations that can also be imagined in real life.

Yesterday wo Utatte was one of the most hyped series for the Spring season in 2020, so let's take a closer look at it:

STORY:
Friendzone or more? Many of us have already gotten into this situation. If the feeling of love is only one-sided, even friendship is in danger. Our protagonist Rikuo is also affected ... by this and experiences how difficult and uncomfortable it can be. Initially without big goals and dreams, he continues to develop with the help of his friends. He really loves his old college female friend Shinako but she had a sad past and lost the person she loves the most. She isn't sure about her future...in the meantime we also get to know Haru, our energetic and happy girl. She loves Rikuo and is willing to do everything for him. Also Haru had a hard past where she dropped out of school even. But in the end it doesn't matter how hard or uncomfortable the past was, whether old love reappears, the most important question is how the future looks like. Where do I get the motivation to change my life? Our protagonists must also ask themselves all these important questions.

CHARACTERS:
The characters play an enormously important role for love relationships, they are the absolute main aspect. Without being able to understand their thoughts and actions, this anime would not have succeeded. The nice thing is that you can put yourself in the role of the characters. We can understand their joy and their pain very well. We experience how they develop, set new goals and all of that step by step. Love relationships are complicated, but every person wants to love and be loved.

ART:
The environment gives you a very idyllic, but also realistic feeling. Every single scene was presented as it could be in real life: from the houses, buildings to the decoration in the rooms, everything was very well thought out. The expressions and emotions of the character also come out well. Not even the smallest detail has been forgotten.

SOUND:
Nowadays we experience not many animes that do not have an OP. "Yesterday wo Utatte" is one of the few exceptions. After a short opening scene where we normally expect the opening song, it is left out. In the beginning maybe a little unusual, but suitable for this anime. During the episode everything was well thought and even the smallest detail are presented perfectly: We hear quiet engine noises during a dialogue in the background, we can hear their emotions from the characters' voices, even the pouring of water sounds like in reality. Perfect ED songs complete the whole thing. The lyric of these are suitable for the feelings and also the music is tuned accordingly.

ENJOYMENT:
After the first episode, this anime got my full attention. The everyday situation, a complicated love affair, all of this captivates the viewer. Everyone wants to know what's going on. Where does the journey of our characters go, who gets together with whom ... the anime answers all these questions a little more with each episode. One or the other will probably ask herself/himself what she/he would have done in such a situation.
BUT!!! Without spoilering anything, it can be said that 12 Episodes is definitely not enough to cover the whole plot. A rushed ending can give you a very unsatisfying feeling.

All in all, I recommend everyone to give this anime a try, even if you might not like such genres in general. With all its good aspects, "Yesterday wo Utatte" will surely get your attention.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Jun 21, 2020

BlueKite

Mixed Feelings

Yesterday wo Utatte is an anime that had great potential, but unfortunately wasted it. When I saw its premise, I immediately felt a strong sense of connection to it. It's been more than a year since I graduated from college, and the show reflects the uncertainty I've felt about the future recently. Not everyone will find their success story immediately once they set foot on the real world. Feeling like you're in limbo during the time between graduation and employment is normal. Perhaps, these are just assurances to comfort me as I’ve been stuck in one place for a while now. Watching the first few ... episodes made me reflect if I made any real progress in life as an adult. It made me root for Rikuo's character, hoping things get better for him eventually. The show could've been an emotionally compelling coming-of-age story about overcoming obstacles that adult life brings. Instead, it ended up being a complicated romance story with mixed results.

Even if the show didn't end up going for the coming-of-age route, I became invested in the romance. Rikuo finds himself stuck between two women that showed interest in him. One of them is Haru, who is the eccentric yet cheerful type that has a massive crush on Rikuo. The other one is Shinako who Rikuo has a crush on ever since they were classmates back in college. To make things more complicated, we also have Rou who's in love with Shinako even though they are childhood friends. The show does a decent job initially in exploring each character's backstory and making the audience understand their train of thought. I honestly didn't care who will end up with who as long as enough time is given to flesh out their characters. The show's focus on romance was starting to get the justification it deserved until it got ruined with one logistical decision that led to its downfall.

As the show progressed around the halfway mark, it started to have a noticeable drop in quality with each episode. They no longer have the same impact as the earlier episodes. It felt like a long period had passed between episodes, and the show's continuity suffered because of that. I soon discovered that a lot of content from the manga were skipped over, and most of them are considered crucial to the story's progression. New episodes would have developments that startled me and made me wonder if I wasn't paying enough attention to the previous episode. The characters' actions started to make less sense, and I still tried to connect the dots despite that. It's almost like Doga Kobo was in a rush to conclude the whole thing, which is a disappointing move that even the extras that are supposed to fill in the gaps couldn't remedy.

I can't help but feel that this anime could've been way better as I reached the final episode. It started extremely well, began to lose focus, and ended up with a conclusion that didn't feel earned. The main characters didn't get the proper exploration that they deserved. Every major decision they make doesn't feel justified later because the show starts to make less effort to help us understand what made them reach that decision. They all feel like the same flawed person they were at the start. They deserve to be more than that because they feel like real people. At least, their interactions made it feel that way, whether it's those moments of awkward silence or sudden outbursts of emotion. If there's anything that I got from watching this show, it made me want to read its manga. I want to know what the story would be like untarnished by the limits of an adaptation. I want to learn more about the characters and understand them better. I want to forget the bitter aftertaste this anime gave me after pinning such high hopes on it.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jun 20, 2020

SingleH

Not Recommended

This is a show about a bunch of permanent adolescents who whine and bitch about stupid shit they shouldn’t be whining and bitching about anymore, and they do so all whilst acting like the petty elements of their lives which they’re whining and bitching about are actually mature in their complexity and worthy of deep contemplation. Ultimately, this show is either one of two things: a very young, amateur author’s idea of what adults’ emotional tribulations look like, or a cynical ploy by a very intelligent author who knows exactly how to pander to impressionable audiences and trick teenagers into watching a show by presenting ... it as being more high-minded than it actually is. Your ability to relate to the show on any given occasion is predicated on whether or not you’re a fucking crybaby, which would honestly be fine if all the characters were petulant little brats, but they’re not, at least not physically. They’re (petulant little) young adults...right? Is that not the selling point of the show? Because I forgot as it dragged on, and the show refused to remind me, because despite the fact all the concurrent events have the characters in their twenties, every plot-relevant detail to the drama is drama which took place in their highschool and college years—which, if nothing else, is the true marketing genius of the show: giving young viewers adult characters to project themselves onto yet also keeping the ideas at hand simple enough for even a toddler to lament.

The main guy is a loser who never came to terms with being a loser, and seeing as he had no reason to become genuinely, seriously depressed, he just became a gloomy incel who works as a convenience store cashier to get by with his shoebox apartment. Despite having no human worth whatsoever, he still holds feelings for his college idol who’s ninety lightyears out of his league—but wait! Her being above this guy in every way and the two having zero chemistry isn’t the real issue, the real issue is she herself held feelings for someone else, that someone else died, and she can’t get over him and move on. Then there’s Manic Pixie Dream Girl, a highschooler who breaks down the awkwardness between the two by turning the whole thing into a contrived love triangle where no one is actually in love with the right person because drama. Main Guy likes Tragic Heroine but that can’t happen because she’s held back by Dead Plot Device Boyfriend; Tragic Heroine insists she likes no one despite constantly leading on Main Guy and giving Manic Pixie Dream Girl the idea she has a rival; and Manic Pixie Dream Girl herself likes Main Guy because she borderline stalked him after they had one single human interaction which was so insignificant, he literally forgot it happened between them. There’s more characters, of course, like Seemingly Asexual Best Bro or Anti-Romance Younger Sibling, but if you’re looking for a character which can’t be permanently defined by an archetype you’ve seen too often to count, you’ll find yourself very much out of luck.

The show tries to come across as down-to-earth and relatable by keeping things quiet, but seeing as no character has even the thinnest shred of a personality, the plodding nature of the show just comes across as torturously boring, and that’s not even mentioning how much the set-up itself utterly butchers everything which it’s blatantly attempting to rip-off. If any facet of the concept sounded familiar to you, it’s probably because it is familiar. It unabashedly steals dramatic pretexts from genre staples like Maison Ikkoku and Welcome to the NHK and keeps forcing together this bizarre concoction of unoriginal plot devices out of their bastardized elements until the monstrosity that’s left can actually stand and walk on its own two feet, even if it’s less of a walk and more of a drunken stumble through meaningless interactions, trite conversations, and an absolutely depressing lack of any lasting character development whatsoever. Like, it couldn’t be content with just being vapid, it had to then go and reel people in with dramatic familiarity and unfounded nostalgia only to outright disrespect them, seeing as the price of admission for relating to this cardboard cutout of a show on any given occasion is your ability to project your real feelings onto the fake ones this show instates upon its non-characters for the sole purpose of killing time: both its and yours. A worthless coming of age starring individuals who should’ve already done so which glorifies the fact they have yet to.

Which I suppose is the one and only silver lining to this pathetic realization of a fundamentally hackneyed script, because if you take it to be intentional, you could then make the argument it is, indeed, actually the thematic heart and soul of the work. “The Asuka in your head and the Asuka in hers.” Shinseiki Evangelion described this dynamic ingeniously over two decades ago, and while I think comparisons to one work are not valid criticism for another, I also think watching three uncharismatic assholes project their emotions on one another until they’re all caught up in this maddening downwards spiral of melodramatic nausea and childish misunderstandings which don’t even resolve themselves over the course of twelve full episodes of TV anime is the dictionary definition of hell on Earth, and if that’s your idea of engaging media, then my review will be of no use to you. This show is cold, hard proof the current generation—Gen Z, Millennials, Zoomers, whatever you want to say—is so pathetically coddled, their immaturity has effectively pushed back the age at which teen melodrama can be acceptably portrayed in media. It repurposed elements from more mature and meaningful works as a vehicle to deliver on a product not only inferior and worth no one’s time, but a product which is so mind-numbingly juvenile, the stolen elements cease to even reach their intended audience any longer, and do little more than add to the already towering mountain of melodrama. While it’s easily Doga Kobo’s most beautifully animated project in years, it’s just as easily their most unenjoyable project since ever.

Thank you for reading.

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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	Poll: Yesterday wo Utatte Episode 3 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 ) Stark700 - Apr 18, 2020	197 replies	by Rennyson100a »» Oct 29, 7:26 AM
	Poll: Yesterday wo Utatte Episode 12 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Stark700 - Jun 20, 2020	449 replies	by Neko_myanimelist »» Sep 15, 8:11 PM
	This ruined my day. (It's ended so contains spoilers till ep-12) Yeshaiah2015yesh - Aug 1	13 replies	by BeardedSol »» Aug 3, 2:44 AM
	Poll: Yesterday wo Utatte Episode 6 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 ) zyjJanApr - May 9, 2020	150 replies	by SadMeat »» Jan 29, 11:09 AM
	Poll: Yesterday wo Utatte Episode 2 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 ) Stark700 - Apr 11, 2020	160 replies	by Stargurll02 »» Jan 6, 12:30 PM

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