I was swimming through a bunch of older OVA in search of some anime about some naked girl in a glass case in some desert setting and also had a naked woman with body paint I saw a picture of in 2001 but have no clue on where or what it is that I happened on this OVA, I thought the art looks super cute 90s style and I kinda like the idea of shounen ai but have not been running into much good ones(And I still haven't found many good ones)
I was closing in on my birthday then and I noticed that the average rating here was was pretty low but I decided to track it down with the thought of 'what could possibly go wrong? It's 90s!'
I was the first person who made the review I did think it was okay(though I changed my word on the art style I do like it a lot, it's really cute and beautiful) but it did made me curious on the manga which after some hard decision I decided to try getting my hands on them starting with just the first book(which has a page on MangaUpdate but not this site), interested enough I decided to get the rest of them while still translating the first book at the time(though now I am working on translating the second one, I need to edit the text in) I decided to give a look at the book this OVA was adaptating, Hiroki Harusaki Meiro.
And... while this isn't exactly a huge divergence there was enough things edited in the OVA that got rid of what I said I wanted to see.
Spoilers for anyone who wants to read the manga.
The beginning itself had a scene of Fhalei and Kanata suspecting her is not a scene in the manga, in fact he only finds out who she is near the end of the arc when Hiroki's spirit tries to alert him, Fhalei herself does not find out who Kanata is until shortly after Hiroki dies.
From there it's mostly faithful although hints of Hiroki's unhappiness plus his attempt at trying to earn money for his future was cut out replaced by a childhood flashback that isn't anything like the ones in the manga, the way he died was sorta changed too, in the manga Mayumi(the girl he tried to save) was on a bridge watching her mother from above so he tried to save her from the car only to get hit by the leg and thrown off the bridge while the anime had a Yu Yu Hakusho situation.
But after this is where things really change, most of what happened when he died was replaced(his body hanging out with his friends and ocassionally bugging out Kanata with Fhalei trying to win the attention of his spirit) by childhood flashback which most of them wasn't in the manga either, though one event the height measurement was in the manga it was edited to be childhood related and then there was the infamous musical montage which is actually from the first book very abridged and with Ijima included
Once that is over the scene which I mentioned of Hiroki alerting Kanata for the first time is cut off though the second one which he managed to talk to Kanata about it was there, scenery in the very special area is filled with unusual statues that the anime didn't have plus their classmates watch the climax, which the anime cut off since they cut off the first alert, most of the other stuff is pretty faithful though except for the very final scene which cuts off what Kanata is thinking and changes Hiroki excitedly wrangling Kanata's neck to an embrace
For what's it worth it's worth saying that the boys' relationship wasn't suppose to be that obvious in the earlier arc it was there(Seriously Hiroki dreams that Kanata was a woman in the second book's second chapter and him accepting Kanata was male was a the whole point) but it wasn't until Human Noa no Kore(or Human Noa voice) where it was supposed to be a real serious possibility but since the OVA only has this arc it went with the idea they are already together, if anyone thought the Shounen-ai here was too tame that's the point especially if you look at the hormone addled variant of most Shounen-Ai at the time(or even now) plus what I said it was the third arc they weren't really considering themselves an item yet
Overall I do think the managa is vastly better of the two but I don't think the anime is all inferior, I did like the more sentimental tone over the more standard goofy tone that the manga has at times including the final scene I said, I also like the art since I was more of a 90s anime fan rather than the Saint Seiya look most of the manga had(or the rather ugly Saint Seiya/Dragon Ball Z like art most of the Hiroki Harusaki Meiro arc had) and it did introduce me to the series which I thought it the best Shounen Ai I ever read, sure there's no kissing(thanks anime for that one scene) and there's no real flirting though to be fair it was true with the heterosexual couples in that series too, it's light hearted and sweet in an age where most Shounen Ai is heavily dramatic and sexualized |
