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Well wasn't this a doozy!

True Tears is the story of a young man with a talent for drawing who wants to publish a book, but the main plotline is his burning desire for his de facto "sister," Yuasa Hiromi. I'm exhausted and disappointed so this won't be much more than a brief overview.

I came to this from Whisper of the Heart, as I'd heard this series also involved an artistically-inclined character who's inspired to create something that truly comes from the heart. And yes, I can say Shinichiro does exactly that, but it didn't quite strike a chord with me as WotH did. Anyway, True ... Tears had a really promising start, with what appeared to be a rather clichéd slice-of-life school romance story a la Toradora! or Clannad, but it seemed subversive in a way (at first). That is, the series seemed to be aware of this stereotypical treatment and took occasional jabs at itself, sort of a way to turn the clichés on their head.

From there (I would say from the second half of the eighth episode), it devolved into an ACTUALLY clichéd and heavy-handed school life story. Drama isn't a bad thing, but damn if it didn't drag the entire series down with it.

I think there are a few principle factors that led to this sharp decline: first was that the female lead/romantic interest was completely uninteresting. I can debate the personal qualities of Yuasa Hiromi's character from sundown to sunset, and it may in the end just be a matter of opinion anyway, but ultimately I never felt like I was "with" her, I never felt like I could realistically root for Shinichiro to win her over. I just didn't care.

Shin himself did quite a heel face turn as well. At least in that first half, although he was oddly fixated on Hiromi, he did seem to have some sense of self-awareness and conscience. Deep down, he seemed to at least mean well to his friends and acquaintances, even the more unusual among them. Over the second half of the series, he devolves into a generic school life jerk - that is, the one all the girls want, and God knows why.

I don't think True Tears is really a terrible series overall, and the last half may not even actually be bad. It just seems like episodes eight through thirteen could have been so much more than they were, and they ended up being a spectacular letdown. It had such a strong start and what makes it so disappointing as a series is how quickly it appeared to lose steam.

I don't know; maybe True Tears really is a completely subversive game-changer, toying with our automatic assumption that the main character of a slice-of-life romance may make mistakes and do stupid things but at least means well. Perhaps most of the cast save two was made deliberately unlikeable for that very reason. The weird thing is that looking back, I almost feel like after around episode eight or nine, the characters are turned into people they don't seem to have been just a couple episodes prior. It's like they're jostled permanently out of their own character. Maybe I'm the only one who felt that, but feel free to come to your own conclusions. And it's a shame too, because the OP is wonderful and the art at time is breathtaking.

Anyway, I think that's enough non-sequitur and passionate nonsense for one review. In a nutshell, my take on True Tears is as follows: watch it if you want, but it's neither must-see nor must-avoid. If you do decide to watch it, perhaps you'll come to a different conclusion than I did, but I frankly would've been much happier (and may even have rated the series a lot higher) if it had ended a few episodes earlier.

I know this is going to sound like epic hyperbole, but please bear with me in the course of this review. My life has been subjected to a number of happy coincidences, so crazy in their randomness and so profound and wonderful in their effects. One of them was the one-in-a-million chance in which I met my girlfriend (we kinda "met cute," and now we're preparing to live together), and another was a chance meeting during one summer with someone who would go on to become my first full-time employer, a great help in getting into law school, and a treasured personal mentor.

Chancing upon AND ... deciding to give Urusei Yatsura - Those Obnoxious Aliens - was just another such astronomical, happy coincidence. Again, I don't mean to make it sound so overly dramatic, but when I found it randomly flipping through AniDb.net, I was strongly tempted to shrug and move on. I had been serially burning through anime and manga series for over a year, and I needed a real diamond in the rough to rekindle my interest in Japanese media.

I don't remember what ultimately pushed me to go ahead and actually watch my first episode, but that first episode was all I needed to get hooked. I loved the satirical, esoteric Japanese humor. I felt like I was watching a Japanese Simpsons, and somehow I feel like I've learned quite a bit about classical Japanese culture despite never having taken a class, and surely more than I've felt I learned from previous series. I also loved the general tone of the series, especially in the first hundred or so episodes (directed by Mamoru Oshii), because it reminded me of American cartoons from the '50s and '60s if they had been willing to be a little more daring with their bawdy and scatalogical humor.

There's a WHOLE ton of stuff I want to say about this series that could span volumes, but I want to make this review relatively brief, so I will simply say that if you want a more in-depth breaking down of my thoughts on UY, please check out my blog, which has a link to my OTHER blog, where I've written a full review. But why, if I've already written that, would I write a review here? Well, there were a couple of thoughts I left out while writing that one, because I was only about 1/6th of the way through the series at the time. Now I'm done with the TV series proper and working on the OVAs and the last couple movies, and I have a few new observations I want to share now that I've seen all 195 episodes.

Man, 195 episodes. The only show I've ever watched that was even AS long was Friends, and no cartoon series I've watched ever came close! So suffice it to say that my life for an entire month has consisted of Ataru, Lum, Shinobu, Mendou, and the rest of the wacky denizens of Tomobiki. Having finished the series, now more than ever I can say that the characters actually are the strongest factor the show has going for it, despite what many may say about the lack of character development. For a series that totally screwed around with the chronology of the original manga, they manage to flesh out and grow the characters to a surprising degree, all while maintaining at least a loose semblance of chronological progression. And although I hated troublemakers like Lum's cousin Ten or her rival Ran - at first - I was amazed to find that by the end, they had all grown on me. As much as I groaned at how creepy and cruel Megane and Lum's Stormtroopers were in the beginning, I now consider them some of my favorite characters in the entire series. They are hilarious, and UY would not be the same without them, just as much as can be said for its two leads.

I mentioned in my blog review that one of UY's strong selling points with me was the art style. It's not always consistent (although it does get consistently better over the years), but I found it refreshing, and now that I'm done I can say this with even more certainty. I love shows like Clannad, Haruhi Suzumiya, and Shining Tears x Wind, but I feel like anime art styles have become increasingly homogenous since the '90s. UY's art style grabbed me immediately because it reminded me of the original Dragon Ball, a very nostalgic series for me and among my all-time favorites. And I was not disappointed; from the silly to the epic, the animators proved themselves very versatile, but also very fresh (probably why they burned out towards the end though). If you need a break from modern anime (and don't get me wrong, 99% of my favorite anime was from the last decade or so), I urge you to try an episode or two.

Also fascinating, now that I've seen the entirety of the main series, is I've realized what a seminal work this is. I know they didn't pull things out of thin air and I'm sure even the original source material was building off of old tropes, but since finishing the main body of the series, I took a break from UY to sample a couple of more recent shows. I nearly died of surprise and amusement as I realized just how many modern anime tropes stemmed from characters, plots, and situations implemented in UY. The ridiculously wealthy family with its own private army and a property containing half of Japan? The Mendou clan. (Semi-)ecchi harem comedy? Willful harem seeker Ataru and every attractive female in the known universe. Magical girlfriend? Why, Lum of course. Moe and tsundere traits in a female lead? Lum again. Bishounen played for laughs? Mendou Shutaro and Ataru both have their moments. It's also very cool to see what I imagine are some older tropes that fell out of fashion after the period during which this series had its run. It's kinda like watching an old time movie, where you can get a sense for an entirely different set of cultural circumstances because the stuff they're making fun of is hardly mentioned in contemporary series.

Don't get me wrong; this series is not perfect, and not always totally enjoyable. One thing I got tired of pretty early on was the music. Not that the music was bad or anything, and actually there was quite a bit of variety, but that variety is almost for naught considering how many episodes they stretch them out for. Maybe that indicates it's more a symptom of the series being extremely long than anything to do with the music, but take it as you will. There are also definitely points (and unfortunately sometimes streaks) at which the episodes do drag on, because the humor doesn't work or it feels incongruent, or hey, maybe you're tired of Ataru giving Lum sh*t or Lum putting up with his sh*t. Luckily these are usually followed by marathons of episodes that are leagues better, and on the whole I would say UY's enjoyment factor and overall worth is greater than the sum of its parts. It's an experience I will never forget, and to which I hope to return again and again.

Thank you for reading my review. Please, please watch this series. As another reviewer said, it's a crying shame that otherwise open-minded anime lovers and general lovers of entertainment will pass on this one just because it's older. The modern stuff is great and is sure to get better with time, but classics like these deserve to be remembered and treasured, because 'classic' is a title well-deserved for Urusei Yatsura. Happy (girl) hunting!