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This review will have light spoilers. This anime is the retelling of a story from the great anime creator Tezuka who created Astro Boy and Kimba. It was a departure from his more happy and light kid stuff. It was still a bit kid oriented with a plucky boy hero but involved the darker and weirder horror stories of Japanese folklore. This modernization of the story leaves much of it's kid friendliness behind.Tezuka was a great creator and he created great characters in Haykkimaru and Dororo they deserve to be given life again.In order to round off the string of horror tales for a complete ... story there were changes. I've seen the original it's a classic and I had some difficulty with the modern revisions. But in the end I liked what they did. It gets very serious where Tezuka backed off to not alienate the kids. This digs in in spots till it becomes philosophical at times. But being adult isn't a criticism worth making. Dororo the character is different because we know his secret now. But at heart the character is the same. The heart of youth surviving even surrounded by horrors - fantasy horrors or real horrors.. Hyakkimaru is more a fairy tale character and hasn't changed hardly at all despite the philosophy and psychology they try to give him. He is a fighter and a hero and the victum all in one. I'm very Happy they were given new life.

This Anime did an amazing thing. It made me care about sports. I can not express to you the depth of my not caring about sports. I'm definitely a humanities and the arts person. Science is okay but I haven't the talent that I've recognized in science to care very much about the details. Science is like music in the sense it takes dedication and tenacity to go through what seems at times endless getting nowhere until you're somewhere. Musicians practice scientists accumulate trivia until something significant hopefully comes out of it. But sports? Where is the point of sports? No music comes out of ... it. No knowledge. Winning a game? There'll be a million games a day and nothing will come out of it but injuries and eventual loss of ability as you age. Those who have talent for sports get to go to the dead end of winning or losing faster. Those who are superior at sports are just genetic anomalies. Okay, thus has been my disrespect for sports so far.

I won't lie what got my attention to this anime was the "shipping" of the main characters. So much creativity has been spent on them and the genuineness of love for these characters and between the characters, I thought it remiss of me not to sample the actual series.

Volleyball? Toss a ball over a net? I've been in volleyball games in gym. Everything goes so fast how could anyone pretend to control let alone strategize such a game?

Well... despite my being maybe the worst audience for a sports anime I got pulled in. No this wasn't a BL story but when you see people care about something... I mean the sport... and their heart is on the line... well, if you can care about the characters you start to care that what they are trying to do gets done. I actually cared about every damn move they struggled over.

This I suppose is art, to make you care about the characters and story. You could say I didn't go very far from my art roots. But to make me care about a sports game? And feel for athletes? I'm still in wonder about it. I have a lot of rethinking to do.

As for the ships, a trivial note only, the opening title scene of some of the episodes focuses on one of the shipped couple's ass, then closing credits ends on a very warm smile of love from the other half where it's clear who he's smiling at off screen. It may not be BL but I feel this has got to be one of the best ship couples ever. And somebody making this series knew it :-)

This one just tears my heart out. There'll be spoilers. Okay, standard romance formula is have two people in love and make them suffer.

Do young people suffer like this today? Today the idea that there is such a thing as male to male love is known. Some people in some situations get backlash but unless I'm mistaken don't most people know now that not acceptance is not their fault? There's now the term homophobia for those others and the knowledge that there are other people out there like you. Depending where you live there could even be a gay community to seek refuge with ... or find a kindred soul.

Love doesn't always come when you want it or work out with the one you find but... This sort of torture? Just romance fiction I suppose? Then why should I take this one personally?

Some call being gay a choice. If you're very unlucky it can be a choice. When faced with the truth of what you're feeling do you choose it or deny it? Do you look in the other's face and run away?

There's two couples here. The first couple is forced to face their feelings. In the end when the choice is made they've made the right choice and know it and it becomes a celebration. Spectacular. It's a sweet fiction here but it can happen. More importantly it's about that it should happen.

The second couple over the rest of the episodes basically face the same sort of choice. To say yes. I like that the first couple is there as sort of a commentary on the second. One angrily yells at them to say yes, his own feelings are like a rock and they should be the same way. The other of the first couple can clearly see the drama the other couple's going through and sort of puts a word in every now and then to sort of say "Okay, what are you gonna do about it?"

Well, they have to suffer for awhile or the story isn't romantic.

Sadly life isn't fiction. How many people made the wrong choice at a crisis moment and scarred themselves for life? How many people had a chance for happiness and fumbled it. Let fear or misunderstanding or self doubt throw the chance away, maybe not even understanding what went wrong. Life can be fatal sometimes.

But thankfully we have fiction to give us sweet valentines. It can remind us though life can be fatal it can also be a valentine. :-)

I reccomend you watch both series.This and its sequal series is a happy show for happy people. Simple as that.

You can't possibly miss the allegory here. But I think you need both series to get the full effect. It's like a family friendly, all ages hand out from the Center. Something to help your toddler understand you and your friend. Or maybe for you and your friend after a session of pet names and baby talk.

It's sad some need to bring up issues. Reminds me of the joke about two guys kissing one of them jumping up and yelling "No Homo!"... or was that ... a joke?

Pardon me... cuddle time for me and my cat boy. :-)

Chiao Miao

I sometimes speak up to make a commentary but don't give substantial reviews usually. This might include spoilers but heck the plot isn't surprising. Some romance anime are colorful and energetic this one isn't. Damn if it doesn't capture some of the I don't talk or I don't discuss things vibe of actual straight male high schoolers and college age men. This anime is multiple episodes of small barely articulate moments. Of course the plot at times wrings out some articulateness but usually under pressure as outbursts. You could call that colorful but it isn't the toying with things some anime do. This story ... is not kidding around. This comes off as real. You could argue how real can it be when statistically four guys team up to make a band and all four of them are living out serious gay dramas. The odds wouldn't garantee one character was gay and he'd probably be living a boring non drama existence. So, gay romance storytelling aside the whole plot could've fit in maybe two episodes if you wanted to instead we live their moment by moment existence for a whole series. That's not boring it's compelling. Honestly I sort of got fatigued by the continous angst and gay panic so I was almost glad to see the series over. But now that it is over when I stumble over clips of the series on you tube and watch , the character's whole story comes back to me and I'm hit by the emotions. Am I saying watch this? Depends if you want to feel for other people's lives like that. It's easy to say it's just a story there's nobody's life here. But it doesn't feel like that. Or am I just easy? :-)

This isn't much of a review. I love this series. I've watched it three times with year or two gaps. I'm gay. The first time I got called a gay slur was in second grade at eight years old. I didn't fall in love until I was 30. To see a young person who knows what he feels and is free to be in love... If only the world I grew up in was like that. I root for Ren to get through to Haru and cheer when he does. Obviously, I'm predjudiced. I'm so glad Japanese culture is capable of recognising the truth ... of this story. It's a truth too many would like to deny. And keeping it secret has been harmful to so many millions... yes, millions... of people. This story gives me hope there'll be a better future.

Okay, don't know if my point of view is especially noteworthy. Gay man here, but nobody speaks for such a broad category. Yes, Yaoi or shonen ai is followed by some gay men but often it's problematic. Japanese have such a fetish for "No! No! No!...yes" That seems to be true straight romance or gay but it seems especially so with gay material. There's one you probably all know that the two characters live together for three years and still every time his boyfriend touches him he jumps! It's depressing sometimes... but I watched all three seasons. Obviously you know what I'm going to say ... about the first half of this series. What do you want to call it? Date rape? Harassment seems an understatement. I began to think I really should be offended by this. But I kept watching. Something happened about the halfway point. There was a scene where the pursued was sitting home without the aggressor and he suddenly felt alone. Like he's been so busy with his career he hadn't noticed that before. They have this melodramatic scrape and you get the feeling this No/Yes relationship they've built is actually fragile. If it hadn't been this aggressor/wilting violet thing this wouldn't have been such a disaster but it was and they have to scramble to hold it together. They do. And THEN they get around in flashbacks to fill out the feelings the show hadn't bothered to tell you about. Was it my imagination despite some play Yes/No the wilting violet suddenly has an equal sided relationship? By the end of the series I believed these characters and believed their relationship. This is my favorite BL series by far. :-)