So,
this is how I rated it overall. You might not agree with me since this show has an 8.30 rating on MAL but this is my review so un-helpful away.
Includes, both season one and two review.
Story-6/10 (Cliche story)
Art-6/10 (tooo much chibi)
Sound-8/10 (pretty catchy, different, good)
Characterization-6/10 (started out as good and unique but ended up as irritating and un-relatable)
Enjoyment-6/10 (some moments were so retarded that they were funny )
Overall-5/10
If this world was a cotton candied, sugar coated fluff ball then this anime being categorized as *slice of life* would have been justified.
To be honest, the only reason I started watching this was because I am
...
a sucker for anti-social characters.
When I read the plot base for this anime, I thought it was quite unique.
An anime tackling issues about the superficial, an anime in which there is a not so pretty girl, ostracized because she looks like the character from the ring. Oh, how original!
However
Unrealistic and unrelatable: Kimi ni Todoke hardly handled this unique topic in a unique way, instead it gave the clichéd shoujo spin to it and ended the series in the most basic *girl gets guy* manner.
The plot is that Sawako is a teenager suffering from being labelled unapproachable. With long dark hair and pale skin, she is compared to the evil girl from the ring, due to the almost always, gloomy look in her eyes. Thus, everyone calls her Sadako.
The present author himself was very unpopular in High School and tries to speak for all cast outs through this series. Except that Sawako is a very exaggerated version of your average *nice person* she gushes with gratitude for anyone who is nice or civil to her, buys them presents and bakes them cookies making her more of a Disney character who is naive, innocent and desperate to make friends than actual person.
Sawako is prevented from being a pathetic, pitiable character by her endless optimism and willingness to help others. She doesn't spend time feeling sorry for herself, nor have her isolation and the often cruel treatment of her classmates made her bitter. She is unfailingly generous with her time and her understanding of their school work.
This little note is the thing that makes Sawako so frustrating. Here, is a person who has always been labelled and misunderstood, who’s always been a castaway just because of her appearance. A person who has always been a loner and has never gotten a chance to make any friends, when things like this happen it’s natural to feel resentment, jealousy and anger.
However, Sawako lacks all of these natural emotions and this is what makes her a flat, one dimensional character. Not once does she break down, not once does she feel frustrated about her situation. We don’t see that side of her, nor are we aware of its existence. This marks this series as unsatisfying and incomplete as well as lacking in depth.
[Btw she's voiced by Mamiko Noto, big surprise! since she has made a career of doing these sweet-but-wimpy kinds of characters (Shimako in Maria Watches Over Us, Rimone in Simoun)]
While, Kazehaya is consistently a nice guy, aiming at Sawako only, even though the whole school is heads over heels in love with him. He chooses Sawako because she looks depressed and stands out. Since, he's the kind of guy who likes to see everyone happy and help them if they aren't.
Sawako thinks the same, and takes all his advances to be *just kindness*
At this point we see how because of this, a huge communication gap between Sawako and Kazehaya is shaped, which in the end consumes unnecessary episodes and the storyline lags continuously until the point that confessions are shouted out and wounds are healed. Except, the wounds that were inflicted on me, while I was watching this terrible series.
Kazehaya’s character is just as flawed as Sawako’s. For a series that’s about the high school years of a bunch of people, Sawako and Kazehaya don’t really feel like interesting characters at all. Sawako is way too pure: whenever someone tries to take advantage of her feelings (by making her jealous for example), her incredible naivety just feels incredibly unnatural and it quickly turns into a bit of a lame gimmick. Kazehaya on the other hand is just as bland as a male romantic interest. He’s just… there, with hardly any personality about him other than some guy who just keeps smiling. I mean we all want to be believe that there’s a fictional guy out there who doesn’t care about your looks and your inborn awkwardness, and loves you for who you are. Who will obviously knock off the prettiest girl and choose you, instead. Who’s not superficial; and doesn’t care about what other people think. Even though he’s the most popular boy in school, cool story bro but no. Not to mention that Kazehaya has liked Sawako for some time now, ever since school started to be precise. However, he does not communicate with her until he hears her compliment him. (Narcissistic much eh, Heaney?)
Meanwhile, any scene that focused on Sawako’s growth as a character was overshadowed by its romantic drivel that refused to go anywhere.
Another set of characters worth mentioning are Sawako’s two friends who become her best girl-pals (and her protectors), Chizuru Yoshida and Ayane Yano. Chizuru is your standard-issue aggressive female. Ayane, on the other hand, I found much more intriguing; in this first half of the season there's just one hint- in a phone call she answers- that her personal life might be rather complex. She's also pretty perceptive, and catches on to something about a character that no one else has realized just yet. Another character I really did like is Ryu, Kazehaya's buddy, a taciturn fellow who's terrible at remembering names. He and Chizuru have something going on, but she, at least, is not ready to admit they have any kind of relationship (though she apparently feels comfortable enough with him to casually invite herself and her friends up to his room, which is above the restaurant he works in.)
Apart from Sawako, who as I’ve said feels heavily exaggerated, the others feel real. Not terribly over the top and I think reactions and actions were all pretty ‘normal’, normal enough that it’s believable. And I think because of that sometimes you become more attached to them more than Sawako. Even when rumors about them start flying around, they are in conflict whether it’s Sawako who’s spreading them or not. Though in the real world girls tend to get revenge straight out instead of sticking around long enough to hear the other side of the story, which by the way Sawako doesn’t provide until the very end.
As for the bad characters, there's a coach who's the requisite Annoying Male, and then there's the chief villainess, the two-faced Ume Kurumizawa, who pretends to be friendly and cheerful while quietly manipulating things behind the scenes to suit her own purposes.
Kurumi, for me was one of the more realistic characters, however she too is overshadowed by Sawako’s fluff and whimsically placed aside. Kurumi is one of the prettiest girls in the school, who is also in love with Kazehaya. She sees Sawako as a rival and tries to break them apart, as forcefully as she can.
Sawako’s reaction to this news is so undeniably idealistic that it almost made me laugh. Sawako thinks that because Kurumi shares the same feelings for Kazehaya as she, it will enable them to become better friends and bond over it. Showing us, yet again that Sawako contains absolutely no X chromosomes.
Besides Sawako's personality, the art is the other major problem the series has. The backgrounds are gorgeous, but the characters often aren't. Sawako herself seems to be rendered in simplified SD form over half the time. Chizuru and Ayane are realistically done a very few times in the show, but are mostly rendered much closer to SD as well, when they aren't actually SD. But Kazehaya, Ryu, and Kurumizawa receive much more consistently realistic renderings, for some reason.
Also, the random light flares and bubbles appearing suddenly almost turned me into a diabetic. Not only does it give it a very kiddy feel to the show, but it also makes it very hard to read the expressions of the characters. Usually they’re used with stylistic purposes; you know, color each character with these seemingly over the top reactions. Here however, they felt more like “Okay, you can laugh now”-signs, this show just continuously tried to be subtle, while it ultimately just wasn’t.
Kimi ni Todeke ultimately is an anime, that is meant to make you feel good, warm and fuzzy on the inside. It’s supposed to make you feel happy and motivate you to become a better person. It revolves around the idea that no matter what, there’s always some good in everyone.
Except, holy fuck it isn’t. Wake up, you little shit.
Oct 7, 2014
Kimi ni Todoke
(Anime)
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So,
this is how I rated it overall. You might not agree with me since this show has an 8.30 rating on MAL but this is my review so un-helpful away. Includes, both season one and two review. Story-6/10 (Cliche story) Art-6/10 (tooo much chibi) Sound-8/10 (pretty catchy, different, good) Characterization-6/10 (started out as good and unique but ended up as irritating and un-relatable) Enjoyment-6/10 (some moments were so retarded that they were funny ) Overall-5/10 If this world was a cotton candied, sugar coated fluff ball then this anime being categorized as *slice of life* would have been justified. To be honest, the only reason I started watching this was because I am ... 
Sep 27, 2014
Zankyou no Terror
(Anime)
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Terror in Resonance is a fine anime in terms of directing and tension. It’s not hard to see how it excited thousands of viewers into calling it anime of the year back when the first episode aired. That still doesn't make up for its undeniably amateurishly handled script when it comes to mystery stories. Personally, I didn't need to wait for the show to be over before I knew it wasn’t as good as they were hyping it to be. The cracks were obvious since the very pilot and kept getting bigger with each new episode. The reason why everybody else didn’t want to admit
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