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Anohana was incredibly disappointing. About half way through i sat back and went “oh god im going to be a contrarian again” but I can’t for the life of me understand why this show is so beloved. This show was incredibly shallow, having nothing to really say about grief, or loss, or even really something as simple as “friendship.” The characters are sad because their childhood friend died, but their grief or ways of processing it doesn’t really go much deeper than that. Characters might state a way they’ve processed it, but it’s all tell don’t show, the only thing the characters do are thirst ... after each other before going “I’m sad also by the way :(“

I enjoy slow burn stories, honestly I got really excited when I realized if menma existed was going to be the main mystery of the show. It’s a really interesting plot device… that they don’t do anything with for three quarters of the series. The eight episode slow burn is instantly resolved with no actual payoff. The honest to god excuse for why it took eight episodes for anyone to even try and prove menma’s existence is “Menma is stupid and Jinta is selfish” which is such a lame payoff and basically means nothing when all of the characters have gone through their arcs already.

Speaking of characters, everyone is unlikable and poorly written. The women only ever obsess over the men in this show for basically no reason, and the men are just terrible people for no reason. Nobody has deeper motivations they leave unsaid. The one exception is Tetsudou, he was decently fun to watch most of the time. But even Tetsudou basically boils down to “the good hearted spiritual guy” which while kinda lame and generic is at least more interesting than “pretentious dick” and “generic shut in.” There’s no attempt to give characters chemistry or show romance, they just all have crushes on each other because it adds more drama I guess. It’s lame and annoying to watch.

The show isn’t sad. I went in thinking this was a tearjerker but because the plot was lame, characters unlikable, themes non existent, and writing uninspired I ended up not feeling enough of a connection to anything to make me cry. It’s sad because she’s dead, but that’s it. The emotional climaxes have such little impact that I couldn’t force myself to cry at a single moment. This is all to say, I like crying at stuff and cry easily but this show couldn’t get a single tear out of me. Disappointing.

3/10. Disappointing after hearing so many good things. There are a lot better shows worth your time.

The other reviews are understating how rushed the ending was. Honestly really disappointing. Had a bunch of interesting stuff going on, the themes about confronting your own mortality wasn't anything revolutionary but felt like it could have gone somewhere with a bit more time.

The romance was pretty bland and honestly the worst part about it, I don't think I ever really cared. Felt like the romance from space patrol luluco, really was just 'girl loves cardboard if it's attractive enough' core.

There being a trans character was pretty neat, would have loved to have seen her more fleshed out. Honestly probably the biggest casualty ... of the series ending so prematurely. She never really got to be a character, there were a few hints at nuance, backstory, and her own potential romance with childhood friend guy. Wish we got to see whatever her arc would have been.

I'm pretty confident this series would have been incredible with like two more volumes. Idk, maybe one day the author will revisit this series, or maybe this is it. If there was one message that this manga had it was to accept the end. So I guess I accept that this is it, doesn't make it suck less though.

This show has no sauce. The first episode tricked me into thinking this might be good. Stylish MC, a looming megacorp that owns people's bodies, and a unique mystery. Unfortunately, all three of these points get dropped in like... episode 2. You are promised a hard boiled detective series, but then fails to have the detective do any sloothing. No villains are uncovered, they are all happy to explicitly state that they are evil. The mysteries, if you could even call them that, basically solve themselves with the answer just falling into the lap of the b-plot character for that episode so they can show ... up to the main plot and actually do something for exactly one scene before taking the background to sauceless action sequences.

The aesthetic is interesting on a surface level with next to nothing lying behind it. Dudes just have fucked up bodies that look evil if they are evil or cool if they are good. There's no consistency or themes.

If I vaguely state stuff that happens in the story it almost sounds interesting. A megacorp makes all the cybernetics (called extensions in this series) and own the world. There's an anti-extend group killing innocent people who have cybernetics. The main character was made to be a weapon in a war and is now a private eye. Sometimes extends (people with extensions) experience discrimination (despite literally everyone we see in the series being extended.)
The problem comes in on how these aspects are executed. The megacorp is just comically evil, because if they weren't then the show would actually have something to say. Idk how you have a corporation that owns everyone's physical bodies without even the slightest attempt at commentary on capitalism. The anti-extend group is also just evil with no subtlety, they just kinda hate extends and just like to murder people to make extends look violent. Don't think about how stupid that is. They don't really have any philosophy besides just cyberpunk racism. The main character is just op in the most boring way possible, there's never any tension because literally nobody could ever threaten him in any meaningful way. He gets on the megacorps bad side and the only consequences are like one attempt to spite him and a minor inconvenience.
The discrimination against extends bit never actually has consequences for anyone. The main character is never denied entrance somewhere because he looks like a gun. At most a few characters act slightly shocked at the fact he looks the way he does. Best we get is a girl in the final arc who won't talk to him, but it's all hand waved by the end of the episode with the main characters just stumbling into the thing that progresses the plot.

The story is painfully passive. Nobody does anything. Things just kinda happen to the characters and then the resolution just kinda happens in the same way the conflict just kinda happened at the start.

The music is forgettable. I genuinely can't recall how a single track sounds and I literally just finished watching it.

The sound is bad, half of everything in this show sounds like stock audio effects.

The action is lame, it's a slideshow with no weight or consequences.

Visually you get everything from the first episode with no actual variety in the locations, colors, or sets. Nobody interacts with the world, it's a wholly unappealing backdrop (and not in the intentional way that cyberpunk likes to do)

A remarkable lack of sauce on display. Don't waste your time.

Ok few things, this isn't really a review but more a place to collect my thoughts. You could think of this almost as a diary for me, a place for me to ramble and say what’s on my mind. Might be fun to read, or not. I'll at least try and say stuff that isn't already being said.

I guess the thing I keep coming back to is asking myself if I wasted my time reading it. Which is never a good sign if you’re asking that in the first place. Whenever I finish a series I’m always filled with some weird feelings. It’s not really ... the melancholy some people describe, it’s almost more like reverence? Like now that the series is over all the emotions and things I’ve thought about it can fully wash over me, and it can turn a series I like into one I love. It’s why I think long-running series can be so wonderful, there are a lot of emotions there. I think about things like Monogatari for example.

But it’s weird, after finishing Domestic Girlfriend I kinda just feel nothing about it. Like there are so many of these arcs throughout the story that never really lead anywhere and have characters who you never really see again, but it’s easy to let slide because the story isn’t over. But now the story is over and I can’t help but to think back on a lot of these moments, like what was the point of the racism bit with Rui in New York? It’s awesome that you’re tackling racism now, but it wasn’t exactly done with much of a point, was it? There weren’t really any long-lasting consequences, at most it was just an excuse to get Natsuo to visit America and have them reaffirm their love for one another (and also get Rui pregnant.) Which almost seems a bit too flippant for an arc centering around, ya know, racism in the workplace.

Or how about the part where Natsuo literally gets kidnapped and nearly executed before being saved by the gay Yakuza? How was that not a bigger deal? Like bro, you almost got killed but were saved by your teacher/sister/ex (and the gay Yakuza) in the last second, do you really not have any thoughts to share about it? Not even going to talk about it to your author friends, or even try to write a story about it?

I guess in retrospect everything I loved about this series happened before Natsuo lost his writing. The themes of what it means to be an artist and using art to process your emotions kinda just disappeared. So did the realism and maturity of the characters. So did the development of their relationships. Which leaves roughly 76 chapters of nothing until the series ends.

I think the appeal of Domestic Girlfriend, for me at least, came from the grounded characters dealing with the absurd premise of the series. Like the series was unashamed of itself and was willing to take itself seriously enough to be compelling.
But as the series went on I almost got the impression that it went from unashamed to cartoonish. Like suddenly there was some need to one-up itself. Like the drama of having the main character fucking his sisters was no longer enough now that they’ve developed into more complex characters.

The drama was still there, it just stopped being addressed.

Which leads me into my problems with the ending. The main conflict is never resolved, at least not in any real way. The ending just kinda happens, no characters really have any thoughts about it. Their development ends up basically being for nothing because not a single character has agency over the way it ends.

Rui spends the entire series learning that she can't give up on her love, that ignoring how she feels only hurts everyone involved, and how to be strong and value herself. You're telling me, the girl who had a whole arc dealing with racism and managed to pull through by actually sticking up for herself is going to say "I never stood a chance."

Bitch literally what are you talking about???

Natsuo and Hina have been broken up for like at least four years. Maybe five. You're telling me, you can't compete with that? After Natsuo has made it clear he only loves you? After you broke up once because you realized you didn't trust him enough, then got back together after realizing just how much he loves you? You can't compete with the girl he dated for what, four months?

Dude your entire arc up until now were you realizing your love and building the determination to stay with Natsuo WHAT ARE YOU DOING????????

And poor Hina, she got robbed despite literally winning. She never gets to confess her love to Natsuo. Her entire arc was building towards her being willing to stick up for what she wanted, and she didn't even get to confess to him. Natuso learns about it while Hina is in a coma, from a different character who just tells him how she feels for her.

Honestly what a betrayal to the character. And we don't even get to see her and Natsuo being happy together because it happens in literally the final chapter. From everything that we see Natsuo isn't even happier with Hina. The man can be overbearingly lovey-dovey with Rui at times, but we don’t see even a single kiss between Natsuo and Hina that feels anywhere near as loving and passionate as when Natsuo was with Rui. We literally only see them kiss on their wedding day.

Don't get me wrong, I'm team Hina all the way. Hina deserved to win, but she deserved to have at least the final 10 chapters be dedicated to flushing it out and the consequences of her actually confessing to Natsuo.

Like she finally accepts her feelings for him (for the 100th time) and stood up to her shitty stalker ex, then immediately gets hit by a car and put into a coma so her growth meant nothing because she doesn’t even get to act upon it.

Even Natsuo gets robbed with this ending. Like he doesn’t even get a say in what happens. He doesn’t get to reconcile his feelings for either of the girls. He isn’t given space to talk about it, and doesn’t get to decide if he would rather be with Hina over Rui, he’s sorta just told “Yeah sorry bud Hina loved you still, so you need to be with her instead” and moved on. We don’t see his reactions or opinions. He’s developed so much past who he was when he was in a relationship with Hina, doesn’t he have any thoughts on it? Isn’t he the slightest bit reluctant? He never really seemed to show much genuine interest in getting back together with her after he started dating Rui, so why is Hina still loving him really such a huge deal? If there was a reason we sure don’t get to find out aside from the assumption that a highschoolers crush on his teacher is longer lasting than his literal three-year relationship.

Surely he’d have a lot to say right? So why doesn’t he say basically anything in the final like three chapters of the series?

It’s such a nonsensical ending to a surprisingly grounded story.

I feel like should I love this series, like I should hold it in a special place in my heart somehow. There was so much I loved, but the more thoughts I put on paper the more I’m just left disappointed.
Like I want to talk about how much I loved every second the story spent focusing on Natsuo’s writing. It was interesting, it was compelling, and it was often deep. But that wasn’t really what the story was about and everything that the story actually was about ended up not really getting a conclusion.

And if that’s the case was the story even about anything in the first place?

Either way, to go full circle, I guess even after all that I still don’t really know if I feel like my time was wasted. The parts that were good were very good and I did enjoy a lot of my time with it, I just wish it could have stayed strong all the way through and even the bad parts were still enjoyable enough even if it did get a bit silly.

The TLDR:
If you asked for a review at like chapter 170 I’d probably say an 8/10 but as it stands I think even a 6/10 might be reaching.

Would I recommend it? Probably not
Do I regret reading it? Maybe, but probably not

If for some reason you read this whole review and still haven’t read the manga, just read until Rui leaves for America and headcanon how that ends. It’ll probably be more interesting than what’s actually written.

I really don't know how to talk about this series to be completely honest. It might have one of the strongest first 30-ish chapters in any manga I've read, but it starts to lose what makes it so special the longer it goes on.

If you've ever played DnD (or watched any sort of fantasy media) I'm sure you've run into a 500-year-old elf character, but have you ever stopped and asked yourself "damn how would living that long actually affect you?" I had one of my friends once ask this in the middle of playing DnD once. He said "If I can achieve so ... much in 20 years, and can change the world in 80 what are elves doing for 500 years? Does every elf just have a learning disability or something?" And honestly, that question has stuck with me for a while. If you lived for 1000 years, ten times longer than a human lifespan, what would still keep you on the level of regular people?

It's this question that has been stuck in my mind for about two years now that has primed me so hard to enjoy this series because I've never actually seen the question tackled in media before. And it turns out, a story that tackles that question is super interesting. What would you do if the greatest accomplishment a human could achieve was done and gone in less than one-one-hundredth of your lifespan? What would you do if the people you achieved it with were all born and all died in less than a 10th of your lifespan? Could even form truly human connections anymore? Would you be numb to it? Or would you carry the memory of those relationships for another 500 years? What would a decade even mean to you? Much less a year, or a day.

Interesting questions right? And they're all tackled in the story... for the first 30 chapters.

I hope you can see where some disappointment would come from when they just stop talking about those things because they have to do a cliche anime test arc. I don't know about you, but I don't particularly care about seeing the Naruto chunin exams in a character drama about the emotional impacts of immortality.

At the time of writing this, I'm not completely caught up, but I am roughly another twenty chapters past the end of that arc and the story really hasn't seemed to regain its footing since this bizarre break of pace. And honestly, it's extremely disappointing. I still have faith that by the end of this series we might still see a good payoff and discussion of the things established in the first quarter of the story, but when the middle is this bland and unfocused, I'm not sure if that ending will land nearly as hard as it will deserve to.

TL;DR, this story tackles some interesting and unique themes and ideas but loses steam when it decides to shift focus to being more action-oriented and doesn't regain its footing afterward to create a fairly bland story that deserves more clarity and focus.

7/10 because the early chapters are incredible and I could easily see the story reaching those heights again

Ichido dake demo, Koukai Shitemasu is a breath of fresh air, and I think might be the best portrayal of a lesbian romance I've seen in yuri manga. Oftentimes there isn't much effort actually given to the process of discovering you might be queer, and the flood of emotions that come with that discovery. Ichido dake demo, Koukai Shitemasu handles the entire process with real respect for its characters. The manga also isn't padded with the annoying tropes of romance manga, there's no padding of will they won't they, instead we simply see characters trying to understand their feelings and come to terms with not ... being straight. There's no pointless edge, or fights, or annoying misunderstandings that could be solved with a conversation. The characters act like people and are so genuine that I can't help but feel like the story and characters must be based on the author's real experiences.

The only problem is the premise makes it pretty hard to introduce people to what has essentially become my favorite romance manga of all time. If you're looking into reading this, I beg of you please don't ignore it because of the admittedly pretty offputting premise. It's short and sweet and 100% worth your time.