A little detour is taken as a few other characters are explored for a bit, for better or worse. We’re guessing worse.
What They Say:
Chiaki Yoshino is a popular shoujo manga author under the pen name “Chiharu Yoshikawa”. His friends include his childhood friend and editor Yoshiyuki Hatori, and the chief assistant Yuu Yanase they know since middle school. But one day, Yoshino happens to witness Hatori and Yanase kiss…
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the first four episodes out of the way, the series decides to take a bit of a different track for a bit here as it introduces us to the popular author of girls manga, Chiharu Yoshikawa. Unlike what you’d expect, said author isn’t a young woman but rather a young man named Chiaki who is a rather outgoing and fun guy but definitely not what you’d call manly or independent. He’s pretty much tied to the apron strings of his editor, Hatori, who is also his childhood friend that he knows very well. Shifting the focus to Chiaki isn’t too much of a surprise as it seems to be a rather tried and true piece of the puzzle for properties of this nature, but it is frustrating in a way as I really liked what I got out of the first four episodes and want to see more of that.
For Chiaki, he does get the bug put in his head about his being dependent on Hatori and starts to try and figure out what it really means for him. Where things go off the rails for him though, enough so that it impacts his work, is when he goes out and accidentally comes across Hatori, who is with another friend of his named Yanase. And he sees them kissing, though it’s in a bit of anger and frustration on Hatori’s part towards Yanase. They didn’t see him there, but it’s seeping into every part of Chiaki’s life as he can’t figure out why Hatori would do that and what it all means. It does pain the picture of a mangaka who is pretty out of touch with certain parts of reality, but considering his job is to peddle fantasy to young girls, it does make a certain amount of sense for him to be like this.
A good part of the episode focuses on exploring this issue and the fallout from it as he reacts badly to it, not really understanding why that he has feelings for himself when it comes to Hatori. Mixed into it we get some nice scenes that helps to expand their back story with how they are together, but mostly it’s just nudging Chiaki down the path to understanding what it is he may really be feeling so that he can get closer to Hatori. Unfortunately, the show has a kind of forced feel to it, not the natural progressions we got with the previous set of characters, and it’s hard to believe that a mangaka like him would have as much free time as they show him having. That’s just a quibble though since you’re not meant to bring that much reality into the situation. Still, what I kept finding is that even as the two start to work out what their feelings are, it feels like we’ve been dropped into the show rather than introduced to it, and that leaves you feeling a little jarred by it all.
In Summary:
Not unlike a few other shows of this particular genre, the characters that it opens with have been pushed to the side to focus on others of a similar nature. I really find it disappointing because I’d like to have a season just to deal with the characters we started with as I really liked them from the start, grew to like them more and want to spend more time with them. The story of Hatori and Chiaki here isn’t bad, but it isn’t interesting either because it’s a short-form encapsulated view of events. It reminds me of some of those single or two chapter stories you’d get in an anthology in order to tell a story that doesn’t have much depth to it.
Grade: C+
Simulcast By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
