Ao Haru Ride | Episode 11 | TFP Review (Episode 12 Follows)
EmperorBrandon: The story of Kou’s mother is just so depressing. What happened with her parents and extended family? All dead, or is she estranged from them too? As emotional as it was, it provided some strong insight into Kou, particularly why the studying and becoming successful thing is particularly painful for him. It wasn’t easy for Futaba to make a breakthrough. She gets to admitting that she could never fully understand the weight of the things affecting him, but it does seem like she stubbornly got to that breakthrough moment at the end.
Interesting that there’s apparently a new major character introduced for a few seconds when we got only one more episode to go. I wonder if this will be yet another “read the manga” tease or if they’re actually going to do more. Either way, that was another “goofy Futaba” moment and I always seem to enjoy those.
GingaDaiuchuu: They sure managed to hit all the tragedy notes on that flashback, and it instantly makes Kou the sympathetic character I’ve been hoping he would prove to be all along. His outlook following that is not surprising at all, and it takes someone as determined to get through to him and as Futaba to give him a reason to care and to be passionate again. It’s good to see that he’s not going to try pushing her away when he realizes how right she is, and I look forward to seeing how it plays out from here.
stardf29: That final moment of the episode, with Futaba finally having gotten through to Kou, was definitely the climax of this show (or at least, this season of the anime adaptation). As what the entire show had been working towards, it was really nice, and really helps cement this show as another great shoujo anime adaptation.
While I would like for the final episode to bring some kind of a romantic conclusion to the show, at this point that would honestly just be icing on the cake.
Episode 12 (Finale) | TFP Review
GingaDaiuchuu: Well that was all rather nice and sweet. This was definitely as standard a shoujo romance as you can get, but its tropes are all delivered competently and sincerely enough that I can behind it. As with so many other series, it ends after a cour when obviously there’s much more story to tell, so it would be nice to get more, but it certainly got its big hurdle out of the way to give some resolution at the end.
EmperorBrandon: Hah, so much enjoyably embarrassing lines today. Futaba’s reactions to things are always so wonderful, and it was rather sweet with her and Kou. Seems Kou had a reason to be particularly angsty of late with his father coming to visit, and I love how the experience with Futaba does give him the will to move things in a very positive, emotional direction there.
Kou is such a lucky dude with that scene of him being “captured” by two great adorable girls. I felt this was about as satisfying of a “we’ve obviously got more story to tell” end as you can get. I end up being surprisingly pleased with the note this ended on and certainly ends the season as one of my top three at the very least. Not that I don’t still hope there will be more anime as this seems like it has the potential to continue to be quite good. Do wonder about that cameo guy too. Funny at least to see Futaba thought of as a “pervert” now.
Hitsugi Amachi: While I kind of felt there was just the slightest feeling of this episode being in a rush to get to a good stopping point, it is a pretty good stopping point, as good as you’ll be able to manage when there’s clearly a lot more story to tell. Futuba hasn’t even confessed her feelings yet, so there is a lot more to go.
I wouldn’t have minded seeing more, but I can accept this ending.
Buckeye: And so, things end showing just how much Futaba and Kou grew up throughout the course of this show. They were very down and out in the beginning for very different reasons, but after they get together and get some friends who won’t desert them like what has been happening to Futaba prior to the start of the series, they have finally found their way in life. This episode pretty much sums up all the growth that took place during this show.
Overall, this show revolves around the drama that slowly builds up these characters, and it does an excellent job on the developmental front. It’s the growth shown by these characters at the end that makes this show nice to watch. It doesn’t always take the best approach and at times it was really slow to the point where I was about to fall asleep, but never was it meaningless. It’s a shoujo romance that’s cliched as hell, but nevertheless those cliches are chosen wisely. That said, this drama made for a great story to unfold.
stardf29: The scene with Kou with his family, including his dad, was really nice. It really shows how much better this show is for being able to develop things other than the central romance.
Likewise, those final scenes of the group of friends
bctaris: Right, that [family] part had the strongest impact. The character with a troubled home life, or death in the family, etc., is well over-used to create drama in shoujo and shonen alike. But I appreciated, again demonstrating the patience of the direction in this show, that sequence of Kou coming home, the father finally being introduced (typical of anime, I’d assumed by this point he simply wasn’t around at all), and the guarded family meal, all of it apart from the “romance” or “friendship” side of the story. I liked, as well, that this played some to my earlier suggestion that part of Kou’s path back was through his relationship with his brother (and, it turned out, his dad).
The overall story, of the group of friends falling so casually together, had lost some steam, I thought. I simply liked the setup to the show, before we knew what to expect, to the denouement, where, past the fourth episode or so, we had already known what to expect. Beyond Kou and Futaba, who were compelling characters by themselves, the other friends never seemed to get enough, at least not what was teased and suggested for them earlier on. They lost depth, in fact, which seems rare. Paralleling the plight of Futaba trying to open up Kou with a similar story line of Kominato trying to reign in the loner Murao would have been nice. Plus, perhaps, some continuation of Yuuri still having issues with classmates, driving home more the point of the group of friends being her solace. There were barely not even hints to some of this. Instead, Kominato, Murao, and Yuuri seemed to flatten out, with Kominato…just being Kominato, Murao coming to terms off screen, and Yuuri somewhat clumsily shoehorned into merely the “romantic rival friend”. I suppose the lack of depth can be blamed on the space allotted for adaptation, but it could be from the source, as well.
Pleasant show, overall. Certainly liked Futaba, at least. The episodic direction, for some episodes, is my primary takeaway.
Hitsugi Amachi: Good point. I didn’t really devote much thought to the group of friends…but then that’s kind of the giveaway here—I was not giving Yuuri, Murao (Shuuko) and Kominato a second thought. Heck, we didn’t even really hear much of Murao’s first name until this, the very last episode, since it was rather prominently used. If you had asked me an episode or three back what her first name was (without looking it up on the internet), I would have had to reply “No idea.”
I have a feeling (just a feeling, no actual knowledge) that this is more a problem with the limited adaptation room than the source. I get this feeling because this whole final episode felt rushed at times for me, a “hurry up, we need to get all this in before we run out of time” sense. The only scene in which the episode lingered, with good reason, was over the Tanaka Family Reconciliation (we can call it that, since Kou even voices the notion that once high school is over, he will go back to being a Tanaka). It was good that they lingered there, but after that it feels like they then were in something of a rush to reach a stopping point, since that’s all we get with this show.
stardf29: This show turned out to be another solid shoujo anime adaptation. While it never did anything particularly standout, it executed its story well and knew how to tell a story without relying on the central romance as a crutch. The overall result is a show that has been very enjoyable to watch, even if it never quite reached the level of this season’s many hard hitters.