Myself;yourself review

First of all, my internet problem miraculously disappeared and now I’m free to do as I please, but then it got bad again and now I’m writing on someone else’s computer. Second of all, seeing as I’m a bored student with a summer season that’s doing NOTHING for me, I’ve been digging up old anime that I wanted to watch but didn’t for some reason (even though there are things that I’m supposed to do. Oh well, I love procrastinating). Myself;yourself wasn’t the first thing that I saw, THAT was Hayate the combat Butler the manga. I really loved that series, but it’s definitely not over yet, so I’m doing a review on a slightly old anime that IS finished: myself;yourself.

First of all, a little bit of background info (as always). This anime was actually made in order to promote the game, which was coming out on the ps2 (kinda like .hack//sign. Oh god, I did not enjoy that series AT ALL, the pacing was 3 hundred steps too slow and confusing for me), which featured the art of Mutsumi Sasaki (whom I do not like at all, though I do think the art of chaos;head was pretty) and the original script of Takumi Nakazawa (whom I adored for writing the infinity series, you know, ever17, never7 and all that.)

Premise:

Sana Hidaka moves back to the place where he grew up as a child, where he reunites with his old friends, meets new people, and lives a peaceful life until the things around him change and everyone struggles to attain their own piece of happiness.

Story: 6/10

The story starts out pretty slow, with a lot of hints here and there, but the pace slowly but surely picked up, and by episode 8, I was lovin’ it. Then comes plot twist after plot twist, revelation after revelation, until it peaked at episode 11 with Asami’s confession. However, the excitement dies down after a while, and the series ends without a bang. There was a lot of foreshadowing thrown into the series and they get tied up nicely. I personally think that it would have been a whole lot better if they just got rid of all the earlier episodes involving the love adventures of the 10 years old girl and just concentrated on the plot.

Highlights: the end of episode 8, confession of episode 11, and the end of episode 11.

Music: 8/10

The theme songs were pretty good, but the voice didn’t really click with me as it just sounded sounded scratchy for some reason. The BGM was pretty good though, and the pieces that were played at emotional moments impressed me. Overall, good but not good enough for me to go and buy the soundtrack.

Voice acting:4/5

I think that the voice actors did a great job, especially during the moments I highlighted in the story section. Except for Tomokon Kaneda, who did the voice of Aoi. I’ve heard my share of annoying, high pitched female voices before, but she tops the cake. I mean, I KNOW that she can do a good job, but oh Haruhi-sama, were they TRYING to make Aoi as annoying sounding as possible? The scene where Aoi goes down a water slide may be the worst half a minute of anime I’ve EVER watched.

Art:7/10

The overall art was decent, and I like the way that the cherry blossoms were drawn. But, the characters weren’t especially good, and the male characters looked bland and boring. There was a lot of off shots, though none of them were all that bad.

Animation: 5/10

I KNOW that this is a slice of life harem drama series that’s used for promoting a game, but that’s not an excuse to have bad animation. The overall budget was pretty low, which resulted in a lot of moments where you just spend half a minute looking at stills and awkward sounding laughter in the background. The opening animation wasn’t all that great either, save for the first few seconds. Some parts, like watching the characters go down a water slide, was just painful to watch.

Gut feelings: 2.5/5

Had some good parts here and there, it’s worth finishing of you started it already, but I wouldn’t recommend it toanyone.

Total: 32.5/51 C–