OP Sequence

OP: 「Tears Infection」 by KAORI
Watch the OP! Mirror 1, Mirror 2

Summary:

Sleeping peacefully on the train to Sakuranomori, 16-year-old Hidaka Sana dreams of the farewell party held for him five years ago as his family was about to relocate to Tokyo. Participating were four of his best friends: Oribe Aoi, the Wakatsuki twins Shuusuke and Shuri, and Yatsushiro Nanaka. After they each gave Sana a present, an embarrassed Nanaka explained that she too had made a present: a little tune on her violin. Nanaka told them the song was still unfinished, but she promised Sana that she would complete it by the next time they meet. Sana then wakes up to see a bridge pass by outside the window, triggering a memory from his journey to Tokyo, when, at this very bridge, Shuusuke came running and tried to shout something that was lost in the noise of the rushing train. Arriving at Sakuranomori, Sana strolls through the streets noticing what’s changed in these five short years. He eventually goes to the shrine to pray, and he remembers a past festival where he gave Nanaka a flower bracelet that he had won.

A raven breaks him out of his recollection, and instead pulls Sana’s attention to a dark-haired girl in a miko outfit who has been sweeping the grounds. Their eyes meet, yet for no apparent reason she moves off in a hurry. Sana then makes his way toward the exit, but he first stops to buy an omikuji, which to his dismay informs him that the future will bring great misfortune – women troubles in particular. As he’s tying up this bad fortune, Sana catches another glimpse of the mysterious girl staring at him, and she again decides to vanish when he sees her. Sana’s next stop is his new landlord’s house where a female voice greets Sana. It belongs to a petite girl in glasses who squeals happily at the sight of him, and he soon realizes that this is Aoi. She thinks that he might have forgotten about her, but the main reason he didn’t immediately recognize her is because of her large chest.

The two head to Sana’s new apartment, and Aoi offers to help him unpack, but Sana turns her down because of the h-games he has in his boxes. Sana finishes unpacking by himself and goes out shopping for food later that evening. On the way home, he passes by a bookshop that reminds him of how Aoi always loved books. Inside, he finds a book that’s supposedly the year’s best, despite it only being April, and he by chance runs into Aoi again. After a long lecture from her about how good the book is, the two head home together, and she invites him to come eat with her family. The conversation at the dinner table with Aoi’s parents switches from Sana’s age to how landlord and tenant are just like parent and child, and Aoi’s mother even brings up the prospect of Sana becoming her son-in law as a joke. Once he returns to his own apartment, Sana lies down pondering the physical change in Aoi, and it makes him wonder what Nanaka looks like these days. His daydreaming is interrupted when his mother calls to check up on him. After a long conversation where he reassures her that everything is fine, he hangs up the phone, and his watch shows it’s 1:52 in the morning.

The next morning, Sana is woken up when Aoi comes to get him for school, but she gets embarrassed at the sight of him in his underwear. After Sana puts on some pants, Aoi tells him they’re late for school, however he points out that it’s alright because today’s the opening ceremony. This information leaves a shocked Aoi on the floor, and she complains that she was in such a hurry that she didn’t even eat breakfast before dashing out. Since Sana hasn’t eaten yet either, she offers to make them both something and even has an apron ready in her bag. The two eventually do make it to school, and Aoi leaves Sana outside the teachers’ lounge after begging him not to tell anyone about the morning’s embarrassing event. Sana then meets his new homeroom teacher, and she introduces him to the class that he’s in which happens to include Shuusuke and Shuri. In getting caught back up with old friends, Shuri asks why Sana suddenly decided to come back, but he doesn’t give her a straight answer. As the twins then argue over Shuri’s cooking ability, the mysterious shrine girl from before walks into the classroom and approaches them. Sana asks if she’s the person from the shrine and tries to introduce himself as if they had never met, but she responds by slapping him. Sana now notices the flower bracelet clasped around the girl’s wrist – the same one he had given away all those years ago – and he realizes that this must be Nanaka.

ED Sequence

ED: 「キミと夜空と坂道と」 (Kimi to Yozora to Sakamichi to) by いとうかなこ (Itou Kanako)
Watch the ED!: Mirror 1, Mirror 2
The OP and ED were surprisingly good, or at least a lot better than I was expecting in both the animation sequences and the songs themselves. I think the OP in particular has several shots that made it more interesting (like the “Bye” displayed on Sana’s mp3 player and this mysterious person) because of how they hint at things that haven’t been revealed yet.

Preview:

In researching this series to write my fall preview, I thought the show sounded rather generic, and so I hadn’t prioritized watching this on Tuesdays. It wasn’t until last Wednesday that I started hearing about how good this show had been, and it wasn’t until a few hours ago that I finally got the chance to watch the episode. Suffice to say, I agree with all the people who find this show interesting, and I think it has a lot of potential if you can get past the fact that Aoi’s voice becomes really annoying really fast (my hope is that her part is downgraded in future weeks). The first half of the episode didn’t have much to write home about, but in the second half they started developing a few very interesting themes (like why Sana came back) and ended on quite a bang…or slap if you will. It actually left me wanting to see more, which is still more than I can say for a lot of the series this season so far.

Unfortunately, I also think that Blue Drop has a ton of potential, and so I’ll be trying to juggle both of them on a day of the week where I don’t particularly have time to do two. It will likely fall to the next couple of episodes of both series to help me decide, but for the time being, Myself; Yourself is looking pretty good.

41 Comments

  1. Ugh…yea hearing Aoi’s voice at length is really wearing on a person. Anyway I’m glad to see you picked up this series. I thought you weren’t going to blog it since it aired this past Tuesday and there wasn’t an entry. I’d have to agree with you and say that this show did leave me wanting to see more. Hopefully this pans out to be great series.

    Fayte
  2. Guys don’t compare this to SD haha…(I know at the opening Sana seems like the ****** of SD and the way he stares at Aoi thinking she was Nanaka, imagining Nanaka’s 5 year version lol This is anime is more like a future version of Love Hina.
    Sana’s reason on returning he got lots of promises lol…….

    Comparison Myself, Yourself to Love Hina story
    Sana (returning due to promise, but it’s different with Yuuichi of KANON since Sana decided it by himself and due to family reasons)
    Keitaro (keeps on going due to promise)

    Nanaka (1st female protagonist to hit Sana through slap)
    Naru (1st female protagonist to hit Keitaro through punch)

    I love also how this story would go (yeah we want Aoi’s screentime to go down the drain)

    arigatou
  3. additional info
    The ending seems similar with Love Hina too… where the female lead characters are posing towards the screen though in this anime they featured it at the end where Love Hina just zoom out the whole picture..

    arigatou
  4. Hmm I find it quite predictable though especially when Aoi tried to help Sana unpacked(it was so obvious how can anyone can’t figure it out -.-) and some of the joke are lame. Anyone care to tell me it’s good qualities in this show?

    setsuke
  5. LOL…I wonder what that guy did in order to deserve this slap. This was some powerful stuff.

    At first I was interested in this show simply because I liked Nanaka’s character design, but after watching the first episode it definitely caught my interest even more. It seems like a generic romance show but maybe that’s what I need – a good old classic love story. I hope that will repair the damage after watching School Days.

    Well, here’s for hoping Aoi will decide to move to France (Damn, I guess the damage is still here!)

    Darklord
  6. Not brilliant animation but a decent show overall. I’m not sure whether I’ll watch it long term or not considering all of the other shows I’m trying to watch (6-10 anime plus 15 american tv shows…)

    Mark
  7. Any anime that merges a moe, loli-sized, big breasted, shrill-voiced, meganekko into a single character has too be good. Either that or I need some serious professional help.

    *shrugs*

    I sure hope you continue to blog this Omni, i need something to fill the void left by Airantou and Seto no Hanayome.

    Shinn Agami
  8. “Shuusuke came running and tried to shout something that was lost in the noise of the rushing train”

    I have a feeling this is why Nanaka is holding a grudge against Sana. They parted on good terms so you would think that the moment she saw him standing at the shrine that shed jump for joy but instead bolted away like he was the devil himself, so I doubt this has to do whith not knowing who she was (Mind you she gave him very little time to even look her over to jog that memory of his)

    If Shuusuke had been telling him that Nanaka loved him and wanted to keep in touch (or something along this line of thought) then things would make more sence with her behaviour. Since he never heard it (Mind you Shuusuke would assume he had and told that to Nanaka) he would never have folowed up on it leading Nanaka to believe she was rejected.

    Neko
  9. I think that this show is have better potential than Blue Drop since i have preference of harem anime over yuri. Let’s see how it turns out.

    Sadlly, there are only three show for my most watch list for this season:
    -Clannad
    -Myself; Yoursel
    -Kimikisu

    I thought that most of the shows for this season were going to be great; while actually, they are decent but not past that level.

    banzemanga
  10. maybe it is a good sign for him to get slap early. If the violance gets built up like SD MsYs could end up with a nice boat at the end or at the least a face full of boxcutters.

    Xellos-_^
  11. Ohhh nice u blog that! at first i thought ur not going to blog it. It really looks like Futakoi. A lot of flashback, suddenly he finds his friends on the same school and hes similar to that guy in Futakoi.

    Aznsoulboy
  12. Glad that you’re blogging this, because this show crept up on me and I didn’t think it would be good. But after the first episode I added this show to my watch list.

    magmaburning
  13. Good to see you’re blogging this, Omni! I was worried when I saw from your Fall 2007 preview that you listed this series as unimpressive with only a decent chance of getting blogged. I watched this show raw this past weekend, and thought, “oh man, Omni’s missing out!”

    -D

    Dan
  14. The getting slapped part makes me want to see the next episode and see what happens…
    Did anyone recognize nanaka as the miko when sana was at the temple? She had a completely different feeling from when she was 5 years ago that i was not sure if she was actually nanaka until they showed the bracelet at the end and shuusuke warning sana…

    Hagiri
  15. Shinn Agami: “Any anime that merges a moe, loli-sized, big breasted, shrill-voiced, meganekko into a single character has too be good. Either that or I need some serious professional help.”

    Damn straight. Look what just part of one scene in episode 5 of Haruhi did for that series.

    Omni: “…and so I’ll be trying to juggle both of them on a day of the week where I don’t particularly have time to do two.”

    Eh, if it gets to be a problem and you still want to do it, just take an extra day for one of them. Look how far behind the RAW you were on this one, and you’ve still got a ton of comments and no real complaints. If people bitch about it, just tell them what they can go do with themselves.

    quigonkenny

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