ef - a tale of memories. / First Impressions

OP Sequence

Watch the OP! Mirror 1, Mirror 2

Summary:

Asou Renji, who had always thought of protecting a princess as a knight, has an abandoned railroad station that he likes to visit for its quietness. When he goes there one day though, he finds a girl sitting on a bench, so he tells her that trains don’t come here. Renji then gets a bit flustered and excuses himself, and the girl smiles and waves goodbye. This was the first time that the two of them met, and the entire chance encounter lasted less than 45 seconds. Meanwhile, another boy named Hirono Hiro is drawing his manga when he gets a text message from his friend Shindou Kei reminding him to come to her Christmas party. Kei is furious when Hiro doesn’t show up, but before she can message him again, she gets a Christmas greeting from her own sister Chihiro. Hiro actually heads to a church first to gather some information for his manga, and it is there that he meets a girl dressed like a nun who claims that she has to meet someone. As he turns around to leave, she stops him to wish him Merry Christmas, and he says the same back to her.

Once outside, Hiro receives another message from Kei asking him where he is, and as he is reading it, someone races past on a moped. Chasing after this person is a girl yelling about a thief, and after questioning Hiro which direction the moped went, she takes his bicycle and rides off. This leaves Hiro no choice but to go after her to get back his bike, and to complicate things, Kei calls him as he’s running. Since he’s busy, he tells Kei that he’ll come another time and then hangs up on her. Hiro manages to catch up with the girl who took his bike when she crashes it and gets thrown off. Unsure if she’s still alive, he is surprised when she suddenly opens her eyes and initially doesn’t remember what’s going on. She then recalls that her bag was stolen with all of her important things in it, and she’s determined to get it back. However, after a bit more searching, she easily gives up and downplays the importance of her wallet and cell phone. Hiro is more concerned about if she got hurt earlier, but she claims that she’s fine and thanks him for worrying about her.

When snow starts falling around them, the girl dances around happily and explains that she likes how she can be with someone for a White Christmas because she doesn’t want to be by herself on such a day. Since she hasn’t introduced herself yet, the girl tells Hiro that her name is Miyamura Miyako, and she also finds his name strange. She then tells him that there’s no one home tonight, and she follows this up by accusing him of thinking perverted things. Unfortunately, her key was in the stolen bag, and because she doesn’t want to be outside by herself tonight, she has Hiro accompany her. As for Renji, he finds himself at school on a different day after getting a form to fill out his future aspirations. He wants to be the prince who fights to protect the princess from misfortune, but he realizes that he’s too old to be writing down that kind of dream. Unsure of what to do, Renji goes to see a man named Himura Yuu at the church to get an adult opinion, however Yuu claims to be neither a priest nor a counselor. The reason he’s always hanging around here is because he’s waiting for someone.

Yuu then asks Renji what he likes, and when Renji says that he likes reading, Yuu suggests that he go to a liberal arts college and write novels. Renji thinks that doing something he likes to do as a job is too simplistic, but Yuu points out that it’s better than doing something he hates. Afterwards, Renji heads to the abandoned train station again and finds the girl sitting there again. Unexpectedly, she asks him if they had met before, and since they have, she inquires if he comes here often. This gets the two of them talking about how great a place this is, and she eventually reveals that her name is Shindou Chihiro. When Renji comments on how she can get to this train station faster than him, Chihiro reveals that it’s because she’s not attending school. To his surprise, she then apologizes and decides to go home because she thinks that this is Renji’s special place. Both of them start telling the other not to worry about it, and it leads to both of them laughing. Chihiro nevertheless asks him if it’s okay for her to come here again, and since it is, Renji says he’ll see her again later.

The following day, Renji heads to the station again and sees Chihiro there, but he finds that she seems a bit different from yesterday. It takes Chihiro a moment to realize who Renji is, and she’s so glad that he actually came to see her again that she hugs him. Afterwards, they get to talking about the novel that Renji is carrying with him and the diary that Chihiro has with her that she apparently can’t live without. She eventually asks if they can be friends, and Renji is glad to do so. When it’s time for him to go, Renji again says that he’ll see her later, and this makes Chihiro quite happy because she sees it as a promise to meet again. Once she’s alone, Chihiro tries to write in her diary, but she starts crying instead with her thoughts on her sister. Unaware of this, Kei is playing cards in the White Christmas world while Hiro and Miyako are walking around town together. Their classmate Tsutsumi Kyousuke is also up at this late hour staring at a blurry photo of Kei that he had taken on the street.

ED Sequence

ED: 「I’m here」 by 田口宏子 (Taguchi Hiroko)
Watch the ED!: Mirror 1, Mirror 2
The OP for this first episode was just an instrumental filler since it’s not the euphoric field feat. ELISA that’s currently being played on the official site. It’s still a nice piece though, and I don’t know why more series don’t just use these kinds of instrumentals. The real OP will probably premiere next week. The ending meanwhile is okay, but nothing really special. I’m mostly disappointed because I had been hoping to hear more of the theme that was on the prologue and the website.

Well that was unorthodox, to say the least. I had thought the story was going to be focused on Hiro and Miyako, so it was a surprise to see them completely switch focus to Renji and Chihiro in the second half of the episode. And if the ending of the summary sounds kind of weird, it’s because I couldn’t quite make sense of what happened to Chihiro and how Hiro’s world is related to Renji’s world (or if they’re the same world). Chihiro and her sister Kei seem to connect the two settings, as does the apparent waiting of both Yuu and Yuuko at the church. I get the feeling that this stuff won’t get explained for a while, but this series will only be 12 episodes, and it probably won’t take that long.

Even with the disjointed format though, I thought Shaft did a wonderful job on the animation, and the episode was filled with their stylistic touches. It ended up reminding me a lot of sola, not only because they share the same character designer Nanao Naru, but also because there were a lot of shots of the sky in this. Overall, I’m still not 100% sold on the show, but there’s a lot of promise in the story, and if Shaft can keep the quality consistent, then there’s no reason this couldn’t turn out to be good.

53 Comments

  5. Well already expected good animation from the trailer. Switching between those two couples was a bit confusing, but this is just the 1st episode so wayne..
    What we’ll definitely have is good story progress since this is just a 12 episode show.

    mutio
    Reply

  16. I just seen the episode can’t understand much since its not subbed but tried my best see what was happening. This episode was introducing the characters mostly on Hiro and Miyako, and Renji and Chihiro.

    https://randomc.net/image/ef%20-%20a%20tale%20of%20memories/ef%20-%20a%20tale%20of%20memories%20-%2001%20-%20Large%2036.jpg
    Im quite suprised that guy kept that photo on his computer since it was not a good picture he took dispite he still kept it.

    Well this is not your ordinary bishoujo because this is no harem but more on pairing. This episode had very good animations so I think everyone should check this out.
    Also I beleive that Naru nanao who created the character designs for dacapo and sola also worked on this.

    Most importantly I hope that some really subs this show Shaft shows hardly gets fansubbed (still on Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei episode 7).

    shh227
    Reply

  34. hmm still have to wait for yuu to appear thus completing the relationship for this series but not in the game and i do hope chihiro will not be a spoiler here for the latter tale which she would also be a character in

    Algester
    Reply

  35. I’ve read the first 4 volumes of the manga and the anime seems quite different. I really liked the story of Hiro and Miyako, so I hope they won’t focus too much on Renji and Chihiro (although I do want to know what has happened to Chihiro as it hasn’t been explained in the manga yet). I

    Mayuna
    Reply

  36. I’m confused after watching the first episode. So many random events and characters. And the artwork… well the artwork was fine, although I’d have liked it a lot more if they didn’t alternate the styles so fast (monotone to full color to cutouts to silhoutes). There were a few styles that I thought were really wonderful, but some others… just felt out of place… so I’m having mixed feelings about the first ep.

    As for the story/characters themselves… I like them a lot. Love how even though everyone’s scattered in the show, they’re all still related to one another. Though that guy with the novel in his chest pocket… kinda gives me the same vibe from watching Raki in Claymore. Dunno why.

    Jayars
    Reply

  41. Just watched the raw last night to make notes for our group. I didn’t realize this until someone mentioned it, but Chihiro looks like Nodoka from Negima!?, but with an eyepatch. I do like the storytelling style from what I’ve seen of this first episode as it gives you a sense of parallel stories running all at the same time. It does seem to switch around from each set of characters as you get a piece of their story, but also at the same time, they each connect to each other in a certain way. I’ve only gone through the first scenario with Miyako and Hiro in the PC game so far, and it did play out the same way for their first meeting in this episode.

    I’m very impressed by the music soundtrack for this show. Everything from the instrumental OP, the background music itself, the ED, and the actual OP euphoric field as Omni mentioned which is now streaming on the ef website; all of the music great to listen to.

    Some nice artwork already. Particularly like the walk on the beach and falling snow scene:

    https://randomc.net/image/ef%20-%20a%20tale%20of%20memories/ef%20-%20a%20tale%20of%20memories%20-%2001%20-%20Large%2018.jpg

    The show already has a good setup to it. I like it already. This is going to be another fun series to work on. 🙂

    aquastar831
    Reply

  43. Nanao Naru designs are one big mistake for this series – they are generic, unattractive, and lack depth. Whenever the characters have their eyes open, the pointy chin and, err, cucumber eyes remind me of falcons.

    asdf
    Reply

  45. Is it just me, or is it taking longer to sub this show than most of the other ones. Well, I’ll patiently wait for this one as it looks very good IMO. In the meantime, I’ll probably end up watching CLANNAD, Dragonaut, or Blue Drop.

    Ryuzaki
    Reply

  48. Someone needs to confirm this. Pause the video at 7:06 when a newspaper flies by Hiro. On the white newspaper itself, it says NICE BOAT

    I can’t believe SHAFT put it in there!

    deltazechs
    Reply

  50. I found this trailer after looking at the Ghost Hound trailer, and didn’t find it here!

    Take a look at it, pleaaaasseeee! Ghost Hound is from the creators of Serial Experiments Lain, Jin-Roh, Ghost in the Shell, and Jigoku Shoujo. I’d love to see your opinion on it!

    Sorelliena
    Reply

  52. Just watched this [yeah I s*ck], loved the artistic touched they did. This is probably the most beautiful I have seen…

    The last scene struck a nerve though, as I believe girls at that age shouldn’t have that kind of relationship. And I’m still 19…

    Gravmech
    Reply

  53. This anime is SOOO deep. I think it’s my favorite one so far. The first episode is like “what the heck’s going on” but you follow the characters as they reminisce about the past and it’s pretty good. 12 out of 10. and that’s impossible.

    Riokanoya
    Reply

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