First Impressions / true tears

Summary:

Nakagami Shinichirou is an aspiring picture book author who is currently working on a story with the theme of tears. He’s frustrated because he wants to draw gentler pictures than he has been, and when he heads out of his room and downstairs, he finds and stares at Yuasa Hiromi working at a computer. Shinichirou has feelings for her, and after their short conversation about her work and eating dinner, he wishes he had said more. He returns to his story once he’s done eating and writes about collecting a person’s tears to make a necklace and decorate a tree. In his mind, Shinichirou develops an image of a girl standing under a giant tree, and he starts drawing. At school the next day, he watches Hiromi during gym class and gets teased by his friend Nobuse about it. After changing out of his gym clothes, Shinichirou hears a girl singing and traces the sound to a girl standing atop a tree branch by the school courtyard. As he stands there stunned by the view of her against the sunlight, the girl notices him and angers him by telling him not to look at her without asking. However, when he turns to walk away, she stops him and jumps down on top of him.

As it turns out, the girl had been in the tree getting berries from a branch to feed the school’s two chickens – what she calls a sky meal. She feels that the chickens want to fly, and since they’re caged up, she wanted to give them a meal from a high place. The girl then compares how one of the chickens doesn’t try to fly to what she thinks are Shinichirou’s own problems flying, and he responds by ridiculing her flying analogy by saying that her head is light with air. This causes the girl to get angry, and she walks off after wishing unhappiness onto him. Shinichirou learns from Nobuse later that the girl is Isurugi Noe. Returning home, Shinichirou pays a visit to the family brewery where his father is too busy at work to talk with him. He remembers how Hiromi came to live with them after her father – who was his own father’s acquaintance – had died. Shinichirou had been in the same class as her since elementary school, and since she was always cheerful, he had been worried about her smile. As Shinichirou is thinking about this, Hiromi comes home, and the way she simply greets him before heading inside reminds him of the unhappiness that Noe had wished onto him.

That night, Shinichirou heads to his friend Andou Aiko’s home to practice a traditional dance before heading to her family’s imagawayaki store, and when he voices his frustration through a loud sigh, Aiko warns him that sighing will lead to unhappiness. She is concerned about him, but Shinichirou leaves as soon as Nobuse stops by the store. Back at home, Shinichirou notices that he smells bad, so he decides to take a bath. What he doesn’t know is that Hiromi is already in the bathroom, and so he walks in on her changing. He rushes back out when he sees her, but to his surprise, it’s Hiromi who apologizes to him. Shinichirou thinks to himself that the normal reaction would have been screaming and calling him a pervert, and he’s frustrated at how she apologized. He ends up channeling this energy into making a chicken out of a box of tissues. The next morning, Shinichirou is sitting down to eat breakfast with Hiromi and his father when his mother walks in with a letter from a Tokyo publisher. She wants to know what he’s been hiding, but Shinichirou storms out without answering after grabbing the letter. Despite his mother’s protests, his father thinks that Shinichirou is his own person and doesn’t have to follow the family business.

The letter from the publisher turns out to be a rejection, and it once again reminds Shinichirou of the unhappiness Noe wished onto him. To get rid of this curse, he finds Noe – who is again up in the tree – and offers her a gift to take back what she said. She loves the chicken-shaped tissue box that he gives her and thinks that he can fly now. They then head to the chicken pen, but when they get there, they find the front of it broken open from what appears to have been a tanuki attack. Only the white chicken who can’t fly remains alive, and there’s blood on the ground, yet Noe feels that the black chicken flew away. Shinichirou thinks that she’s going to cry, but to his surprise, she doesn’t shed any tears despite how sad she sounds. As they two walk together past the waterfront, Shinichirou comments on how strong she is, so Noe admits that she’s really sad, and the truth is that she’s given up her tears.

ED Sequence

ED: 「セカイノナミダ」 (Sekai no Namida) by 結城アイラ (Yuuki Aira)
Watch the ED! Mirror 1, Mirror 2
If you’re looking for the OP, I uploaded it yesterday.

Based on the first episode, true tears appears to be hitting all the right buttons production-wise with its great animation quality and very nice soundtrack (particularly the pieces that started and ended the episode). I think the only (very minor) complaint I have is that they chose to use CG people for the distance shots, and that looked odd and reminded me of how Utawarerumono did the same thing.

As for the story, I thought this had a bit of a slow start. Most of the episode is devoted to introducing the characters, and it looks like Aiko has feelings for Shinichirou, Shinichirou has feelings for Hiromi, and Hiromi feels like a burden on the Nakagami family. None of that was horrible interesting though, and it wasn’t until Noe’s appearance – with her eccentricities about the chickens and flying – that things got better. And then of course there’s also her problem with tears/crying, and that’s likely to be one of the central themes of the show given its title. Overall, I’d say H2O probably wins out for more interesting first episode, but this show has potential too, and I expect it to get better now that we’re past the introductions.

31 Comments

  3. See, the girl jumped out of a tree or something and fell on Kyon-Jr there, he looks in pain. That’s what I’m talking about in H20. The girls beat, crush, pulverize and stomp all over the males. They owed us one.

    Kaioshin Sama
    Reply

  8. Ok, so like, What’s the plot for this? A love square? Triangle? Anyone got any plot info? I know this is based on a date sim, so i’m expecting all the girls to be hawt for the guy.

    GP
    Reply

  9. Ok, so like, What’s the plot for this? A love square? Triangle? Anyone got any plot info? I know this is based on a date sim, so i’m expecting all the girls to be hawt for the guy.

    Even though there was a game with the same name, the anime story is totally different (different characters and all), so there isn’t any plot info to be had.

    relentlessflame
    Reply

  16. Hmm, the first episode gave a pretty nice introduction to the characters, although the special aired yesterday pretty much showed everything that was in this episode. So while this episode didn’t really present anything new to me, I’m definitely going to continue watching this show.

    I see some Hirono Hiro in Nakagami Shinichirou already from his drawing ability (which I presume is for manga) and some Tsutsumi Kyousuke in him from the way he gets inspired from real-life imagery.

    The fact that 「true tears」 is aired in HD makes everything just look nicer on a 40″ Samsung 1080p LCD TV (LN-T4065F) too. 😀

    divine
    Reply

  17. oh boy! this show is looking good! You can tell that the Aiko has feelings for Shinichirō
    even though his best friend seems to be after Aiko. It seems it will be 3 girls after one guy, so this borders in the harem anime genre just for that but it seems Aiko doesn’t stand a chance as Shinichirō’s friend is already after Aiko.

    golthin
    Reply

  19. The animation quality is indeed excellent.

    It breaks away from the ‘girl live under the same roof’ harem routine. Hiromi hardly talks to Shinichirou at all, which is understandable given that she’s living under the roof of strangers. The way Shinichirou’s mother looks at her isn’t very friendly either. I predict that somewhere in the future Shinichirou’s parent will push Hiromi to become Shinichirou’s fiancee, thus making his situation a living hell.

    I suspect that Noe the ‘crazy girl’ can talk to animals. The love triangle between Aiko with Shinichirou’s best friend have a lot of potential as well.

    Ronin8317
    Reply

  21. @GP
    It will most likely will get subbed, people can’t leave this type of shows alone. Be patient, the first episode just broadcast and it is still vacation time for most people.
    People don’t usually get back to work or school till the 7th.

    golthin
    Reply

  29. The soundtrack for this looks amazing; both op and ed captivated me. But yes, for a first episode, seemed really slow. Anyhow, I’m still really interested on this, and in my opinion, this and H20 are at the same level.

    HolyHawk
    Reply

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