This anime follows two different couples. One involves high school student and professional manga artist Hiro Hirono who befriends and later gets close to Miyako Miyamura; a girl who seeks his love and fears being abandoned or forgotten. Their relationship is imperilled by Hiro's long-time friend Kei who fears Miyoko will take away her friend and she is determined to put an end to it. The second, interwoven story involves Renji Asou; one day he visits an abandoned railway station and meets Chihiro. Again a friendship develops despite Chiriro suffering from an unusual condition. After an accident when she was twelve her short term memory was damaged; she can recall events before the accident but recent memories only last thirteen hours. She copes by keeping a diary and 'extending' important memories by thinking of them just before she goes to sleep. Even knowing these problems Renji is determined to make their relationship work; it won't be easy though.
This series is distinctly bittersweet and the viewer is sure to grow to care for the characters in a way that makes some scenes emotionally difficult. The characters are interesting and even though memory loss is one of the most over used clichés in anime I don't think I've seen it used this way before normally it is somebody tried to discover who they were rather than desperately trying to hang on to who they are. Both stories are fairly emotional and the creative way the story is animated only adds to this. The animation is quite beautiful and uses several tricks that couldn't work if it were live action; some may feel these devices are over used but I really though they added to the series. Overall I'd definitely recommend this to anybody looking for something emotional and different I feel it will have great re-watch value too.
These comments are based on watching the series in Japanese with English subtitles.
This series is distinctly bittersweet and the viewer is sure to grow to care for the characters in a way that makes some scenes emotionally difficult. The characters are interesting and even though memory loss is one of the most over used clichés in anime I don't think I've seen it used this way before normally it is somebody tried to discover who they were rather than desperately trying to hang on to who they are. Both stories are fairly emotional and the creative way the story is animated only adds to this. The animation is quite beautiful and uses several tricks that couldn't work if it were live action; some may feel these devices are over used but I really though they added to the series. Overall I'd definitely recommend this to anybody looking for something emotional and different I feel it will have great re-watch value too.
These comments are based on watching the series in Japanese with English subtitles.