emcclure - 2015-03-10 12:54:21

Have you ever had that situation where you love the beginning of an anime but the rest of the series doesn’t turn out to well? You get disappointed and just want to forget all the things that were bad. That is how it was with Photokano for me.

This series is about Maeda Kazuya, a normal high school boy that receives a digital camera from his father. He starts to get interested in photographing which opens a lot of doors for him. During the series he comesacross people he would never had talked to if it wasn’t for his new found hobby.

The structure of this series is pretty simple. It starts off with four episodes of introduction whereyou get to meet all the characters. Then the series becomes arc based. This is when it becomes problematic. Every arc is focused on one of the girls that Maeda meets. During these arcs Maeda helps
the girls with their problems and also starts a relationship with them. The problem here is that the arcs arevery short. Most of them only last for one episode. This makes them very rushed. This structure also makes it feel like the story doesn’t progress so much.

The photo theme is very interesting and was the reason for me checking this series out. They did handle it pretty well although they could added a bit more of it. Again the bad structure prevents from doing this.

The main characters Maeda Kazuya isn’t that special of a character but he is likeable. He doesn’t have so much development or a backstory, but this works because the focus is more on the main girls. The girls are many. So many that I won’t take the time to talk about each one of them. The good thing about them is that even if they are somany they still have interesting and unique backstories. But then we do also have a problem with the amount of girls. As I said before the arcs is only one episode and that’s because every girls is going to have one. The lack of time makes them really rushed and the main character barley gets to start a relationship before he has to move on to the next girl. I think the series would have been better if it had a smaller cast of girls.

The series also have few supporting characters. These characters don’t get so much screen time becauseof the focus on the main girls. This is pretty disappointing because some ofwhere really good and funny. My favorite character of the series is Kudou Hiromichi, the leader of the photo club Maeda joins. He does only appear a few times during the series and most of his appearance comes from the previews which he narrates.

I don’t have so much to say about art and animation. It holds a good standard. My favorite part was how they did the photographing. It looked nice and beautiful. One of my favorite things about this series is the great feeling you get. You feel calm and relaxed. The biggest reason for this is the
background music. It is always used at the right time and set such a good tone in the scene. The voice acting was good. There weren’t any performances I didn’t like. My favorite performance in this series came from Midorikawa Hikaru who played the character I talked about earlier Kudou Hiromichi.

Photokano is a series that sets high expectations that it can’t live up to. It follows the classic dating sim structure which is not a bad structure, but it has to be handled well. Photokano has a great intro but has a really bad structure. In this case it’s the structure that decides if this series is very good or just good. This series would have worked out a lot better if it just where longer or had a smaller cast. Even with the bad structure the
series has some interesting characters and it gives a really good feeling which is the first thing that comes to my mind when I think back on Photokano.

beer.carole - 2013-10-08 06:22:02

It's a romantsu series based on a dating sim-type video game. The protagonist is your typical male anime protagonist who suffers from a middling case of Anime Protagonist Syndrome. He's a fairly bland dude with a younger sister; he goes to school, but doesn't do much else.

His father gives him a DSLR camera, presumably having upgraded. He discovers photography. Hiding behind the lens, seeing the world through the viewfinder, the protagonist discovers a whole new side to life. He finds himself transported to another world, in which he drifts between subjects and composes beautiful photographs, in the process ignoring the emotional shell he'd built around himself and magically becoming a more outgoing and sociable person.

At least, this is what the anime repeatedly says through the voice of the protagonist, though it's not particularly evident from the writing. The show simply lacks emotional content; there is no connection with the protagonist, no sympathy or interest. Even derision would be a step up from this disinterested plane. There is no evidence that the protagonist has become more outgoing; the show simply jumps in on him having just received the camera, going through life, conveniently, on the first day of school.

So, life gives him lemons. He discovers photography and is sucked into the school's skeevy Photography Club, which focuses on copping the naughtiest shots possible of the school's female population (of course he's not into that). He meets a few new people, and we're introduced to the school's popular girls (who he just so happens to know from his childhood; convenient). An attempt is made to develop relationships with other characters, but these are uncompelling. Ham-fisted writing is employed, using chance to get the character out of trouble. Rule 1 of great storytelling: making shit up to get characters into trouble is OK, but the opposite is true of getting characters out of trouble.

Life goes on, and the story splits into alternate endings, alternate paths, as one might have followed playing the game the show is based on. These endings tend to feel rather rushed, and all suffer from the same rather impressive lack of emotional content that afflicts the rest of the show.

In all, impressively emotionally bland. I just don't care about any of the characters. Shit, even the title and credit sequences are boring, with the OP and ED on the level of elevator music. Pleasant, but bland, hollow.

shanahan.kylee - 2013-06-15 13:32:32

Typical romance series that splits the story characters into different episodes like Amagami SS but in my opinion it cuts each character's story a little short. But I've give it props for its character design and romance elements, it seems to nail the essence of romance pretty well. Hopefully this doesn't affect the outcome of the series too much so I'll give it a 4/5.