glover.tiffany - 2016-04-17 18:35:30

con una premisa interesante, pero algo confusa en la mitad, muy entrenida en general con un toque oscuro en la trama, vale la pena verlo si quieres algo tranquilo y corto pero con historia

gdonnelly - 2015-01-07 07:45:15

[Old review is old.]

Looking back on it, Natsuyuki Rendezvous spent its time fairly wisely to develop what it had to say, with adequate pacing from beginning to end. Still, while actually watching it, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a script that continuously struggled with elements that worked and failed within such a simple premise.

Natsuyuki Rendezvous centers around a man named Hazuki who opens the show by telling us that he has fallen in love with a flowershop keeper named Rokka. After using the first episode to get closer to her, managing to score a job working in her flower shop, he comes across a strange man living in Rokka’s house above the shop. It doesn’t take long for Hazuki to discover that this man, named Shimao, is the ghostly manifestation of her late husband, who has trouble giving Rokka up to some newcomer. So the series follows Hazuki trying to bypass the spirit in order to win Rokka over, Shimao coming to terms with his ideals and his actions in the afterlife, and Rokka struggling to move on to someone else.

From what the show sets itself up to be, which is essentially a ghost cockblocking some guy who wants to woo a widow, they end up pulling interesting things out of the setup. I admired how this show examined themes in a satisfactory way and moved onto other ones seamlessly right up to the ending. It knew just when to go into light romance philosophy or when to let people interact leisurely. The dilemmas that the characters go through as they try to come to some sense of solidarity are the obvious focus, and the show kept its focus squarely on those issues.

The other part that should have been nailed unfortunately doesn’t feel as strong as it should be: The actual romance. It feels too odd when interactions between the couples bring up awkward or confusing situations, going from poetic passion to winceworthy one-liners in a matter of seconds. To be fair, this is a highly unusual situation they’re dealing with, and if anything, it feels refreshing to see lovers acting out of the norm. I can somewhat forgive this complaint in the sense that the show just presented an odd situation and the characters’ actions to combat it.

But then the problem becomes the characters themselves.The main protagonist acts a bit too dickish as he competes with the ghost, to the point where I couldn’t really get behind him in some situations since he acted like such a jerk to forcibly get what he wants. Shimao being a stick in the mud when it comes to handling his ideals backfires at times to make him come across as hypocritical. Rokka is probably the most likable in the cast, but even that comes with setbacks. Since her ideals are jumbled and she takes awhile to move forward to her resolution, we as an audience gravitate more to Hazuki and his semi-questionable set moral values that back him up as he tries to win Rokka over. Because of this the main cast is a hard pill to swallow, and mediocre direction doesn’t give us a very focused emotional connection with the conflict generated.

The biggest complaint I have in the screenplay is how the show doesn’t flow very well. I mentioned that it knows when to let scenes play out or to talk about serious aspects, and how it effectively addresses its concepts. However, the presentation felt awkwardly forced, rushing to end scenes on quick conclusions in order to jumpstart other ones. A complete overhaul, and the anime could have easily been calmer and more relaxed with its story, while keeping within the timeframe of eleven episodes and tackling everything that it did by the end. What we got was a needlessly bumpy script, though at least it knew to move forward towards a solid ending. Polish would have gone a long way (a complete rewrite further), but a sense of completion for a story with interesting content prevents me from disliking it altogether.

Dogakobo did the animation for the show, and despite my hatred for the studio, I can note a few good things in the art department. The animation renders the distinctive character designs with passable dynamism. The backgrounds had a refined blotchy style to them, displaying calming settings for the various locations and adding tranquil vibes to a show that really needed it. There’s something quite soothing about how they paint the flower shop, or a little restaurant, or a forest sidewalk. The only location they don’t do well with is a theme park, but no anime can execute those well.

I can say without a moment’s hesitation that this is one of my favorite anime soundtracks. It’s a fitting complement, as background music should be, but the soundtrack on its own gives us over forty tracks of incredibly enriching piano music, all songs being a couple minutes long and each with a unique and memorable melody to them. A goldmine of quality keyboard songs in the purest sense, perfectly special on their own and even better as an entire album. While the OP is skippable, I found myself sticking around for the ED a few times since the visuals brought a brief bit of style to the table.

For as many elements that make this show out to be a relaxing experience of difficulties in romance, there were too many things that took me out of it, being the extremely odd pacing and the characters’ behavior. On the other hand, many moments in the series progressed with mellow demeanor, fueling an honest interest in what was transpiring. It’s a messy mixed bag of an anime that isn’t too important in the big picture, nor is it a complete waste of time.

Natsuyuki Rendezvous (2012):
6.0/10