dagmar.funk - 2016-01-05 23:36:49

I've seen quite a few bad reviews for this, but I liked it. . I liked it though. The only things I could say bad about it were filler and possible bad adaption from the VN. Not only did I like this show, but I could relate; that really sold me on it. In order to really like a romance, I need to cry and cry I did. 

I'd say a 9/10 for story. The story could've been slightly better for sure. The build up was a lot slower at first, and relied more on comedy than the plot; they fixed that over time. They did a decent job at bringing it together in 13 episodes.  I could definitely feel for it, but it took awhile to get there. It would have had a 10/10 story rating if there were more feels. 

7/10 on animation. This is all about personal preference, and personally I'd say it's pretty standard for what it is. I could see similarities between Clannad and Chaos;Head art styles. I liked it, but it's not exactly the best art I've seen.

8/10 on sound. I liked the OP and liked the ending even better (then again, I'm a Kanako Ito fanboy). The music played during the show itself wasn't really prominent though. If that were better, it would get a better rating. 

7/10 on characters. The characters could have been done a hell of a lot better. It seemed they rushed character development in the latter half of the show. Some argue that they didn't develop the characters enough, and that it was hard to connect because of this; I somewhat disagree. I could get a feel for them through their interactions and what was shown. There definitely would have been more feels if character development was more of a focus, for sure. I was fine with it as was though. 

10/10 enjoyment. I really enjoyed Myself;Yourself as a rom com. It did everything right in my opinion. There was decent comedy, struggles, and romance. It had a conclusion. That's better than a lot of rom com VN adaptations. 

10/10.

I liked it.  

thermiston - 2014-12-21 20:04:49

One of my all time favorite anime, this will give you the feels like crazy!

murphy.willa - 2014-10-14 03:49:54

[Old review is old.]

Myself;Yourself is a good example of a heartless adaptation. The action of taking content from a pre-successful source like a visual novel and shoving it into a different medium is nothing new to anime, since the producers know that the new product will be carried by the pre-existing story. Thus, no real care is put into the other factors that make up a well-composed anime, such as direction, art design, etc. If the producers of the show don’t really care about the presentation of their own story, how do they expect us to get invested in it?

Myself:Yourself follows Sana Hidaka as he returns to his childhood town after years of being away, only to find that everything has changed (what a surprise). His childhood friends have matured, a romantic interest named Nanaka Yatsushiro has distanced herself from him, and it’s his mission to uncover what happened to her and his friends while he was away. Despite a straightforward drive, the collection of thin character archetypes result in an uninteresting journey. The main character is the protagonist made for the viewer to project themselves onto as they go throughout the story, creating a dense bore devoid of audience connection for anyone who sees him as an actual character. The rest of the cast is a mixed bag of irritating sidekicks and recycled personalities, some bearable and some not. Those who aren’t used as means to waste time with mediocre side arcs are made memorable by the cheap sob stories they have to deal with.

These stories can lean towards the manipulative levels of classic moe at times, but they do at least deliver some emotional content that audiences can get attached to. A couple of side stories away from the main conflict even handle some controversial topics surprisingly well. The relationship between the leads grows with decent pacing and resolves itself nicely. And while most of the comedy falls flat, there were a couple scenes that got a chuckle out of me. The show isn’t as raunchy as what’s considered commonplace ecchi for, say, anime of the 2010’s, but there were still bits that were obvious cheap shots. Methods to create easy drama are fairly common, like drawn-out misunderstandings between the main characters or opposition by one dimensional asshole adults, and unfortunately the show drags on longer than it should as a result.

But what could be worse than one dimensional assholes? The animation. Missing of any sort of passion, this is easily one of the blandest examples of animation to come out of studio Dogakobo, and that’s saying a lot considering their repertoire. This is where the main problem of the show factors in the most. Why should we waste time to watch something that the studio skimped on in every possible way? There have been anime with great stories and cheap animation, but more times than not, a certain passion for artistic craft shines through. Myself;Yourself doesn’t come with that, and opts for flat character designs, vapid expressions, choppy movement, and banal atmosphere. In anime especially, art design is just as important in showing the emotions that the show brings forth as the writing. When the entire animation department does the cheapest render possible of its story, huge opportunities for engaging the audience are lost.

The music was able to ensure a tidbit of that engagement, though. I’ve certainly heard worse examples of background noise, and I remember staying for the opening more times than I usually would with a show like this. This may just be a roundabout way to say that the sound department doesn’t have many specialities either, but it truly is more effective than the art.

The anime’s simplicity, despite unoriginality, provides a five hour experience that is tame and easy to take in as far as the medium goes. The producers were aware that the story was structured decently enough to carry the adaptation, and when the show continues on to its finale, that turns out to be exactly the case. Even so, many more slice of life shows exist that tell nostalgia based stories infinitely better than Myself;Yourself. Its little merits are far and few between, and the lack of effective impact won’t keep them in your mind for long anyway.

Myself;Yourself:
4.0/10

asmitham - 2013-07-27 21:01:26

Okay before you read this review,fanboys/girls, if you actually enjoyed this anime steer clear from this review because i found this anime to be quite horrid.As i went to see the reviews for this anime I've seen too many high rated reviews so this is just my side of things and how i perceived/enjoyed this anime.Story: 2The story is something not really new (after have seeing Kanon before i mean its really similar on how everything is set up, childhood spent in this "said" city and comes back after some time and blah blah blah), but the way everything was set up was just not smart in my opinion. There are these fillers in this anime that make me wanna punch someone in the face due to the "dullness" of them (later explained in Sound+Character), and the fact that its only 13 episodes and they are adding fillers while there are still so many questions left unanswered and aren't clear why the hell are they even in this anime?!? Also the story how everything goes, it just didn't seem to flow good. The story seemed to be random and sporadic, having these random events of drama, that didn't get set-up/built-up properly, resulting in an overall bad storyline. It felt very random because nothing seemed to be foreshadowed and there is a huge severity of lack of background information on these characters. The past 5 years what in the fuck happened? You'd think they try to better explain things, but instead they give you this other event of drama, which did not transition well, without explaining that well either. Having only 13 episodes, and while trying to fit everything that was in the LNs, everything was rushhhheeedddd. As i said before all the arcs in this anime weren't set up properly with each arc about 2-4 episodes long, and within this time period they try to achieve this large amount of drama and sympathy for each character you barely know shit about and their extreme circumstances. Honestly it could've been WAY better. In the end of each arc i was just sitting there thinking to myself;yourself "what...why...srs?"The overall story had amazing potential, but with the fillers and just these seemingly random events (supposed to be flowed some fucking way), it just collapsed on myself;yourself i mean itself.Art: 8Only positive point in this anime in my opinion. Its very pretty and standard. Animation was fluid and what you'd expect from an anime.Sound: 1There was nothing wrong with the OP or the EN for this anime but holy fucking hell the fucking voice acting was so bad! I watched the subbed version and i swear to God each anime character's voice acting sounded like they were half-dead, bored, and DULL. Which is really bad considering the point where this anime is supposed to be really serious so i was expecting some emotion in the cast's voices, BUT NOPE just mono-tonic which led to the supposed drama undramatic. They try to achieve comedy in this anime but failed horribly each time, because it was just so mono-toned to me. The music in the anime didn't suit the haphazard circumstances. The background music often came up suddenly in these "suspenseful" and "sad" scenes, which werent suspenseful or sad to me because of the bad build-up and portrayal of these events. Which made the background music just seem out of place and just BAD.Character: 2*sigh* i dont even know where to begin. There are your archetyped characters, like you look at them and you know what to expect from them. I usually like these archetype characters (as a fan of some harems), but i felt they weren't portrayed as they should have.NO BACKGROUND INFORMATION LIKE PLZ. I felt i needed some background info to have feel these emotions of sympathy and sadness for these "dramatic" events. The lack of build-up and info on these characters resulted in the overall badness of this anime. Its like throwing a spoon in your lap and someone forcing you to feel sad for it... its just wtf.The lack of character development contributed to the rushed story and just seemingly random circumstances.Enjoyment: 1UGHHH, like whyy. I was just waiting for this anime to be over every episode. I had to force myself;yourself to friggen finish this shit.Overall: 1.5Just "/slit wrists" and kill me now. Could've been A LOT better if it were a 26 ep anime but it wasnt. I would not recommend this anime to anyone, but if you can deal with random events with forceful drama you will like this anime...

twehner - 2013-06-08 05:20:31

Going into the series, I believed that it was going to be something tear jerking like AnoHana or something upon those lines but instead it took me by surprise and was quite lighthearted and managed to squeeze in some humor within the first half of the series while having little bits of the darker side of the story slither in. Story - 8 - For me the story really started to shape in the latter half of the series and the real meat of the story became rushed in my eyes due to that which kind of limited the depth into which the story could proceed. I felt as though there was a little bit of filler, or at least I didn't feel as though the episode in question had any real bearing upon the totality of the story. My dilemma with the story was that it started slow and ended fast so the pace was quite off but I think the melding of those moments of lightheartedness with those of gloom offset my complaint about the pace.Art - 6 - Overall the art wasn't something special to me but I think more than the art, there were certain moments which were brilliantly drawn, mainly the flashbacks and being a not very detail oriented person, I didn't notice anything that was out of the ordinary with the style of art.Sound - 6 - I think the voice acting was decent although the change in puberty for one of the characters was a little bit exaggerated. The OP and ED were alright although I prefer the OP much more than the ED. I absolutely hated Aoi's voice .Character - 7 - I definitely enjoyed the characters and honestly, there isn't much I found that was disagreeable with me in the characters. I think they did a pretty good job with developing the back stories of the characters except for like one. Overall - 7 - It was an alright anime overall nothing too special, and I think that's only because I saw AnoHana before I saw this. I think the least enjoyable part of the story was the ending or just how the ending was put forth. It didn't really match the rest of the story, well at least the presentation didn't.

colten.leannon - 2013-06-06 07:03:25

‘Myself; Yourself’ is a slice of life romantic drama that centres around a group of friends. Hidaka Sana had moved to Tokyo as a kid, leaving behind his pals and the hometown where he grew up. Five years later, he chooses to return to his hometown. Upon his arrival he notices that the places and things he was familiar with have changed but not to the extent he expected them to, and he feels nostalgic. He is soon united with his childhood buddies—the enthusiastic albeit clumsy Aoi-chan, the quarrelling Wakatsuki twins and Yatsushiro Nanaka from whom he expected anything but a slap on the face! Hidaka is disheartened when he realizes that Nanaka is no more the cheerful girl she used to be as a kid. She has turned distant, cold and gloomy. M;Y is one of those anime that I picked on an absolute whim and then felt glad that I did. For a short series with thirteen episodes, it was a fairly entertaining watch, and if not the best, it is certainly a good romantic drama with a speck of comedy and fan-service that stays within its limit. After stealing a glance at M;Y, many would think it is a typical harem with an average high school student for a male protagonist orbited by infatuated girls. If you’re one of them with the harem radar up, uproot that radar NOW! It offers a story of friendship, perseverance, dilemma and relationships, and it gives away all that quite realistically on the screen which is what makes M;Y something more than just an average romantic drama. Though the main plot is nothing unique or revolutionary, the sub-plots and the interactions between the characters are a plus point of this anime. The initial episodes are all about taking trips to the riverside, partying, eating, fooling around and making new friends, and all that are quite fun to watch. As the story progresses, gradually the anime begins to develop on the dramatic side though occasional humour still prevails here and there. The ending lacked depth though. I expected so much to happen in the end but nothing happened. It was kind of abrupt and rushed, and hence not satisfactory overall. A sudden transition to the adulthood of the characters was probably not a good idea in the first place I guess but still, they pulled it off somehow. I can elaborate more but I’m afraid I’ll be giving away spoilers so let’s bring this to a close, ne? As of the characters, they are quite amusing. Each one has an interesting personality. I fell in love with all of them, especially the Wakatsuki twins— Suusuke and Shuri. It was really fun seeing this brother-sister duo. However, the character that I liked the least was Hoshino Asami. For some reason, I didn’t like her from the very beginning, and I could not relate to her like I did to the other characters. Aoi-chan was one character that I looked forward to because of her amalgamated nature of enthusiasm and clumsiness. After I was done with the anime, I realized that every character had their own story but Aoi-chan had none so I wish she had one too. There is nothing much to say about the art and the animation except that they are done quite well. The OST is good. The OP ‘Tears Infection’ by Kaori and the ED ‘Kimi to Yozora to Sakamichi to’ by Itou Kanako are catchy, and so are the background tracks. I fell in love with Nanaka’s theme the moment it played for the first time. So, will I recommend ‘Myself; Yourself’? Yes, I will. If you’re a fan of the romance genre, this anime is for you. This somewhat underrated series deserves to be discovered and watched!