Thursday, July 13, 2006

   Kare Kano Review
His and Her Circumstances or Kare Kano (because the English and Japanese title is fecking long.)
Length: 26 Episodes
Genre: High School comedy/romance with some drama
Recommended Audience: Anyone who loves a character-driven show
Content: No foul language or any gory violence but it touches on some darker personality issues and child abuse. There is a love scene involved but it’s tastefully handled and much tamer than you see in a soap opera
Rating: 7/10

Plot: Kare Kano really has no plot. It’s a character driven story and it does it quite well. There are some threadbare parts in the story-line but I’ll get to that later.

The story is really quite simply and fairly well executed. It’s about going through high school, putting on our own charade, our struggles to find out who we really are while trying to balance that out between social and academic obligations. Our main and some not so main characters are truly fresh and seem like real individuals. Because Kare Kano is a 20+ volume manga being turned into a 26 part TV series, other characters do suffer. Miyazawa and Arima, our cannon couple gets the most attention to them, so they seem more true to life. Other than Tonami and Sakura, the others come off as caricatures or unusually flat. Shibahime, when she first appeared seemed like she would be a large player but ended up becoming little more than beast-like comic relief character. However, the scenes that she is in ARE amusing so I do forgive them. However, I should be a little lenient with this series; it’s hard turning a long shojo manga series into a more compressed anime. So this should be considering a teaser of what’s in store for the manga. Thankfully, it’s handled better than Angel Sanctuary or Descendents of Darkness, two other anime teasers for their manga counterparts.

GAINAX, creators of Evagelion, FLCL, is a studio noted for putting some gratuitous fan service into series. (GAINAX bounce anyone?) I was quite surprised to see they made a shojo anime with no undergarment flashes or absurd character designs bordering on the moe. At the same time, Kare Kano lacking those things probably made the studio rather bored, which becomes obvious around episode 19 and on.

They chose a somewhat odd place for an ending… Granted stopping at the budding of Tonami and Sakura’s relationship (as the narrator puts it, the beginning of a new His and Her circumstance) is rather good…however it was in the middle of the cultural festival and since a lot of the last few episodes dealt with Miyazawa and company’s struggles in getting their play off the ground, logically speaking, we should’ve seen said play.

On a final note for being a high school series, Kare Kano avoids going into the soap opera melodrama and angst. [8/10]

Animation: It’s pretty obvious that GAINAX had a low budget to begin with. We probably would’ve had high quality shots, albeit less character develops, if they had decided to shorten they episode length. But maybe it’s like American television and they had to fulfill their required 26 episodes. For the most part, they make good use of the budget, 70% of the series is pretty standard for a television series, maybe slightly below standard. It’s hard for me to judge correctly because I watched the entire series on VHS primitive-fan sub rips (Don’t worry; I plan on buying the series!) They employ some rather clever techniques to get the most out of their animation budget. Episode 19 is where I think the studio got bored… as it’s a rather experimental job…but I thought it was amusing. Episode 25 looks rather cheap: it takes the 1970’s American cartoon route by not bothering to paint in iris for the characters. 26 is rather annoying as being the final episode they should’ve animated it…Instead it’s mostly voice overs going through some stills. I’d be surprised if they used over 300 cels for that one. Another obvious short cut is abundance of recap episodes. There’s two in a row around 14 and a lot of the later episodes (almost all of them in general) take 2-5 minutes recapping the story to this point… and there’s a few episodes where only ½ of it is an actual episode, leaving the rest of it to recapping.

It may be harder to introduce newer anime fans or those who are spoiled by the digital age and their candy colors. However, GAINAX’s uses of live action shots here is an obvious influence to their later crazy cool ending sequence for FLCL. Kare Kano does sport some cool backgrounds and pan shots. [3/10]

Voice Acting: I can only speak for the Japanese, but the entire cast was suburb! Really, may be not perfect, I’d probably recast Rika and Miyazawa’s sisters…They all did a wonderful job with it; I honestly can’t find a thing to complain about. Miyazawa’s seiyuu, whoever she may be (don’t really follow seiyuu or VA’s…) was a GEM. She was fantastic; she perfectly captured her character’s rather manic moods. <3 [9/10]

Kare Kano may not be a perfect series, but its close. It’s truly enjoyable and touching romp through high school that doesn’t take itself too seriously. It avoids becoming angsty or soap operatic. All the characters are genuine and likeable. The voice acting is SUPREB. The story and some character develop is lacking in some place but there’s nothing too aggravating. The only thing that keeps Kare Kano from becoming a true anime classic is its animation. It’s passable at it’s best and shoddy at it’s worst. Had they been able to reduce the amount episodes, I think GAINAX could’ve done a better job. But overall, they did pretty good considering this is a VERY shojo and reflective series

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