Overview:
Under the cherry blossom tree at Sakuragaoka High School’s Entrance Ceremony, Miou Aida meets Haruki Serizawa for the first time. Ever since that day, their eyes chased after each other. Miou is reserved, while Haruki is very social. While many mistook them as a couple, their relationship remained a little more than friends. As they stop to sit on the steps of a deck on their walk home, Miou cannot help but ask, “Haruki…do you like anyone?” Haruki replies, “I do like someone …what about you?” Just 10 centimeters between their hands. It’s just 10 centimeters, but the distance remains.
– from Crunchyroll
Review:
This was kind of unexpected but from what I’ve been able to find out there’s going to be six episodes so I decided to give it a watch. Basically it is your standard high school romance. Which means it is doing all the usual things with the guy and the girl and the blushes and the friends and there’s nothing really noteworthy about this particular story so far. That doesn’t make it bad. If you happen to like high school romance stories, then this one is very functional, fairly pretty but not exceptional, and the characters are so far pretty cute.
They are using Haruki’s film club as a way to be a little bit self-aware as well as to really shine a light on how Haruki sees the world and why his relationship isn’t going anywhere. Explaining things with dialogue in stories might be uncool but if he doesn’t tell the girl he likes her they aren’t ever going to end up together.
And then of course, Miou drops the line I hate the most from any romance heroine and of course we hear it from so many of them. “It’s not like that.” Why not? And why insist that it isn’t?
Basically this first episode establishes the two main characters and their personalities. Much like Just Because, these characters are soon to finish school and are starting to make their plans for the future and I feel that is going to play more of a role as the story goes forward. As a set up, this works but as I said in the beginning, there isn’t really anything out of the ordinary here. Cute romance that might develop into something more meaningful but at the moment is happily playing it safe and by the numbers which makes it watchable but unremarkable.
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Thanks,
Karandi James.
