Hitohira: Afterthoughts

In Categories it is listed under Clubs, Comedy, High School, Performance, Seinen (on AniDB)

And given that picture you would've thought that it is Comedy main.

But noooooooooo, it is more on acting (club) and school life, maybe some bits of slice-of-life in it.

I really think people who anyhow categorize things should be shot. And maybe these databases should have a short description of the series instead of just character background and setting.

And really, there is not much of comedy, unless you consider the occasional punchline that serve to lighten the mood and get the story going. In which case this explains the current state of mainstream comedy.

I would have avoided this if I thought it was comedy, given the apparent amount of budget it has (from the artwork), given the over-simplistic and overused setting (of school), the plainess of characters, given the comedy boom which happened around that time, and the number of CMI shows which spawned thinking they can take advantage of it.

Which I did. It was pure chance that brought me to take a look at this show again.

Would you call this fate?

And I'm glad I did.

Because it is not a half-assed comedy. It is something serious. And for something serious, the setting and character design are good. It's been a long time since I watched something serious and it's not romance.

And most importantly, the story is good. Good enough.

So the moral of the story is, who cares if the artwork is good, if the character design is expensive, because the story is the most important.

I may be wrong though, seeing how many girls go to the movies just to see their favourite actor.

How exactly did this show fare? To put as objectively as possible, I started Toradora!, then Clannad ~After Story~, paused Clannad because of some problems muxing the DVD releases, started Hitohira, resumed Clannad because I couldn't wait any longer.

I use how much I desire to watch the next episode as a gauge of how good the show is, if you hadn't known me yet.

Toradora! got paused at episode 11 and has been paused ever since I started both Clannad and Hitohira, I actually covered more episodes of Hitohira than Clannad in the same time frame, but need to take the "denial to watch a good show because it'd be a waste" factor into consideration.

It is not conclusive enough to be saying that Hitohira won Clannad (after all, Clannad is one of the legendary series out there), but it is putting up a good fight. It still loses though.

This is not a show that will go down in history, but is in my recommendation list. I do not anyhow recommend shows even I like them.

So, those who fancy some light-hearted but serious story, go for it.

Oh well, enough of this, it has served me well. NOW PREPARE FOR SOME CLANNAD MARATHON!!! Get tissues ready. I won't be after-thinking about Clannad though, there's at least 20 blogs saying it's good already.