Otaku Review

Those of you who follow me on twitter have also followed my experience with the series ‘Akane-iro ni Somaru Saka’. You heard me when I started it, you heard a few of my comments along the way and then on Monday night you heard my stunned silence as I got to the conclusion. Now that I have gotten to that conclusion, it’s time for another edition of my additional thoughts.

As always, you should be warned when I write one of these it’s generally because there were things in the story that just bothered me but I can’t talk about in a normal review because they are spoilers. So yes, this entire article is going to be filled to the brim with spoilers. If you plan to watch the series and don’t want to know what happens, this would be a good time to stop. Ok, now that we’ve trimmed down, thoughts after the cut.

Alright, to dispense with formalities… I did enjoy this series. I enjoyed it quite a bit actually for the first nine episodes. We’ll get to the last three episodes in a bit but first I want to highlight all the things that this series did right because there were a lot of them.

For the first nine episodes, ‘Akane-iro ni Somaru Saka’ was all about its characters and relationships and the staff did such a great job with this. The characters being introduced during episode one really went well. The only introduction in this series that got blown was that of Junichi’s parents (and oh we are going to talk about them quite a bit later). To be honest, for the first thirty seconds of the first episode I thought I was watching the wrong series.

Aside from that though; Yuuhi, Minato and Junichi are all introduced very well. The set up to the ‘Geno Killer’ running gag is really set up well and gets a great head start. Every episode is filled with hilarious situational comedy and I admit that even when I tried my best I could not resist laughing at the writing. The jokes were just really well done.

The jokes wouldn’t have gotten anywhere had it not been for the great characters though. One quick side note though, am I the only one who thought that Junichi and Yuuhi looked an awful lot like a couple of characters from the series ‘Spiral’? I’m just sayin. Anyways, Yuuhi and Junichi made for a great leading couple. The fights were always believable and the progression of their relationship really felt natural. It never felt like it was being forced on the audience so it really didn’t take long before I had completely bought into the relationship being built.

Minato is a character amongst herself though. Portrayed wonderfully by Aya Hirano, I completely bought into this ‘sister’ role and always laughed at her reactions. The way Minato is created though is really something to give a little notice to. Even though she’s such a typical character in the way she dotes on her brother, the staff always made sure that the audience knew how tough and capable she was. Despite the fact that the character design pretty much could’ve bought them a free pass in terms of making Minato into a ditz, she is always the cute yet solid foundation of the house.

It’s the final episode that bothered me though. The set up is strong: Yuuhi and Minato are having their deep talk at home and Junichi is going to have a pivotal scene with his parents. Instead what we get is the start of episode 12; Junichi has a two minute scene with his parents that end with the punchline of him having to walk home again.  There is some dialogue about Junichi being targeted by a cult who wants to kidnap him (perhaps this has something to do with the culture fest episode?) and then they leave and none of this is once again never brought up.

They had set this up for almost the entire episode and this was their payoff. Not only am I now completely aware of how much time was wasted on something they never had any intention of doing anything with but I am now also convinced that his parents are going to play almost zero role in the series climax. If all they needed to do was get him out of the house for a night they there had to of been something meaningful for him to do without overshadowing the girls.

Getting into the final moments of the series; So, let me get this straight… ‘Akane-iro ni Somaru Saka’ has spent the last eleven episodes building a rather strong romance series around a relationship between Yuuhi and Junichi. Just a couple of episodes earlier they cashed in on this build up and created a real relationship and hooked the audience in. The couple has some expected angst and drama leaving Junichi to make a decision. And then in the final seconds of the series… every single moment of build up and storytelling is completely rendered meaningless because he chooses his sister.

Really?

You made us get through twelve episodes of this just to tell us that it means nothing because he just wants to love his sister instead of the beautiful, rich heiress who already loves him? To be fair the staff behind the series does try to salvage something with the epilogue with a few throwaway lines. Minato isn’t really Junichi’s blood sister (big shocker) and Yuuhi decides to move back in… because she wants to keep two people apart despite the fact that she left SO that he could choose her? Is Yuuhi hoping for a do-over here? Maybe she’s trying to go back to one of her earlier save points?

A new OVA is going to be released next year and an early hint stated that it would be different from the series. There was no real elaboration regarding what ‘different’ means but I’m sure fans will come up with all sorts of fun interpretations over the coming months. Personally I would love it if someone would come back through and fill in the many plot holes left behind by this series. So, exactly what cult is watching Junichi? Why are they studying him? What was going on during the culture fest episode and why are so many people from the school involved?

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