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Old 2008-10-11, 21:01   Link #309
Sorrow-K
Somehow I found out
 
 
Join Date: Feb 2006
Age: 40
I can see what you're saying, in that too often drama, both in anime and other media, will be pretty blatant in wanting you to feel a certain way in a given scene, which does make things come off as forced. But I think this went to the other extreme, in that it's attempt to give the audience freedom to feel as they will left it underwhelming and unattached. I kinda agree with what I imagine is your philosophy towards drama that, if you're going to err, err on the side of "understated". All too often drama is over-the-top with characters angsting and having to win wars all by themselves and people going into comas and then other characters dramatically dying only to come back to life the next episode, etc, etc. That's why I tend to by highly critical of anime that resemble daytime soap operas. Not that I don't mind a bit of melodrama in reasonable sized doses. Hence why I'm such a big fan of ef and Marimite.

But, what I'm trying to say is that there's slightly understated, which tends to make for good drama, and then there's extremely understated, which is what Natsu no Sora was. There's a couple of pretty big things in the story that I wasn't left satisfied by. The first was characters. Gota got a good amount of character development, Kuroda got a reasonable amount of character development for a side character, Sora got a little bit of character development, but not enough for a lead character, Hara got almost no character development, and he was one of the more intriguing characters in the cast, and the rest of the cast got almost nothing. And the other thing I'm struggling with is the intended meaning of the events, particularly the finale. I'm still here, something like a day after seeing the final episode, and I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out exactly what they meant by all of this.

I dig this show's ambition, but I think this is one of those shows that's ambitious, but doesn't have the poise to pull it off.
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