Relax, kuro, we understand j00. In case you have difficulty in deciphering the gist of this post due to my verbosity, here’s Cliff Notes for you: It’s like casting pearls before swine. Which is my passive-aggressive, catty and unnecessarily confrontational way of saying either “What is wrong with you, true tears is excellent, get out”, or “If you think Winter is trash and you haven’t seen true tears, please end your life now.” Of course, I say it by means of a large post like this since for all my efforts to take this to be the gospel truth like the ardent fanboy I am, I still have to maintain a civil fa�ade all purposes aside.

Call it a man’s gut instinct (intuition is for women), but true tears seems hardly like the type of thing to go wrong any time soon: it’s so pretty, and no, I won’t stop talking about the animation until you, my reader, watch it, if you’re one of the unfortunate few that haven’t. You could surely write this off as another star-struck fan rambling about the glitz behind this diamond in the rough, this rose among thorns, but hey, it’s the director of Simoun at work, and whatever he did that was good about the series, he’s brought the magic around to play.

I expect true tears to be one of those shows that I come away from consistently wowed everytime, and to crown it “Anime of the Year” seems like a daring feat to be sure, but I know what I’m talking about. true tears is, to be honest, very much like the girl (or guy, for the ladies) that you meet one day who strikes you as just so damn attractive for a number of compelling reasons, all of which you can only begin to describe in detail later. When love strikes it strikes hard, leaves you babbling, and it’s only when you pick up the pieces later can you barely decipher the reasons for falling in such a chemistry-charged, primal manner.

Whenever I write an ef post I usually loop 5cm’s OST over and over again in the background in lieu of a proper ef soundtrack. Like a heroin addict taking methadone, it’s a poor substitute for the wonder of the real thing, but that just goes to show how highly I regard Tenmon for the magic he did in 5cm. The tracks do strike a common chord in terms of the aesthetic he employs, an enchanting and magical lyric that contrasts with the marked realism of ef and 5cm.

Byousoku changed me. I wouldn’t say it was a dramatic change like one would after a profound or disturbing revelation of sorts, but it changed how I looked at relationships, especially those of the type you take for granted in their “could-be” Schrodinger state. I say this due to there being a girl in my life right now that’s taken on an Akari-sque bent lately. I don’t know her all that well, yet I want to; the prospect of my going overseas to a college in the States next year made me think of this — as I wondered today if I should make the effort to draw myself just that little bit closer, I thought of Akari, and Kanae. Of never letting go. A distant person with his sights always fixed somewhere higher. The long-distance heartbreak, of which I’ve known once and would rather do without.

I have about nine entries in my feedreader’s Byousoku news bin that I’ve skimmed through briefly for fear of them influencing my review (yeah, you people sure can write). They’re all related to 5cm, but I’ve noticed two things they’ve neglected to point out, and this will therefore constitute most of what I’m going to say, if not all.

Do we take our ability to interpret symbolism and less coherent storylines in anime for granted? How much life experience do you have to have before you can relate to issues like what Byousoku addresses? I say this since I saw 5cm twice; the first time alone, in the middle of the night, and the second time with a group of about eight friends. The contrast between my reactions and theirs were large, to say the least, and I was left wondering if I liked 5cm only due to my exposure to both.

and the collision of your kiss that made it so hard, made it so hard