Anime — Saikano

This was billed as a real weepie, and good with it. So I even ordered it from the States (only to find an R2 release was in the works). And I was prepared to forgive the sketchy animation style.

Alas, this series fails and fails hard. In trying to be tragic, it falls heavily into melodrama, and ham overacting. The subtlety of emotion is akin to that of a flung house brick, so after a few episodes I was sitting there, numbly waiting for something really heart-rending.

Alas, while my eyes might have moistened a bit during the first few episodes, by the time we came to the tragic death of a close friend towards the end, I was thinking "Just get on with it.", and it continued to over-egg the pudding all the way to the very end.

Nowhere near as good as the buzz suggested.