When 99% of the population consumes some form of creative media, we do it from our own perspective. When we think about what we liked or what we didn’t like, our own personal opinions are likely to hold more sway over the quality of the work itself, and our final opinion is usually somewhere in between the two extremes. Since anime bloggers are not professional critics trained to ignore their opinions for work, we usually do the same.
As you can figure, though, this can lead to trouble. J.C Staff’s Hatsukoi Limited was praised quite a bit while it was airing in the Spring, and I don’t deny that it has its own unique charms, but try as I might, I can’t seem to change my opinion that something didn’t work for me.
To be honest, I’m not quite sure what the show was praised for, but it seems to strike a solid balance between two of the main elements of shounen romance: comedy and drama, and realistic and unrealistic. I admit, it was a pretty comfortable balance. The characters never felt unauthentic to me, and the serious moments weren’t jarring; instead, it all fit together naturally, almost like Toradora. However, that’s where my praise ends: not because I believe the show got worse, but because it started sinking in that I wouldn’t like it no matter what it did.
“Why did he have to fall for me?”
From the moment Misao – or Beast-kun, your call – showed up in the beginning, I had a feeling that something was going wrong. It reminded me slightly of Toradora, where Ryuuji’s literal ugliness hits you before you realize that it’s a plot device. Of course, the difference here is that the main characters never really thought of Ryuuji as ugly, and the device slowly fell into the background as something that should be there but hardly ever drawn upon. I suppose you could call that a waste, but at any rate, I was glad that he didn’t spend the entire show complaining about looking like a yakuza member.
Unfortunately for Misao, though, he wasn’t born into such a pretty world series.
Misao makes up only a fraction of my point, but I think he’s my best bet at explaining myself. How did the girls react when they found out that the Beast was interested in Ayumi? They reacted like they would have in the real world, plain and simple. Kei went on to talk about how looks are the “main thing” in relationships, and the issue disappeared without much consideration.
Now, before you say it, I’m not mixing up the characters’ intent with the writer’s intent: Kei changed over the course of the series, and despite the fact that Misao never really came back, he was no longer quite as frowned upon. However, if the opening episodes didn’t prove anything about the themes of the show, they did prove something about the cast of characters – it proved that they were as shallow and inexperienced as they ought to be.
For a soul-searching journey, there was a disappointing lack of internal conflict and dramatic realizations.
Basically, my problem with Hatsukoi is that it makes too much sense. All of the characters’ first loves are ordinary, realistic, just like things were for me and everyone else out there. Some end with success and others with failure, but by and large, they’re all plausible. The thing is, realism has its ups and down. The argument is always used in the world of gaming: does it really matter if Mario is as tall as a human being should be? On the other hand, I doubt many people would want a cartoon version of Master Chief (although that brings this to mind).
At any rate, there are times in which I don’t care about realism in anime. For romance, I divide the genre into two basic categories: realistic/unrealistic, and relationships/feelings. The former is self-explanatory, and I stand very little chance at explaining the latter properly, but I’ll give it a shot anyway. Let’s look at Misaki’s problem on Valentine’s Day, when she was conflicted between her feelings for Arihara and the fact that two other boys were interested in her. Which aspect of the problem gets more attention, the practical consequences of her decision or the emotional consequences? Seeing as the entire dilemma occurred in less than an episode, it actually wasn’t much of either, and that can be a problem in itself. Whenever a certain problem was given enough attention, though, they were more practical than emotional.
Digression aside, I don’t mix well with love stories that are about practicality. This usually refers to soap-opera-like dramas, but from time to time, it refers to normal anime as well.Visual novel adaptations are unrealistic, but they’re about feelings – false feelings, maybe, but still feelings. Shows like Honey and Clover are realistic but are also about feelings. Most shoujo manga seem to be somewhere in between both categories, which is nice. Hatsukoi Limited, though, while still gaining points for being realistic, lost my subjective interest for being too practical. I wanted to watch something that explores the feelings of first love, not something that follows a bunch of (stereo)typical teenagers around and documents their first loves.
I admit, it had its moments.
As I neared the end of the show, I was almost looking forward to saying that it left a bitter taste in my mouth, but in reality it was quite the opposite. Ayumi’s final decision was pleasing in that it was the only ending that wouldn’t have caused me to bang my head against a wall, and her closing monologue was nice. The series definitely had its share of sweet moments, too, and the story does a good job of capturing the ups and downs of love as it’s experienced by the cast for the first time. As I said, it’s not a “bad” show.
But it didn’t work on me. The problems between characters like Kei and Kusuda were eye-rollingly frustrating despite being realistic, and the love triangle(s) weren’t developed beyond the basic premise. Being different isn’t the same as being good. Incidentally, when I say that I liked Ayumi’s arc in H&C because it goes farther than other works of fiction with the premise of unrequited love, it’s things like this that I’m comparing it to, and it’s things like this that bother me. Hatsukoi only scratched the surface of the characters’ feelings, leaving the viewer as clueless as the characters’ friends and family would be. One of the benefits of watching people though a TV is that the narration and monologues can let you see into their hearts, but that wasn’t the case here. Most of the issues consisted of things that are literally visible in the real world, and there was nothing to go beyond the basic complaints of “he has a Kappa face,” or “my breasts are too big.”
In the end, I can honestly say that Hatsukoi was a realistic portrayal of first love from different angles, but I can’t say that I gained anything from it because it only told me what I already knew.
~ ETERNAL
つづく
