Amagami SS – Tanamachi Kaoru arc – review
August 24, 2010 at 10:46 pm 5 comments
“We’re just bad friends…”
Birth of the boy band.
After this arc, I’m really interested in how they’ll develop the quieter/more modest characters such as Sae and Tsukasa. They’ve clearly started the series with the more gutsy and powerful ladies, so who knows where the series’ll go with the other female love-interests.
Mmmm ear-biting...
Morishima-senpai was a great tease. We witnessed some pretty outrageous things with her, such as the whole kinky role-play and the kissing behind the knee (out of ALL places). Kaoru’s a cruder character and it’s clear that she’s earned the title of “Kibitou’s Warhead”, with her almost aggressive personality at times.
Hrrrr.... how very risqué~
However it’s no big surprise to see her softer and more vulnerable side. I personally thought they did that well. However it’s clear things were rushed, just as they were with Morishima Haruka. The whole mother-daughter was never satisfactorily concluded, and shift from ‘bad friends’ to ‘omg we’re like sooo like a couple’ was very quick.
You know, I've never found Australian waitress uniforms that attractive...
Of course very little can be said about the boring and recycled sound. Tachibana’s voice also tends to piss me off majorly. Animation is also fairly average, although the character models have always been nice to watch.
Nothing like a hands-on experience
Despite the clear faults, Kaoru’s arc was most watchable! The whole kissing the stomach thing was pretty damn out there, but after watching Tachibana go for behind Haruka’s knee ‘like a puppy’, and then that excruciating ramen role-play, that could be considered relatively tame. Come on Sae, show us what you got~
Did I ever tell you how MUCH I LOVE flowers...?
Entry filed under: Anime.
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Baka Reviews 
1.
lvlln | August 25, 2010 at 9:28 am
That’s an Australian waitress uniform? What makes it so Australian?
2.
ippius | August 25, 2010 at 11:13 am
nah i kno it’s not. definitely not. im just sayin that ozzy waitresses never dress like this and the way Japanime portrays waitressing in general is rather different to the way perhaps Western cultures do so. My bad, the point wasn’t direct, but it’s hardly a serious note.
3.
Fidelis | August 28, 2010 at 9:34 am
— “The shift from ‘bad friends’ to ‘omg we’re like sooo like a couple’ was very quick.”
For me, the relationship growth was fairly well portrayed.
1st episode: They’ve been close friends for years and are both surprised to learn they have feelings for each other beyond friendship.
2nd episode: She takes the initiative in trying to expand their relationship. She tests his feelings with the prospect of a kiss. But they do kiss for real and they’re not quite ready. Still, she’s broken the ice. He kisses her back and she goes along with it. She now wants to spend more time with him and he’s finding her cuter than ever. They know the other one has feelings for him/her now.
3rd episode: A sudden crisis leads him to intensely worry about her. He helps her get over it. He says he’ll be always there with her, for her. She says she needs him to do just that.
For me this was the turning point of the story, and it’s sad that this is the episode where the opinions of many take a turn for the worse. We see just how deeply they care for each other beyond growing attraction. He realizes he loves her and she realizes he loves her as well. It’s the high-water mark of their relationship before the…
4th episode: with a gentle push from friends, they finally admit they love each other in much the same terms they used in the previous episode. This was no accident.
Their emotional and physical intimacy have clearly progressed; they’ve mellowed and opened up to each other. Compare her angry “baka” in the first episode to her soft “baka” here.
— “The whole mother-daughter was never satisfactorily concluded.”
Yes, it’s what regrettably kept the story from being a slam-dunk (along an abrupt ending due to censoring). I only watched for her so it hurts.
It’s too bad they didn’t properly wrap things up about her mom. In the game she doesn’t get over it as quickly and he makes good on his promise to be there for her, aw. But I guess I can let that pass because of the 4-episode limit.
But she actually compares her need for him to her mom’s need for a husband while they’re in bed. (She doesn’t fall asleep – or pretend to – in the middle of a kiss either.) It should have brought the marriage metaphors (vows, first night) to a head and shown why all the time spent on her mom was important to naysayers. I still can’t get why the writers would not use such a killer, plot-capping line, and devote more time to side characters instead.
4.
ippius | August 28, 2010 at 9:41 am
you have some very valid points there. i just thought it was fast, because in most romance genre anime series out there, it takes a long time for the male and female to finally admit their feelings for one another, with a whole lot of cheese and development in the middle. however with the time constraints i guess they did well.
what do u think of Sae’s arc so far?
5.
Fidelis | August 28, 2010 at 3:18 pm
Only watched for Kaoru in the first place. I haven’t played the game but just read spoilers about her before the show started. I wouldn’t call the class rep shy, you can check out her own manga (while Kaoru doesn’t have one, argh).
So I take it you were fine with the second half unlike some? Oh joy, I’m not alone! On the site I frequented I felt alone.
You don’t mind the ending, tease kiss and still-frame and all? People were expecting a time-skip epilogue like the first arc but she simply doesn’t have one (as big?). They were supposed to ride his bike again as that’s how it goes in the game. The network cut that out, but they’ll include it in the home version.
So I wonder if the still frame was just a temporary fix.
But that’s still not the epilogue. In the final scene in the best ending playthrough, she takes him to meet her parents. I don’t know if they animated it too. I’d like to see that in the home version as well.
A timeskip definitely occurs in a lesser ending where they’re college roommates but sadly not as close.