To Heart

A romantic comedy that’s not romantic or comedic. Bad juju, bad.

Abstract: Meet Hiroyuki Fujita, your typical forgetful, apathetic, scholastically un-inclined youth in high school. However, there ARE 2 things that Hiroyuki’s good at. One is sports, as he’s the epitome of the word jock. And the other is befriending cute girls (Of course). Hold your horses though, as this doesn’t devolve into your typical harem situation. In a refreshing break, only a couple of girls actually develop a romantic interest in Hiroyuki, including his old childhood friend, the red-headed Akari Kamagishi who keeps flashing back to this 1memory of their childhood together as the reason why she likes him.

However, while they avoided the oh-so-obvious harem trap, they swung the pendulum too far the other way. That is to say, while it’s better plotwise only a couple of girls like Hiroyuki, it takes way, way too long for anything romantically to develop at all. And considering that the series was only 13 eps, there was no margin for error. Aside from the slow pacing of the show, add (Or not, as the case may be) in the lack of humor to this show and it just doesn’t fly period. To Heart nets itself a bronze.

Background: Everyone remembers their childhood sweetheart don’t they? *Sighs*…

Oh, pardon me…

Anywhoo, while you may look back on that cute girl with pigtails or that boy who always teased you with fondness, Akari actually gets to go to school with hers. Seems like the gal’s had her sights set on ol’ Hiroyuki for quite a while now, but he of course is oblivious to her feelings. Basically she’d have to hit him over the head with the Baka-Hammer to get her point across.

Men! *Rolls eyes*

So, while Akari longs after Hiroyuki, he manages to bump into a new girl every episode. Literally, as in the bumping part. I’d call Hiroyuki a stud-savant because in his blissfully ignorant way he manages to become, if not the apple of the Girl of The Week’s eye, the Girl of The Week’s savior and best friend. All this is set against the backdrop of their day-by-day progression through high school. And other than the fact that towards the end of the series a female robot showing up, there’s nothing remarkable about the world these 2 inhabit. And that’s the problem with this series: Nothing really stands out. Makes for some real exciting viewing.

Yeah, right.

Materials and Methods: As this is a late-90’s production (With the art done by KSS), the character designs are clean, and they stand out against the washed-out, watercolor, grainy background. The girls are all kawaii of course, and they manage to look different from each other (Non-natural hair colors not withstanding). Akari is voiced by Ayako Kawasumi (Aoi from Ai Yori Aoshi, Mahoro from Mahoromatic) and comes across as kind, sweet and completely innocent, a role she seems to reprise time and again. And although he’s not in every episode, the supporting male character Masashi gets as his seiyuu Souichiro Hoshi, a newcomer on the scene who’s chimed in before as Kei from Onegai! Teacher and Kaoru from Ai Yori Aoshi. Aside from those 2, the rest of this cast also has a lot of experience at the seiyuu game, including Aya Hisakawa (Skuld from AMG, Haruka from Raxephon) and Junko Iwao (Hikari from Shinseki Evangelion and Kotori from X).

As good as the art and the casting may be though, there’s nothing to recommend this series on an audio level. Although Ayako Kawasumi does sing the ending theme “Yell”, she comes across as off-tune and the song doesn’t have a lot of power behind it. The opening theme “Feeling Heart”, complete with Engrish, is your typical upbeat J-pop ballad. However, that’s it. No vocal from the rest of the cast, and the background music present was cookie-cutter, blasé fare.

Results: One word can describe this series: Yawner. I kept hoping something, ANYTHING, would happen. You’d think with the setup this series had that romantic teen angst would hit you fairly early on in the series, but guess again. Even if they didn’t go the harem route (Which I do give them credit for), at least have Akari make SOME kind of overture to Hiroyuki. Instead, episode after episode, she just sits back, smiles and supports Hiroyuki as he manages to make friends with every girl school. If there were even a modicum of reality in her personality, considering she wears her heart on her sleeve she would’ve been steaming mad and forced Hiroyuki’s hand after the first couple of episodes. Hiroyuki himself really is a dumb jock, and the only thing I did like about him was the fact that he was nice to all the girls without being hormonal about it.

What about the humor? No, really, what about it? I didn’t see any. No understated humor, no exaggerated humor, no humor at all. For a supposed romantic comedy I don’t remember laughing, or even chuckling at all. Indeed, the series seemed to exude this air of serenity, of nothing really big happening and days meandering by. And I’d say they achieved that feel a little too well. I was constantly asking myself what the point was of the series. Okay, ostensibly it was to get Akari and Hiroyuki together, but that would require some sort of build-up wouldn’t it? Maybe a date or two? A kiss? Howzbout a confession? Heck, I’d have settled for a love letter! Dream on if you think you’ll get ANY of that here.

Conclusions: This is one of my shortest reviews, simply because there’s just not a lot I can say about this series. I know this series was very popular in Japan, and I’m still trying to figure out why. The only thing that saves this series from a below average rating was the art quality and voice acting, but I was still tempted to dress this series out. Poor writing (At best) means To Heart gets a bronze, barely.