catching up on anime review
Sasameki Koto (aka Whispered Words)
Kazama is a sweet and a little bit airhead girl with the habit of regularly falling into a crush for cute and small girls, Sumika is her best friend and secretly has a crush on her. Sadly Sumika is the type of girl - tall, capable, excellent at both sports & academics - that would be more properly called handsome rather than cute, so she mostly spends her time suffering in silence while Kazama drifts from one crush related hijnks to another. One day they witness two other girls kissing one another in an emptied classroom.
I wasn't expecting to find another good yuri anime right after Aoi Hana, but there it is. While the story is fairly predictable and lacks originality, going from slice-of-life to comedy, gently pocking fun at some classic yuri tropes while following most of them along the ways, Sasameki Koto is a very good and entertaining watch, with endearing characters and excellent storytelling. In particular it strikes a very good balance between comedy and the emotion of (various) unrequited love and friendship; and executes both very well : the wacky stuff is very funny and adorable, the emotional moment are very sweet or heartbreaking. The cast of characters is pretty excellent : I found both Kazama and Sumika to be very charming; and all the various other secondary and tertiary characters are also pretty fun and lively. Tomoe and Miyaka, the couple of lesbians, are hilarious and great at giving impetus to the story by wanting to create Girl's club; and Akemiya, a boy with a crush on Sumika, who gets up to crossdressing for complicated reasons, is also adorable. The cast is completed by Sumika and Kazama's genki friend and another classmate who is a fangirl of Yuri novels.
The art and animation doesn't stand out as in any way, but they're enjoyable and fluid enough, with some good direction.
Much like with Aoi Hana, the biggest flaw of the series is that it couldn't adapt the whole run of the manga so it just... stops and doesn't deliver any ending; which is a bit frustrating (less than in a plot focussed series; but still).
In conclusion a very solid and well crafted if typical comedy/romance series.
Kazama is a sweet and a little bit airhead girl with the habit of regularly falling into a crush for cute and small girls, Sumika is her best friend and secretly has a crush on her. Sadly Sumika is the type of girl - tall, capable, excellent at both sports & academics - that would be more properly called handsome rather than cute, so she mostly spends her time suffering in silence while Kazama drifts from one crush related hijnks to another. One day they witness two other girls kissing one another in an emptied classroom.
I wasn't expecting to find another good yuri anime right after Aoi Hana, but there it is. While the story is fairly predictable and lacks originality, going from slice-of-life to comedy, gently pocking fun at some classic yuri tropes while following most of them along the ways, Sasameki Koto is a very good and entertaining watch, with endearing characters and excellent storytelling. In particular it strikes a very good balance between comedy and the emotion of (various) unrequited love and friendship; and executes both very well : the wacky stuff is very funny and adorable, the emotional moment are very sweet or heartbreaking. The cast of characters is pretty excellent : I found both Kazama and Sumika to be very charming; and all the various other secondary and tertiary characters are also pretty fun and lively. Tomoe and Miyaka, the couple of lesbians, are hilarious and great at giving impetus to the story by wanting to create Girl's club; and Akemiya, a boy with a crush on Sumika, who gets up to crossdressing for complicated reasons, is also adorable. The cast is completed by Sumika and Kazama's genki friend and another classmate who is a fangirl of Yuri novels.
The art and animation doesn't stand out as in any way, but they're enjoyable and fluid enough, with some good direction.
Much like with Aoi Hana, the biggest flaw of the series is that it couldn't adapt the whole run of the manga so it just... stops and doesn't deliver any ending; which is a bit frustrating (less than in a plot focussed series; but still).
In conclusion a very solid and well crafted if typical comedy/romance series.