Zíza

An incredibly relaxing affair. It's like the manga just jumped out of the paper and played out in front of your eyes. We have a heroine who falls in love at first sight and this love leads her to choose what to do next, and she becomes a nurse. When she meets her prince again after school, he becomes a demonic doctor who makes the whole cardiology department tremble. Sort of. The series has one cliché after another, but they're so well done and don't go on overly long, so the viewer is entertained. Plus the main couple is incredibly cute, and from about the third episode onward things start to spark pleasantly between them. This is exactly the kind of show that falls into that teenage "kiyaa, kawaii" category. And then there's the fact that the Japanese can't do romance.

Sure, it's very nicely animated, opening beautiful, ending fine. The characters have some history, some traumas, some dreams, some they like and some they don't. Maybe they get along okay, but I didn't really get along with them. From about the fifth episode onward I didn't really care what happened next, apart from the wolf and his dog friend, I couldn't find a single character that I was more interested in, that I wanted to root for. I actually found the wolf interesting just because he was so calm, and his friend because he acted like a nice and genuine friend – that made him very likable to me. It's just that all of that together doesn't make for a good show. Since I didn't care what happened, since the whole world didn't fit, and since I found a lot of the characters unappealing, it wasn't a fun show for me at all. The casting of the rabbit reminded me a bit of Scum's Wish, an anime similarly hollowed out, even though it pretends that all the characters have depth. They don't. The society in the anime was so terribly oddly set up, with some suppressing their nature and others living in constant fear. The animal metaphor wasn't necessary, if they were normal people I probably would have rated it better – you don’t have to drag it out of me that these types of characters aren’t really my thing, which is probably why it couldn't evoke the right emotions in me at the right time. Who knows. One way or another, though you could think a lot more about what the poet was trying to say, I think it was just too much in some respects. Anyway. It didn't suit me, didn't entertain me, didn't charm me. In the end, it's just a high school anime with some of that social criticism and where sex isn't taboo – in fact, it's very sexually charged. Whoever finds the panda's eye wins!

I completely overlooked the series at first, I didn't find it interesting enough from the description (after all, Haru's previous heroine in Survival Wedding started out similarly), but then it was recommended to me and I picked it up. I don't regret it at all. It was a truly enjoyable and human experience. Three people in different life situations with different experiences meet for violin lessons and form a trio that is simply a joy to watch. They have interesting dialogues between them, the situation is never escalated to the point where you think it couldn't happen; at the same time, it's not boring, you just enjoy being with them. It's not just about them, of course; it's about their surroundings, which are smoldering. It's actually a cutout into several people's lives that drags beautifully and leaves a nice warm feeling. The acting and directing were very well done; the writer put meaningful lines in their mouths, it wasn't a complete rant about nothing. Looking for a relaxing experience? Check it out.