Hello everyone,
Today we'll talk about the third episode of the anime series Ano Natsu de Matteru that is progressing quite nicely and is slowly becoming one of the best romance series of the last couple of years.
When I try to guess what is making Ano Natsu de Matteru this good, I start to think about direction! Yes, I think that the director is doing really a marvellous job here arranging many clichè scenes into a proper romantic story.
I was in awe at the final scene of Ichika realising she's the love interest of our protagonist. I wonder how the story will progress from this situation, because it's very uncommon for an anime series to make the declaration of love be the first thing to happen.
The episode focus entirely on the misunderstanding occurring between our protagonist and Ichika, the first was thinking about the failed declaration of love, the second one was thinking about her position as alien.
While the whole situation was really clichè, I liked the way everything seems connected in this world. What started as a simple misunderstanding ended up becoming the reason of Kanna getting jealous and of the subsequent random date between our protagonist and Kanna.
It's incredible sad to think that Kanna doesn't have any kind of chances of an happy ending in this story. It's clear that our protagonist has eyes only for Ichika, and I doubt anything will happen to make that truth change...
This is the scene I was referring at the beginning of this post. It was incredible nice to see the discussion between Ichika and our protagonist, slowly making the first notice the emotions of the second.
From this point on it will be interesting to see how they will play out the story. We know for sure that Ichika will be reluctant to enter in a relationship with our protagonist, especially if we think about her status as an alien.
It was also remarkable how the ending song was perfectly fitting with the happenings. That song is really growing up on me and I'm really eager to listen to the single as soon as it is released. (Still haven't checked the release date though...)
I'm also extremely curious about what kind of implications will have our protagonist health (he was basically killed by the spaceship crash) on the relationships between the characters and on the romantic story.
I'm not even sure he is "safe" at the moment, and I think he will probably need some additional (more intensive) treatment sooner or later in order to fully recover and be back to his normal life as a normal human.
Next episode will be focused on the aftermath of the declaration of love between our protagonist and Ichika. From the few shots we got in the preview, we're in for more "delusions" from our main characters, but no detail has being given about the result of the declaration...
Concluding, Ano Natsu de Matteru is continuing to prove itself as a very good anime series to watch in this winter season 2011/2012. If someone is still not watching this, I suggest it if you are looking for a romantic story.
I'll continue to watch and write about this regularly in this blog.
See you soon,
feal87