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Everything that follows is just my opinions based on my preferences, so take it with a grain of sodium chloride.

A lot of people complain about official translations (by international companies) not being as good as the fan-made translations (fansubs) due to a variety reasons. There are some cases in which I agree……..

There isn’t a whole lot of music from Kimagure Orange Road that stuck out for me, so this post will be rather short, and you probably shouldn’t expect another orchestral remake project like I did for Maison Ikkoku (heh). With that being said…..

Dare mo Shiranai / Nobody Knows walks the same ground of one of the best, in my opinion, Ghibli films -Grave of the Fireflies. Both stories involve a young boy, somewhere between being a child and a teenager, who must become an adult in order to care for his sibling(s) in the absence of parents. Grave took place during a war, as the world and people around the characters became increasingly indifferent to them as survival became more and more difficult. Dare mo Shiranai, on the other hand……

“Toki o Kakeru Shojo” is a story that has apparently had a very long and varied history which includes multiple adaptations, both live action and animated. I have never seen these prior adaptations, and I watched this film from a completely fresh perspective. In some ways, that can be a problem, as there are a few things that are questionable to a new viewer, but overall, the film can be viewed standalone and enjoyed without many problems.

The film can be categorized a few different ways, but it has the slice-of-life atmosphere first and foremost, so that is probably what I would characterize it as. The main character is a slightly boyish girl who has two male friends with whom she is close friends with. Before you ask – no, there is no dramatic soap-opera love triangle where she is forced to choose one. However, romance is involved in the film. As I watched the first half of this film, I couldn’t help but….

Note: If you looking for a spoiler-free review of the series from my perspective, find my review of the TV series. This post contains spoilers, and my thoughts on the contents of this film. As the only people who would/should watch this are those who have completed the TV series, and because those who have completed the TV series should already know (or have a very strong inkling) how the “triangle” will resolve, I don’t feel it’s necessary to avoid spoilers.

The Kimagure Orange Road TV series concluded with an optimistic and quite well-done moment that nevertheless did not really conclude the story because it left the issue of the “romantic triangle” up in the air. It was something of an idealized ending – providing the viewers with a happy moment without having to actually resolve the romantic triangle, which of course, would yield plenty of depressing moments.

A lot of reviews for this film are exceedingly positive, applauding it for being realistic, mature, serious, etc……I’m not really sure what my opinion of this film, to be honest. I was ready for the lack of comedy and serious nature, and I was looking forward to seeing the plotline be dealt with seriously, yet still, something doesn’t sit right with me. The first thing I should mention is that this film is very different from the series. As mentioned……

There are no spoilers in this review, since it’s intended for those who are interested in picking up this series. For my thoughts on the ending, check my “impressions” threads. This review covers the TV series and the OVA packages, and is written before I begin the final movies, so I am reviewing these solely on their own merit.

Kimagure Orange Road is often touted as one of the “classic romance duo”, the other being Maison Ikkoku. My other blog posts should indicate that Maison Ikkoku, despite having several flaws which were highly visible at times, became one of my favourite anime, and that was due mostly to a strong attachment to the characters, causing a very deep investment in their growth and development. That is one of the most important factors which …..

I’ll go over my thoughts on the final third of this series in this post – but a full review will be written soon. Like all my “impressions” posts, this contains spoilers for the episodes I list above (in this case, until the ending), but my review will have a non-spoiler section. So rather than looking back over the series as a whole, I’ll simply focus on the episodes which are fresh in my ……

Here is an mp3 of “Madoka’s Theme” from Kimagure Orange Road. This is from the OST, not by me, so I did not mark it with the site URL. It is carried by a saxophone solo, but after a few phrases, it is joined by strings which gently provide harmony in the background. The saxophone is an instrument I don’t hear much of (especially as a classical music fan), but it provides a certain touch to this piece of music that isn’t comparable to any other. I instantly fell in love with this piece when I first heard it, it has such a wistful quality to it. The KOR music and score don’t have as many gems as Maison Ikkoku or Honey and Clover, but the ones that are there shouldn’t be overlooked.

Madoka’s Theme

In my “first impressions” post, I mentioned that there are essentially two directions that a “love triangle” can take. The first is a shallow, soap-opera-ish melodramatic path, which is the most common one. The second one is the path of “Honey and Clover” took with Takemoto, Morita and Hagu. I feel almost “embarrassed” to call it a love triangle because that makes it seem so much less interesting than it actually was. In H&C, it wasn’t anyone’s fault that the triangle existed, nor was it due to indecisiveness or overt jealousy. It simply is the way that it turned out, for better or for worse, and there is a strange sort of wistfulness to how it plays out.

In a lot of reviews, people say that Kimagure Orange Road’s “triangle” is due to the indecisiveness of the main character. Yet I think that trivializes it into ……

I don’t play many games. Partly it’s because I they don’t stack high on my priority list of “things to do when I have free time”. And it’s also because I don’t really enjoy it anymore – which probably strikes people as weird. To be honest, I did enjoy playing games when I was young, like “Myst”, “Lost Eden”, and similar titles. I think video games may have lost their creativity as the mass audience starting growing. That’s why so many titles are just clones of the same shooting formula which I was never really that interested in. There aren’t many titles that can really dazzle the viewer and make them glad that they experience it. It’s the same distinction which applies to excellent films – they make the user feel as if he/she is better off for having experienced it. That it has affected them more than simple entertainment.

I started playing Portal recently. Portal is an original, unique, and fun game. I wouldn’t say that it fulfills the ideal that I was rambling about in the previous paragraph, but it’s still….