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Verdict: Skip Miss Lonely Yesterday, Watch Cross Roads

(No spoilers – unlike many Touch reviews) Whereas Maison Ikkoku beautifully portrayed the transition between teenager and adult, Touch is one of the most rewarding coming of age stories. I had occasionally heard excellent things about Touch for the past few years, but only finally sat down to watch it after learning that it holds the record for highest ratings ever achieved by an anime on Japanese television. This naturally made me very curious. This is a series that is almost completely unknown in the anglosphere – even more obscure than its contemporaries, Maison Ikkoku and Kimagure Orange Road. Yet, at the height of its run, Touch claimed over….

Kare Kano was one of the first anime that I was exposed to, back when I myself was in high school, and thus my review is going to have the inevitable nostalgic baggage. It is basically a high school romance comedy, but it stands out for a variety of reasons. One of them, unfortunately, is that is very uneven – the beginning accomplishes everything it sets out to do perfectly, but as the series progresses, the quality of both the storytelling and the technical aspects takes a decline. I don’t think I’d be out of line in saying that the series basically falls apart about halfway through. Nevertheless, even if it requires pretending that half of the series doesn’t exist, it would be a shame to miss what is one of the absolute standouts in the genre.

Before I go into detail, I should mention that Planetes, like Haibane Renmei, is one of those series that starts slow. A significant portion of it is also episodic in nature rather than having a continuous and suspenseful plot – until about 2/3rds of the way through. But, like Haibane Renmei, when it is good, it is extremely good. It has definitely earned a spot on my favourites list, and is simply one of the most satisfying anime I’ve seen……

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…is actually a pretty good OP……

Why do people get so angry about pronunciations of Japanese names in dubs?  The purpose of dubbing is to localize a film for an audience that isn’t familiar with the original language so that they can still enjoy the story on its own merit.  People like me and most other anime fans, who want to hear the original Japanese speech and are somewhat knowledgeable about the culture and language, can watch subtitles.  Nobody is forcing us to watch the localized …

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