What's the worst thing you can do with your romance anime?
Unrealistic characters?
Cliched and cheesy dialogues?
Forced character interactions?
Or maybe all of the above?
Omoi Omoware Furi Furare should be named as "Rejection Compilation" as rejection is everything that happens.
Am I exaggerating? Ofc but not too much.
The premise of this movie is interesting enough. 4 main characters with different views on the love end up together in a high school as a classmate. Will they be able to achieve their wished youthful romance? It's not bad I liked the first 22 minutes of the show (yes exactly min 22). I wish I could say the same about the rest 1 hour and 20 minutes. It was just a complete mess with a huge Love Triangle.
The characters are nothing new and interesting. Yuna is just like your everyday annoying shoujo character who is living in her fantasy and confessing to someone who already rejected her once. Akari may seem like a mature girl but she is selfish af. Kazuomi is that one character that every anime has that even the author must've forgotten about halfway through their work. He was the most interesting one but had the least screen time. His having to hide his passion and dream of being a movie director from his not well-mannered family was interesting, but the author decided to ignore his interesting side and just focus on boring love triangles. Rio is just a (cool) character that every anime has who is mysterious, tall and handsome. He loves his sister ( not blood-related). So he is jealous when Kazuomi is together with Akari. Nice incest going on here.
Our leads meet with a complete coincidence. Yuna helped Akari once and Akari invited herself to Yuna's house. Kazuomi was Yuna's childhood friend while Rio was Akari's brother who was someone Yuna was interested in.
It's not a bad way to introduce a character to other characters as it is done way too much in animes already, but I don't like when this happens coz this will take away the entire important factor of "How our leads met and became friends first". The movie did a pretty okay job of this on Yuna and Akari, but this movie is not Yuri so it doesn't matter much. Because Rio and Kazuomi are brother and childhood friend of Akari and Yuna they are already friends before even interacting with each other much. So I think this is an easy and boring way to introduce the characters, but not everyone has the same opinions. So there is nothing I can do about it except for putting my own opinion.
Except for how characters are introduced, how characters fall in love is not well executed either. I believe 2 things are important when it comes to romantic progression between the leads and that is " Why they fall in love " and "How does the love affect their lives".
But I think the author has a different view on what's more important. The movie is full of confession, but none of them feels like genuine love and that's because they don't have much reason to fall in love.
Yuna loves Rio coz Rio (coincidentally) has similar hair to her prince from what they read in her childhood. Wow, interesting. If the fairy tale prince had black hair instead of blonde does that mean Yuna would've loved Kazuomi and not Rio? Guess we will never know.
Rio loves Akari since childhood and love at the first sight. Interesting too.
Akari loves Kazuomi and the author dismissed it by making Akari a kind of girl who easily falls in love. How interesting too.
Rio later in the series loves Yuna and that's after literally kissing Akari like 10 minutes earlier. Is that what society calls Fuccboi?
Okay people can defend him and I can understand it as Yuna did help Rio to make up with her sister, but is that enough to make Rio forget his first love and move on? I don't think so.
And last and not least Kazuomi loves Akari. Idk why and I don't think the author knows it too. They had few interactions with each other and none of them helps to justify his feelings. Okay, he once saved Akari from falling as most anime characters do, but it it's not a reason. And to make the thing worse. The synopsis said, "Kazuomi doesn't understand the concept of love and he is dense about these things".
So why will Kazuomi love Akari?
The movie suffers quite a bit from the pacing issue too. The movie is kinda fast-paced than it needs to be. Due to it many of the character interaction seemed forced. The future couples don't have much interaction with each other. A lot of my IRL manga reader friends said a lot of the scenes were cut in the movie. This can be the case but we are not talking about the manga here so it's a con here.
Even though I said earlier that the characters don't have much interaction and when they do have some it's all filled with cliched and cringe dialogues which are simply frustrating to sit through and watch. Just think of any cringe and cliche lines used in romance anime. What can you think of?
And all of the other things you can think of. It's available in this movie. Yes not even exaggerating.
If you don't know " I love Nitpicking ". Nitpicking is my favourite hobby and something I can do all day. And I have 2 things, in particular, that might not look significant but are something I can't get over with. And both of them is related to Akari's family.
[Spoiler Ahead]
1: In one scene Akari's mom hurriedly comes to the house with a scared look on her face as she thought Rio and Akari were together in the room. So it's kinda obvious she thought they were doing something immoral. But why does she think so?
Is it because Akari's mom knows that Rio loves Akari ? or just because they are 2 people of different sex of the same age? or maybe Rio tried something like that already before? That's something I wanted to know the entire time coz it's not a small deal. The family having no trust is a huge issue that has to be solved but the author forgot that she even included something like that in her story.
2: During the ending part of the story when Akari leaves the house because of her ( Internal Family Quarrels ) you know how and why did she get over with it? Yes, because Kazuomi confessed to her. Yes, as easy as that. If anyone of you is having trouble with family, then just ask your crush to propose to you. They will solve the problem for you.
Kazuomi who has nothing to do with Akari's problem with her family solved it just by confessing to her. Is that how confession and family problem works?
Idk if it does and if it does then my bad but I don't think this is how it's supposed to work.
Moving on from all the criticism I have with it. I do have some positives to say as well.
I am a huge fan of Io Sakisaka's character designs and Bump of Chicken's music. So the movie has pretty great character designs and music (animation is decent too). Lol and that's all about its pros I will say.
I am a huge fan of light-hearted shows in general if you can tell from my favourites, but I think what Io Sakisaka prioritizes in her story is kinda different from what I want from a story ( Hal, Ao Haru Ride and now Omoi omoware furi furare suffering from kinda similar problems for me ) so Io Sakisaka's stories are not something that appeals to me, but it may appeal to a large number of people so I don't want to deny it by saying she is a bad writer.
If you like this movie then good for you it was just not my kind of thing. Well, reviews are not 100% objective.
Thanks for reading.
Have a nice day/night.
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