Do you have memories you don’t want to forget?

This will be a shorter review, because I don’t want to dive too deep into the plot to have it a more spoiler free review, but I still wanted to write a little bit about this show, because it is one of my favorite romance anime.

In ef: A Tale of Memories. we are following 2 plots simultaneously and especially in the first episode it might be easy to get lost, because they introduce pretty much every character at once, but I do think that this was the correct decision as all of the characters are important throughout the show. As I mentioned there are 2 romances that we are following in the show simultaneously and the first one I will go over is the love triangle one between Hiro, Kei, and Miyako and I wouldn’t call it anything special, but it was executed well and I enjoyed it and the way they concluded it. The second plot we are following tho which focuses on Renji and Chihiro is the one which really elevates this show to stand out from other romance anime, because of how unique it is. Chihiro is a girl which, because of an accident in her past can only remember what happened in the past 13 hours of her life and after meeting Renji they develop feelings for each other and Renji wants to help her realize her dream of writing a Novel, but of course thanks to her condition there are a lot of hardships to go through and oneself as the viewer really feels for them.
The characters in the show were also all handled well and even though it had a kind of big cast the show managed to keep the focus well on what’s really important and it was easy to understand and feel for every single character and build a connection to them.

The visuals in the show are outstanding and really help in conveying what the characters are feeling through simple symbolism and quick cuts and that’s of course something one would expect when going into a show which is animated by studio Shaft. I also liked how consistent the art was throughout the show while still playing around with the colors they used for certain scenes to really drive the emotions and mental state of the characters home.
Next up I would like to talk about the soundtrack which was just absolutely stunning and even now as I’m writing the review I'm still listening to it and genuinely every piece of music in the anime was beautiful and very fitting for the scenes they used it in and it definitely enhanced the experience!

▶ Then there’s also the seiyuu’s I would like to mention, because they added so much life to the characters and some scenes wouldn’t have worked at all without their great work like for example (might be a minor spoiler) there’s a phone call scene and it is really just focused on the conversation, because the visuals are pretty much on a standstill for 2 minutes during it, but through the outstanding work by the seiyuu it really feels intense and conveys the rising tension especially accompanied by the soundtrack and the show is just filled with performances like this.

Overall I can recommend “ef: A Tale of Memories.” to anyone who’s looking for a great romance anime which also has wonderful themes and even if the love triangle between Hiro, Kei, and Miyako is a bit more lackluster in comparison to the other story between Chihiro and Renji which is the true gold of the show and something anyone should experience!