Kimagure Orange Road is a romantic-comedy slice of life anime that was made in 1987, so two years after Touch began its adaptation & 1 year Maison Ikkoku began its adaptation. Kimagure Orange Road was an anime that I was overwhelmingly recommended based off of my strong love for Maison Ikkoku, going into it, it looks pretty promising. Will it live up though? Let's find out. Just to throw it out there, this review will contain mild spoilers, read at your own risk.
Story:
The story of Orange Road revolves around the Kasuga family, but more specifically, Kasuga Kyousuke. Kyousuke & his family have moved to a new town due to the fact that he and his two sisters are espers and they were caught with their powers. Kyousuke soon meets this girl named Madoka Ayukawa, falling in love with her at first sight.
Much like Maison, the story set-up isn’t complicated, but it doesn’t need to be, as Maison Ikkoku proved with its incredibly strong writing. The big problem with Orange Road though, it just doesn’t make the effort. This isn’t to say Orange Road is poorly written or anything, but it doesn’t push its story concept to its potential. There’s an incredible lack of development on the part of both the story, & characters throughout the entire show’s run. Orange Road also doesn’t have a strong enough cast to make this simple story work as well it could, but more on the characters later.
The comedy in Orange Road is pretty good for the most part. Much like Maison, the comedy in this show revolves around timing & character quips more than it does being loud & random. So I’m going to have to give the comedy some credit. There is this one repeating joke between these 2 characters called Ushiko & Umao. It’s pretty much the creators being Kunihiko Ikuhara before Ikuhara started getting more involved in anime, I found it a little bit humorous & charming the first time, but the joke wears thin pretty quickly.
Orange Road also likes to reference & parody a lot of movies, both of its native-land & foreign. I’m personally not too big on this aspect of Orange Road, I can appreciate that the creators were passionate about these movies, but they’re incredibly intrusive to what lacking plot there is in this anime, and are usually just thrown in randomly for no reason.
Orange Road gets fairly good use out of the fact that Kyousuke is an esper, his powers will usually come into some form of play that help move the plot along. The creators were also able to make some pretty creative dream sequences out of Kyousuke & his family's powers.
Characters:
This aspect unfortunately kills a lot of the enjoyment of Orange Road for me, these characters are ruthlessly lacking in character. They aren’t irritable or awful, they just leave a ton to be desired. Our main man Kyousuke is the typical rom-com protagonist, he’s indecisive, caught in a love-triangle, he’s pretty much Godai from Maison Ikkoku, unlike Godai however, Kyousuke doesn’t really see a lick of development, he stays the same throughout Orange Road’s entirety.
Ayukawa is probably the best character in Orange Road as she actually has more than one character trait attached to her. Ayukawa is often labeled as one of the founding Tsunderes in anime, but Ayukawa isn’t annoying. She can go from angry to happy on a dime, but at least the creators didn’t exaggerate her personality for the sake of an unfunny joke. Much like Kyousuke however, Ayukawa suffers from a lack of development. Near the end of the series, they reveal bits about her past that show us how Ayukawa came to be the person she is today, but by that point it’s too little too late.
Hikaru is the other girl in the love triangle which consists of Kyousuke, Ayukawa, & Hikaru. Hikaru isn’t much honestly, she’s defined by being the innocent and happy-go-lucky character of the cast, though her happiness doesn’t feel too forced to the point of irritability. Hikaru is pretty much Kozue from Maison Ikkoku, though if Kozue was stripped of her personality & only had one defining character trait attached to her.
I’m actually going to do something a little different here & lump the side characters into this one paragraph. Firstly, I’ll mention Kyousuke’s sisters, Kurumi & Manami. They’re ok, the story doesn’t really get as much out of them as they could’ve, but they’re not bad. Kurumi is the more brash, playful, & carefree of the two sisters, while Manami is the smart, careful, & concerned of the two sisters. Next on our slate, we have Hatta & Komatsu, the only trait about these 2 are the fact that they’re idiotic perverts who really want to get close to girls, but specifically Kurumi & Manami. These two suck, they have barely anything to do surrounding the plot or the series, you cut them out of most of the episodes they appear in, and you wouldn’t lose a damn thing in the narrative. Next we have Yuusaku (not Godai). Yuusaku sucks, the series does nothing with him but repeat the same tired joke, Yuusaku loves Hikaru, Hikaru always rejects him & wants barely anything to do with him in favor of “Darling”. If you’re going to create a side character, actually give them some character, even the smallest of side characters in Maison that appear only once throughout the entire series have more to offer & say about them than Yuusaku does, cut this man out of the story, and nobody would miss him. Finally, we have Kazuya. Kazuya is probably my favorite of the side characters, mainly because Kazuya actually has more than one personality trait & does things that help move the story along. Kazuya is pretty much a younger version of Kyousuke, though he lacks the indecisiveness that Kyousuke has, so he’s more likely to take action.
The biggest fault with this series is just how little these characters have to offer. They barely develop throughout the entire series. The side characters are mostly just repeated jokes & caricatures, if you’re going to have characters in your story, actually give them some character, don’t make the mistake of giving us this somewhat large cast that has barely anything to offer.
Art:
This is one of Kimagure’s strong points. The art in this series looks pretty spectacular honestly, the backgrounds look neat, the series is colorful, the color palette offers us some nice variety, & the character designs look great. There isn’t one that’s really out of place for the tone of this series, which is a mistake I feel as though Maison made by making Yukari look the way she did.
The animation is good for the most part, but there’s quite a number of times throughout its run where it’s pretty blatantly obvious that the animators were getting lazy & cutting corners. Reused frames of animation, flat images just being moved across the screen, shaking the screen to create a false sense of movement, it can be jarring at times. For the most part though, the animation is pretty consistently good throughout, though not as consistent as some other shows that were out around the time of Kimagure’s release.
Sound:
This is another strong point for Kimagure Orange Road, the OST is stellar. Shirou Sagisu, who you probably know for Evangelion & Kare Kano composed the soundtrack to this anime. It's a very 80s disco, city-pop, & some bits of Jazz thrown in there king of soundtrack. There’s a good variety in the pieces & the vocal tracks sprinkled throughout are all pretty good.
The voice acting is decent, there’s some great performances in there, but also some one’s I’m not a fan of. Hiromi Tsuru is great as Ayukawa, but I’m also not a fan of Eriko Hiro’s performance as Hikaru, though I don’t want to pin the blame entirely on her due to the way Hikaru is written. It’s a solid cast, it gets the job done & fits the show pretty well.
Final Thoughts/Overall
I always like to say “Good writing can save bad art. Good art can’t save bad writing”. Although Kimagure doesn’t have what I would call “bad writing” its writing is incredibly lacking, while the artwork is damn near phenomenal. Kimagure is a product of being underdeveloped. It has the blue-prints that would create a great story laid out, but it unfortunately just doesn’t go the extra mile in trying to make something stellar. The characters are underdeveloped & flat, and the story doesn’t really see much development throughout its runtime. On the other hand though, I don’t find myself getting irritated with Orange Road, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy this anime overall. I’d say I enjoyed about 50% of the anime. So with that being said, my final rating is going to be a 5/10. The OST & Artwork are definitely the highlights here, but if you want my opinion, you’re better off just watching Maison Ikkoku instead. It may be twice the length of Orange Road, but it has more to say & offer at the same time.
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