To Heart Vol. 3: Bonds Of Friendship Review

Overall 3.50 of 5 view all 2 reviews

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Writer

scorpioeyez
Warrenton, OR

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Yeah, Enough With The New Characters!

Anime Geek, Romance Sap

Pros

Cute New Character, Fun Extras

Cons

Lack Of Liner Notes, Too Many Characters, Still No Central Plot

JUL

2007

Originally published on otakureview.net

Intro

Yeah, we get it… enough with the new characters already!

The Story

In the third volume, three episodes are shown taking us deep into the non-plot of the series. In the first episode, the four friends are all getting together at Akari’s house in order to study together but when Mashashi and Shiho both cancel, Akari and Hiroyuki are stuck in a house alone together to do things like reminisce and get closer.

In the second episode of the volume, it’s time for the annual school culture festival and the girls in the class that Akari and Hiroyuki share is going to be running a coffee shop but the class rep is having issues with people wanting to do things completely differently than planned.

Yet another new character is introduced in the final volume in the form of a robot named Multi who has been enrolled as a first year student. A corporation has enrolled her in the school to do a final test and collect data but she is only at the school for two weeks. As expected, she and Hiroyuki hit it off pretty quick when he finds himself helping her out when she gets into trouble or has issues.

The Good And The Bad

In the above section, I referred to this volume taking us deep into the ‘non-plot’ of this series. The reason why I referred to it as that is because this series is still lacking in a central story. The characters are cute and the short stories are all sweet and fun to watch but we are well beyond the halfway point of this series and really we should be seeing a central story by now and we should be seeing something a bit more tangible within the characters.

It’s not impossible to have an anime that lacks in a central plot as others have done this with overwhelming success but when a series is so laid back and low energy like this one is, a central plot is vital and it’s just not getting the job done now which unfortunately started to make me lose interest.

The pacing is very slow in this volume which made things even harder to pay close attention to. This was especially a problem in the first episode of the volume where there were multiple scenes of Akari and Hiroyuki doing nothing but studying with absolutely zero dialogue to drive the scene further. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue since this is a legitimate way to establish the scene but when the scene begins to last for more than a few seconds, the audience is going to start drifting out since this series long ago established that it wouldn’t be pulling out any huge surprises or shocks during these types of scenes.

On more than one occasion I did find myself missing dialogue because the action on screen was so laid back that I accidently let my attention drift and next thing I know, I’m confused by what a character is saying and I’m having to rewind. This happened especially in the first and second episodes but with Multi providing much more energy during the final episode, this wasn’t nearly as much of a problem there.

Only one new character was introduced on this volume so there really isn’t much to say regarding character design or artwork with everything on this volume staying very consistent. I thought Multi was designed very well and I enjoyed her time on the screen. The character itself was very easy to like and was very endearing.

Music

There were very few scenes on this volume that had obvious background music and a lot of scenes had no background music at all. I think this was one of the reasons why the scenes in this volume tended to drag so much because there was very little music to control pacing and give the audience a real grasp of how much time was passing.

Dub vs. Sub

The dub performances in the first episode of the volume just felt a little dry. Not bad, just lacking in character. The cleaning scene in the third episode was cute and charming on at least a dozen levels though. For the most part though, the acting in this volume stayed consistent with previous volumes and I didn’t notice any major problems within this volume other than that first episode and I’m not even faulting the performers because the episode itself was so very dry with very little action so the dialogue might’ve just come across as dry because of what it was accompanying on screen.

Lenore Lenore as Multi was very good and very endearing so she easily gets the stand out performance of the volume.

Extras

There are plenty of the standard extras on this volume including a line art gallery but the best extras of the volume are the standards set by previous volumes starting with the character bios and notes from the translators. Unfortunately both are very limited on this volume with the character bios only covering three characters and the translator notes only talking about the culture festival and cram schools.

Also included on this volume are two more special mini episodes. In the first episode, Shiho has come to wake Hiroyuki up and it seems that every woman that has shown interest in him so far are coming to wish him good morning as well while simultaneously changing positions with each other in a very odd way. In the second episode, Hiroyuki is taken fishing by Ayaka Kurusugawa.

Overall

I really like this series and so it’s sad to me on more than just a reviewer level that this volume did so poorly with me. While it was fun to see another new character in Multi, I think this series has more than enough characters as it is and it has done absolutely nothing with them. There are dozens of relationship possibilities within this series and yet the staff has done absolutely nothing with any of them which makes the whole viewing experience very frustrating. While I am certainly holding out for a brilliant ending that I didn’t see coming, I’m quite worried that this is not going to happen and I’m going to left with a very unsatisfied feeling in my stomach. No story and absolutely zero tangible conflict is making a series that started strong sink into a very murky ending.

Final Grade: 77% - C