I just started watching Kare Kano on dvd and I love it. You're right about the art being sometimes disappointing, but the crazy feel of the series always leaves me with a warm, fuzzy feeling lol.
Kare Kano tv Review
Yukino Miyazawa, the perfect student. She's got the looks, the grades - everything any girl could ask for out of a school life. She is envied by all the girls and loved by all the boys, and is #1 in her class. The worst part could be the fact that she knows this and loves it. Her mask was her life, and she lived fine within it.
Enter Soichiro Arima, now the perfect guy. Yukino can't help but notice that Soichiro has been stealing her thunder. Born under a rich name, looks to kill and with grades that equal Yukino's, she can't help but be infuriated by his perfect ways. Day in and day out among her diligent studying, she plots to take down Soichiro, to break him.
Then, Yukino gets a curveball. The midterm results come in, and Soichiro bests Yukino by half a point. Meaning he becomes the #1 student in their class. Yukino, angrier than ever, turns to leave the class, but Soichiro touches her and merely whispers..."I love you."
Thus starts a comical romantic war between the two as they continue to try to get under each other's skin. But they only seem to get closer and close until Soichiro then stumbles upon Yukino's dark secret, and after that, the seeds of romance start to sink in...
Story & Characters
Ah another love story bought to the small screen, enter the main characters for this series:
Yukina Miyazawa, model student extraordinaire (and fake), lives for praise and special treatment. She does everything in her power to make people admire her, playing up to everyone’s perceptions of an admired and popular student. However in her High School debut she is eclipsed by another model student.
Souichirou Arima, model student (extremely attractive), tormented by unseen demons of his past, lives to be a credit to his parent and to prove his worth to his extended family. Nothing can get past his emotional barriers – until he meets Yukina.
Arima is charming naïve about the female and male admiration he attracts (girls flock around him in groups- where have I watched that before?), and Yukina is, well, a con-artist who has decided to change after meeting Arima. Yukina’s -umm- somewhat colourful character provides continuous comic relief, plots of revenge (which always backfire), well timed jokes and embarrassing encounters liven up the serious themes. The main two characters bumble around each other and slowly gather other (rather popular) students – who are also colourful and strange characters- into a strangely endearing not to mention weird and wacky group of friends.
I guess the moral to this story is, even seemingly perfect people have problems, but nothing that can’t be solved
without a great deal of laughter.
Rating:
Art
The art is just plain strange. Animated episodes are interrupted by uncoloured sketches. The animated characters are drawn with nice detail, and serve to outline how different this anime is. Yukina has some awesome fighting and angry scenes, but that’s about it for this anime.
After around episode 22 a whole episode is dedicated to cardboard cut-outs characters being moved around an uncoloured sketched background?????, leaving the watcher to wonder if the animation budget ran out.
The final episodes get the story across with uncoloured sketches, quick comments and a lot of voice-overs. This is the
greatest let down of this series, uncoloured sketches were used too much, mixed with sepia coloured photos and real life
footage around Japan for the closing credits- the novelty quickly wore off.
Rating:
Sound
The opening and closing songs for this series are fantastic. Who couldn’t love a series with an opening song called “The Promise of an Angel� and the closing one called “Into a Dream�. These songs are also used as background music to emphasise scenes of emotional depth. The dubbing is good although it is sometimes out of sync with the animated character’s mouth movements- perhaps this is focusing in to much detail. The voices (in the dub) match the characters really well and convey the emotions of that character exceptionally well.
Rating:
Presentation
The basic story line for this anime certainly isn’t original, and you might mistakenly label this as just another high school/pre-university sappy love story. However that’s where the similarities to any other anime end. This series took a very unique twist of a well used theme and created a strange and fast moving anime with serious overtones woven in between humorous situations, satisfying punch lines and some pretty cool fight/chase scenes.
The love story between these two flawed High School students is the core of this series – however don’t get the impression that this is a serious anime. This is basically a comedy written in the shadow of a serious anime. It was really a pleasure to watch the developing relationship between Yukina and Arima, the trials, separations, jealousies and misunderstandings between these two led to a greater understanding of themselves, each other and the people that surround them.
Watching and understanding this anime requires involvement in the story and a quick trigger finger on the pause icon/button (to read the translated comments), but is well worth the energy involved as this is required for only one or two of the serious parts, the comedy gags are too frequent to miss them all, and in the end why would you want to miss any?
The end is never really outlined but leaves the watcher to assume the characters will keep following the changes made in their lives throughout the anime (-not a spoiler-).
If you like anime that is based on character interaction and their relationships towards each other, then this is the
anime for you. But if you really like a comedy that can make you roll your eyes and laugh out loud, you’re gonna
love this!
Rating:
Final Verdict
8.1667 (good)
Reviewed by tishdon, Mar 22, 2005
Comments
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Ayashinosarah Mar 23, 2005
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tishdon Mar 27, 2005
I'm glad somebody else likes it as much as I do, I'm currently rewatching it and still laughing in the same places that I laughed at before :)
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fabismine May 04, 2005
This is my favourite anime, but I guess the two last episodes could be really better. I like the conceptions, the stylish drawings and the songs a lot. The scene where Yukino gets out of her house and kicks Arima is the funniest ever!!! It cracks me up everytime I see it :)
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Framel Jul 09, 2005
Good review!. This anime is incredible!, surely you will sing the opening and ending, and if you pay attention, you will find some similar scenes with Evangelion. If you want to laugh a little bit and do you like the love scenes... this is the anime that you are looking at, and if you not... well... give it a chance, I'm sure that you will enjoy it!.
i recommend to read the manga to know what happened after the episode 26.
(Sorry if you don't understand, but my english is not good enough)
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ellamornet Jul 28, 2005
I loved the art. It's very faithful to the manga. But I can see why some people wouldn't like it. I agree about the music though. The opening theme won't get out of my head.
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