Riuva : Research Institute for Unicultural Visual Arts

As no doubt everyone following this series would have heard by now, Bandai Visual USA has decided to bring True Tears along with Shigofumi to North America, in a "R1 release by an R2 company" type of deal. And that is not even the most surprising part; what is is that apparently, they are going to price this at US$39.99 for a two episode DVD. For someone like me who’s liking this dark horse more every minute, I should have been jumping up, doing a Hiro Nakamura "Yatta!", and proclaim that surely, True Tears is going places…except that, I’m not so sure. True Tears is good all right, but is it really the kind of material suitable for an attempt at conquering the US market? To put it simply, and I know I’m bringing up a stereotype here, I don’t think this is the kind of thing those Yankees (>_>) are interested in; Pokemon is probably the limit of what most of them know, and maybe the more informed ones swear by a certain overrated mecha franchise whose traditional plot basis revolves around introducing new overpowered mechas to untie any dead ends the writers write themselves into. And at that kind of price…what would be the point? They’ll be pretty much out-pricing the few gaijin-otaku who would have any interest in purchasing this.

Oh well, at least if it won’t interest the average Yankee, at least True Tears made Impz eat his/her words, and even got Generalfeldmarschall Crusader to go "Sieg Heil!" over it; that speaks a lot about how good it really is, I would think. True Tears, Episode 5.

(BTW, I think I may have figured out one of P.A. Works’ methods for saving animation budget; take a look at the background of the above picture. Notice how instead of being KyoAni-class living background, it’s actually a highly stylized still? And it’s hardly the only scene over the past 5 episodes which uses this stylized still background, either. Genius indeed; I’m sure it allows them to save a lot of money on background animation, while at the same time making sure it doesn’t look like crap. No wonder the rest of the whole deal looks so smooth, for the most part.)

Interesting how Noe initially didn’t have any interest in taking up Hiromi’s offer of friendship before this, yet once Shinichiro rejects her offer of lunch and suggests that she should eat with her friends instead, she goes straight for Hiromi. End result? They start to warm up to each other, but everything goes all awkward when Tomoyo joins the fray. Meh…I still prefer my Lady of the Thousand Kicks. In any case, it seems like she’s trying to get close to Hiromi in order to get close to Shinichiro, like Hiromi lied about doing with Jun earlier.

Of course, that’s nowhere near enough effort, as she can only watch Shinichiro walk away with Hiromi. If I remember correctly, this is pretty much the first time Noe seems to show any interest in Shinichiro other than as a Raigomaru-replacement or a piggy-back.

Precisely, you wuss, and that’s not the first time you let a girl do this to you, either. Grow a pair already!

(Yeah, so I’m no closet feminist. Whatcha gonna do about it? :p )

Well, I’m afraid I have to say it here…what a b****. Unfortunately, there are mothers like that in real life; son gets a girlfriend, and they get all pissy about "losing" their son to some "little shrew", so they get gossipy about it.

(Not talking about mine, of course; I’m sure she isn’t like that. Or at least, I’m sure she wouldn’t be if I found a girlfriend; and unlike Da Boss, that’s a near impossibility for me. I love you Mom. :p )

Is it a good thing or a bad thing that when Noe came peeking around, the first thing I though of was Tsunetsuki Matoi?

This is what I’m talking about when I brought up the scene of Noe eating lunch with Hiromi earlier; while previously she had been content with playing pranks on Shinichiro and waiting passively for him to show up, now she starts pursuing his company actively and engaging in more serious conversation with him. Well, relatively more serious for her, anyway. However, this is probably the turning point in this series, where the girls start realising the competition they’re facing and act promptly.

And then she goes and do this. LOL. Now imagine if it had been a certain emo boy in a certain overrated mecha series on the receiving end of that.

Slowly, gradually, Shinichiro’s drawings of a girl in tears become insidiously warped by Noe’s wild imaginations, until he forgets his original vision and starts drawing hers instead. I’m not sure whether this is supposed to be sweet, or creepy.

Time and again though, True Tears keep coming back not only to the theme of tears, but also the theme of being able to fly. Is there a certain significance in it that I’m missing here, or is it something to be revealed down the road?

Precisely! So why the heck are you complaining about something you started?! Bakayaro!!!

Me: (-_-")

More than you know, Shinichirou. More than you know.

Okay, I’m sure I’m just overthinking things here, but why do I get the feeling that Hiromi is giving Shinichiro more of a come hither look than anything? It’s almost as if she’s expecting him to just STFU, come over to her and…you know what? Not going there.

I’ve been disliking Shinichiro for a while now, but up until now I’ve not been able to explain even to myself why this is so. However, thanks to Guardian Enzo of Animesuki Forums for pointing out just what it is. I think I’ll just quote him.

"But you see, Shin is a "good boy". There are few things as humiliating for a teenage male to be, but it’s not a matter of choice for a good boy - it’s a compulsion. It all fits - the folk dancing, the conservative dress, the fairy tales with kawaii illustrations… He’s a good step-brother, a good best friend, a good student, a good son. Like most GBs, what he longs for is to be a threat (and this drives much of the tension for his character) but he can’t. He can no more let a girl stay stuck in a tree (even if he thinks she’s nuts) than murder a puppy.

And as a good boy, what he did in Hiromi’s bedroom was not a matter of choice. Of course he didn’t want to tell her about Number 4 - he didn’t want to talk at all. What he wanted to do was take her in his arms and kiss her, then throw her down on the bed and ravish her until they were both so weakened by thirst and hunger that they had to emerge for provisions. But he couldn’t even tell her how he felt, so he did what he thought was the right thing to do - he told her the guy she said she liked thought she was cute. Because that’s what a good boy would do.

Shin can’t help himself - he’s serially nice. Stop him before he helps again." - Guardian Enzo

And as a result, he pisses her off, and he doesn’t even know why. Classic example of clueless guy who pissed off the girl with his cluelessness. Like I said before, Shinichiro isn’t all that bad a character, but the reason I don’t like him all that much is mostly because I’ve been spoiled by characters like Kyon and Yuuichi; once you’ve seen how male leads like him handles situations their own way, you can’t really stand the wishy-washy methods of the typical male harem lead anymore.

However, I do like how this series has portrayed an aspect of male-female conversation that happens all too often; the way males completely fail to notice the subtle body language of the female altogether, and cause a misunderstanding without understanding how it happened in the first place. I’m guessing this is mostly the reason why guys complain about females being unpredictable; yeah, we guys are a little blunt in the head. We can’t help it, you know; those who can overcome this hurdle are the ones who has girls throwing themselves at him, like a certain person around here. *coughHermancough*

What I liked even better though, is how the same sequence is seen through two different POVs consecutively; after getting a look into Shinichiro’s thoughts throughout the whole exchange, we go through it all over again, this time from Hiromi’s thoughts to get the complete picture. It is this kind of thing that makes the True Tears characters feel so unusually real, yet so intimate to the viewers at the same time.

Out of the three girls, I can’t help but like Hiromi the most thus far; for the most part because the series has presented her emotional states more rawly and intimately than any of the other girls. Noe is fun, but ultimately relatively distant compared to the others, while Aiko shows a bit more angst, but not much more. Hiromi, however, is by far the most intimate character to the viewers; it is not only in her voice, but also in her body language, that her emotions are presented so subtly, and yet so clearly. We know very clearly just why she does what she does…something that cannot be said about Noe or Aiko as yet.

And it seems like the rumours about Shinichiro’s mother being a bitch to Hiromi because of the past seems to gain momentum with this piece of evidence. The child pays for the mistakes of the parents, indeed.

To end things off, a cliffhanger ending with Aiko suddenly grabbing Shinichiro to prevent him from opening the door for Nobuse. Turning point for Aiko, where she throws her lot into the competition. How is it going to resolve itself next episode?

Well, we’re five episodes in, and I’m following this series for real. Which brings me to a question I feel like asking you guys; should I continue writing articles on True Tears? It’s a great series and all, and I’ve greatly enjoyed every minute of it. However, the announcement by Bandai Visual USA has given me second thoughts on continuing; I’m a fairly risk-averse person, and where blogging about a licensed series is concerned, I’m not quite as comfortable about blogging about it as I would be with an unlicensed one like CLANNAD (TV). Moreover, I’ve had to set aside Monday nights to come up with True Tears articles, as opposed to the relatively free Saturday nights for CLANNAD (TV) ones, and I’ve killed myself several Mondays in a role staying up overnight to complete them.

So what I need to know is; is it worth it? Has my efforts put into True Tears articles been worth reading thus far? I’d like to hear opinions from my regular set of readers; and I do mean the ones TJ Han as mentioned as being distinct from his set of readership. I’d like to hear your views.

Ascaloth, signing out for now.