The Anthem of the Heart

Oh goody, another Mari Okada teen drama. I’m not sure when my mind has started seeing these things as commonplace, but it was probably around the moment when people started saying to me with a straight face that “no really, Wixoss is totally a touching psychological character drama. Especially regarding that one girl whose main wish is to fuck her brother.” Nevertheless, I was kind of looking forward to seeing Anthem of the Heart. Anime dramas tend to be more tolerable when they’re only given a limited amount of time to tell their stories, plus if I’m not mistaken, this is the Anohana team’s firstoriginal film. So even if I didn’t like it, it’d at least be worth talking about. I’d say this review alone justifies the fifteen dollar price. So the film starts with a little girl named Jun Naruse indulging in her Utena-like fantasies regarding a prince finding a princess when she sees her father leaving a castle-like love hotel with another woman. Not understanding what it means, she tells her mother about the incident and her father is soon given the boot, but not before reassuring her that his leaving was completely Jun’s fault. Fucking jackass. But since Jun is a kid, she sincerely believes it’s her fault to the point that she imagines a strange egg-shaped creature who tells her that her talkative personality needs to go if she wants to stop hurting people. Thus, Jun ends up getting the reputation of the girl who never talks by the time she enters high school and we get a promising setup about a girl having to face her inner demons in order to live a normal boring life. After the timeskip, the film kickstarts by having the head teacher randomly choose four people to serve on the class council, and for good measure, he decides that they should be in charge of having the class put on a musical for the school festival because he’s just that much of a carefree jackass. Why? Because all good dramas have musical events in them and we needed a reason to get our outcast leads to participate in it no matter how contrived, let alone a reason to meet each other in the first place. So in addition to Jun and her personal problems, we get three other characters thrown in the equation, each with their own issues and romantic preferences between each other. I won’t spoil who’s hot for who, but the additional cast members are a nice boy who has no hobbies of his own, a gruff big dude who used to be the school’s top baseball player, and a cheerleader who puts on a confident facade to hide the fact that she had personal experiences with the nice boy in middle school. Think back to Anohana with these character types in mind, and you should be able to figure it out. Then become frustrated as the movie seems to change these preferences whenever the plot demands it. Like most Mari Okada works, the film loses its way a short ways in in regards to discovering the best way to tell this story, because it keeps glancing at the “how to write drama” handbook whenever it’s confused on how to progress things and grabbing something from a really successful work without understanding why it worked when it did it. So what we end up with is a bloated mish-mash of underdeveloped tropes that tend to get in each other’s way rather than do any complementing. Most of the story is told in a rather dry manner where the characters just go through the motions and hang out with each other in order to establish that the little girl might like the shorter of the two males and that he might be the prince that will allow her to talk. But then she starts to speak up for herself because she wants to participate in the music club's activities because for some reason, she really wants to sing despite never showing any interest in it before. And then people are surprised she can talk. Then they aren't. I kept on feeling like I missed a post-it note explaining these transitions somewhere down the road. And despite the story pushing Jun's problems, it never takes center-stage as much as it should, mostly due to the fact that it never feels like her inability to talk meshes well with any of the romantic entanglements or personal issues the other characters face. At times, it feels like Jun's inability to talk is just a vehicle to make her fall in love and deal with the consequences. I find that disappointing, because romance holds up about as well as action in standing on its own aka not well at all. It also doesn't help that good chunk of the subplots have that usual "came up with the set pieces first" problem you'd expect to see in a visual novel anime. The big gruff dude of the main cast is tangled in a conflict regarding his team and pushing them to the nationals that adds fuck all to the plot and only exists so that he'd have something to do, with said conflict getting swept under the rug after a few scenes and said guy losing any sense of importance throughout the story afterwards. Also, as much as we see him, the main male lead never acts as anything more than an arbiter for events rather than a fleshed-out character with his own motivations. Any problem he experiences is always tied to one of the female characters, and it generally tends to circle back so that their problems are rooted in their relationship with him and nothing else besides vague motivations we never get to truly understand. I'll admit that where it finally ends up did stick in my mind, although it's a pity that the scenes preceding it were a real chore. I really wish Okada would stop it with conclusions where the characters cry and yell out all the frustrations that have been boiling up over time like it's some form of triumph. That's only true if the revelation lives up to the magnitude caused by the character's overacting, and Jun overcoming her ability to stop acting like a spoiled brat isn't exactly something worthy of a Lifetime achievement award. Especially since that problem was pretty much inserted in at the last minute due to that classic and incredibly tired "I heard something I shouldn't have" plot element that I thought we were over by now. There should be a rule in that drama handbook with the statement "don't do this crap!" Buried somewhere underneath all the slipshodness, there's potential for an interesting story regarding personal problems and overcoming them, but in this team's hands, it's like trying to wring out noise from a giraffe. All the characters act dramatic whenever it's convenient for them after overly long periods of slow boils that can't stay focused long enough to develop into anything noteworthy, and the connection between their problems is thinner than a woman's spread legs when you start bringing up your opinion on right-wing policies. At its best Anthem of the Heart can most accurately be described as the quintessential example of a teenage anime drama, and I don't mean that in a good way. It has all the elements you'd expect of its genre, but the way they're executed is so wide-spread and bland that I grew bored and stopped caring about the characters thirty minutes in, then groaned when I realized that the movie was two hours long rather than the ninety minutes I initially thought. And it was really wearing on my patience during the ninety-minute mark, let me tell you that. The film does sort of come into its own by the end, but it's not worth the long stretch of muddled subplots and dry buildup to get to that point. And all the ending really did at the end of the day was remind me of the vastly superior The Girl Who Leapt Through Time as well as the also superior Sound Euphonium. If you have the opportunity to go see Anthem of the Heart, I'd recommend watching those anime instead and simulating the experience by pretending the characters are all Final Fantasy archetypes by way of a Hot Topic filter. In other words, the emo whiners from Kingdom Hearts.

Kokoro ga Sakebittegaterunda reembraces the theme of “expressing yourself,” reminding people that it is okay to speak out their true feelings about anything. This anime film, from the creators of Anohana and Toradora, tells a coming of age story that many people can relate to. Because the film illustrates a very relatable everyday situation, Kokosake evokes enough nostalgia to the point where the film becomes tear-jerking. The film’s situation can be seen as a general self-reflection of anyone’s life, questioning the freedom of expression—whether one should talk her feelings out to the world freely, or keep any thoughts to herself. But, acknowledging that there aremany more choices and themes than this, Kokosake's story, characters, and music shows that it is a beautiful anime film worth watching. With regards to the film’s story, Kokosake’s slice of life storytelling successfully portrays a situation that many people can relate to. In general, this plot sets to resolve the protagonists’ internal conflicts through the events of resolving the story’s conflict. In Kokosake’s case, Naruse Jun, the protagonist of the anime, has her internal conflict in which she cannot speak her true feelings—the main conflict that the film revolves around. As the story progresses, the resolution of the story’s conflict, the school musical, helped her to “open up her heart.” Cleverly enough, the story not only resolves Naruse Jun's internal conflict, but also resolves the conflicts of the other protagonists in the film. The characters’ development in Kokosake was also enjoyable to watch. Kokosake’s plot is very beneficial toward developing the main protagonists’ relationship, communication, and their feelings toward each other. For example, Naruse’s personality changes as the story progresses. Naruse’s actions to “break out of her shell” is hilarious and at the same time relatable, making the film more interesting. There are some bits of comedy and typical anime tropes that tangent off the main story. But, overall, the story is well paced, has enough content to convey the film’s message, and concisely portrays the actions that Naruse Jun and the other protagonists take to resolve the main conflict. The artwork that portrays this story brings the animation to life. With Anohana’s and Toradora’s art style, Kokosake’s artwork impressively makes the animation look realistic. The film’s settings is well drawn and emits an earthly vibe throughout the film. The characters of the anime were drawn really well to the point where anime seems to be merging with reality. The characters movements in the animation follow most physics and their facial expressions—especially Naruse’s expressions—is exaggerated to express emotions and feelings. Since Naruse does not initially communicate with actual words in the film, her facial expressions and body language conveys an idea about what she is trying to say. With this realistic and expressive art style, Kokosake’s art is one quality that makes the anime a beautiful film. But, one of the main qualities that makes Kokosake such a beautiful film is through sound. Because the anime aims to encourage the freedom of expression, the voice acting and music are exaggerated. The voice acting matches the characters and their personalities and the music is well composed to match the situations during the plot, enhancing the liveliness of the anime. As the protagonists who can talk speak, the music serves as a substitute for Naruse’s silence and embellishes the atmosphere of the film. It may be because of the film’s music that enables people to shed tears along with the nostalgic story. With this, Kokosake’s plot, artwork, voice acting, and soundtrack enhances the anime’s beauty, making the movie enjoyable to watch. The film does indeed beautifully conveys its theme. Thus, Kokosake’s coming of age story is one of many good anime that people young and old can enjoy. But, the decision of whether this anime is worth watching is definitely up to you. I acknowledge and respect any opinions that you have for this anime and I hope that you will read my reviews in the future. Thank You So Much For Reading!

Trauma from the past play a huge factor in the way we govern our lives in the future. Although there are ways to rehabilitate, more often than not we remain changed as a person and even more often we don't get the proper treatment or outright deny it. From the producers that brought you Anohana, Kokoro ga Sakebitagatterunda feels like a one-shot that hits you right in the feels the same way it does with Anohana. We as an audience can draw from many of the experiences in our own life in all scales and magnitude to relate to Naruse Jun as she struggles to livethe adolescent years of her life when faced with traumatic experiences in her past. While Kokoro ga Sakebitagatterunda follows a story of similar circumstance as Anohana, what really drives a story home is the use of good sound in combination of a natural and fluent devlopment of the plot. There was an excellent contrast of song and music with corresponding parts of the film and even if there was a lack of ambient sounds throughout the film, the core parts of the film came together very naturally with music and setting in harmony which is what I thought they did a spectacular job in. The characters don't seem to stand out excluding Naruse but it fits the school life setting so it could be argued that that was the atmosphere the producers wanted to achieve. To conclude, this film ended up being quite enjoyable and is absolutely worth your time and your money if you are lucky enough to catch this in theaters.

When I first started Kokoro ga Sakebitagatterunda, I initially dismissed its mediocrity and by the numbers plot for yet another angsty teenage romance, but upon further evaluation, I discovered that Kokoro ga Sakebitagatterunda does something very special, something very rarely seen or heck, even discussed in anime. What I'm referring to of course is the depiction and commentary on the issue of mental health in teenagers in Japan. Tragically, in reality, most cases are simply dismissed or ignored; the social stigma for someone suffering from a mental disorder is especially daunting and uninviting. What does this have to do with the anime you ask? This themeis mostly conveyed through the primary heroine, Naruse, in this anime. Without spoiling much, some family complications leave her in a state of despair and she suffers through a mental sickness that left her hallucinating and unwilling to speak, for her mind will render a stomach ache if she does. Now this is where the anime starts really taking off on its harsh and brutal social commentary, instead of seeking outside help or advice from, say, a medical professional, she instead decides to be a complete shut in for several years of her life. Adding to the fact that neither her mother or other classmates notice this until her uncaring teacher arbitrarily decides to group her and the main characters into a Community Outreach performance, reflects the reality in which how uncaring most outside people are to people suffering from some form of mental disorder. In fact, earlier on, her ostracization from her fellow classmates as well as the accompanying isolation is especially cruel. The other major characters also provide a gateway for meaningful commentary, courtesy of the writer, to the audience. Most of it is especially cynical and a criticism of perhaps, modern society in Japan. Takumi for instance, is a reflection of how stubbornness can be mistaken for determination. His stubborn insistence for Naruse's involvement in the project as well as his refusal of taking her medical condition seriously is often mistaken for genuine determination by the rest of the cast. I believe this reflects well on our society's cultural norms. And then there's Natsuki, who while at first glance may seem to be the typically cliched girl who met protag-kun before earlier in life but never fessed up to him and never bothers properly confessing or telling him or at least hanging out with him or some logical thing, but, and this is where Kokoro ga Sakebitagatterunda really shines here, now, dear reader, Natsuki is actually a satire of all those anime cliches. Her actions in fact, actually spell doom for the main heroine and well, you'll just have to find out what happens. No spoilers here! As the whole story wraps up, Kokoro ga Sakebitagatterunda ends up being one of the most profound anime of our time for its strong social commentary and its clever use of the mundane and common to subvert all of our expectations, creating simply a unique package. Or that's what I thought after downing a few beers to justify this anime's existence.