The Stranger by the Shore

The setting of Umibe no Étranger has always held me in a vice-grip. An island surrounded by the blue ocean, the residents are dressed in billowy clothing. The flowers are bright and blooming. It is the essence of summer. It's the place which you read in a book and then proceed to ache for. Or rather, in this case, the place which you see in a manga and then proceed to ache for. This overwhelming feeling of being in the moment presents itself perfectly (thank you, Kanna Kii), so much so, that you want to be living through it instead. I believe the best mediashows itself in whether or not the viewers wish they could be a part of the story. Mio and Shun contrast each other. Shun is a quiet novelist who, despite having known his sexuality before Mio, still hasn't come to terms with it. Mio on the other hand is young, carefree, and is comfortable with openly confessing his love to Shun. They balance each other out. Mio learns from Shun's family situation, while Shun learns from Mio that he shouldn't be embarrassed about their love. There is nothing wrong with expressing feelings for someone of the same gender or sex. And Shun, having lived his life with this affecting him, comes to terms for the first time, that, this is how he is, and that's perfectly okay. I will admit that the pacing of Umibe no Étranger is rather fast. The pacing is the weakest part of both the anime adaptation and the original manga. Before you know it, it's over. This may have faired better pacing-wise if it had been split up into a four-part OVA. The art. I'll just say it. It's great. They did Kanna Kii's style justice. The animation is smooth, the backgrounds and coloring are beautiful. There is nothing to nitpick. It's above average, probably even ABOVE above average. Studio Hibari did a wonderful job. Now, for what I am head over heels for - the sound (by Eiko Morikawa) and original music (composed by Mina Kubota). None of the sound effects felt out of place - the blowing wind and stretching sea made the setting even more immersive. And what takes the cake is the music. Beautiful piano pieces, that, whenever they started playing during a scene I would focus on them instead because I didn't expect them to be so... good. Mina Kubota did an amazing job with the music. The ending song is equally addicting; it is all I imagined a song representing Mio and Shun to be. This attitude also goes towards the voice actors, who did a great job with bringing these two to life (along with Sakurako, Eri, Suzu, and most particularly a young version of Mio, who actually had a child voice acting him). Umibe no Étranger is a story that bases itself around coming to terms with who you are and your situation. It is a story about growing up and basking in pure first love. The animation, sound, music, and setting all bring this movie together. And albeit it may be a little fast-paced, it surely is a diamond in the rough. Also, it has cats.

BL is a genre with very, very low standards. I’d say that the only genre that’s worse off in that regard may be shows for kids, and even that is debatable. So, once in a blue moon a BL anime that isn’t utterly terrible is released, and just by the virtue of not being completely garbage it gets praised as the best thing ever. And to be fair, in comparison with most of other similar works, it’s pretty good. In comparison to regular anime though… that’s a different matter. First, the good part. The visuals are gorgeous. This movie is very nice to look at, andespecially the backgrounds are aesthetically pleasing. In this aspect, the production value is high, which is the opposite of average BL product. To give credit when it’s due, I have no complains about this part. Maybe the only downside being that this is the only interesting thing about the whole movie. It almost tempt me to give it a higher score, but unfortunately rest of it is still dragging the enjoyment down. The story is… chaotic. It feels like watching a digest of a series you have never seen. The characters are poorly introduced, it’s riddled with confusing cuts that seem to just skip over huge portions of would-be story, and has timeskips without warning that make it even more confusing. We are given no reason as to why should we care about the characters at all – unless of course you are a fujoshi, in which case the usual procedure would be to get hyped about boy’s love and disregard everything else, no further characterisation is required. Ultimately the story, or at least what I could catch from it, adds up to about an average shounen-ai plotline about dude liking a dude while some people are not fully okay with that. Nothing groundbreaking. I have not read the original work yet, so I don’t know if it too is as rushed as the movie, but guessing based on the fact that it is only one volume long, the adaptation probably didn’t left out much things. There is one part where the story finally stays at one place for a longer time and finally starts giving out a bit more coherent storytelling and even a somehow interesting source of conflict which again tempted me to at least give this a 6/10, alas it makes up only about fifth of the runtime and the movie still feels like a very long trailer than an actual movie. As hinted at the start, this is actually very good for its genre, but that is really saying more about the awful state of the genre than the quality of this movie. It is nice that it’s not so creepy and rapey as “classics" such as Sekaiichi Hatsukoi or Loveless. It’s nice it has animation that doesn’t look like a deviantart user was made to be in charge of the storyboard. But, that doesn’t make it great, that just means it passed the mark of not being terrible. Still, for fans of the genre I would recommend it. For others – well, as I mentioned, at least it looks

Here finally after 2 and a half years of continuously watching anime, I found something that I can call my "Most Hated" show ever. I just completed this show and decided to read some reviews and I honestly don't understand the appeal of the show whatsoever. I know this is somewhat of a controversial opinion but bear with me. First of all, let me say that I am not a hater of an anime/manga about LGBTQ at all. If you check my list you will see that I consider 'Doukyuusei', 'Bloom into You', 'Asagao to Kase-san to be pretty good shows and 'My Lesbian Experiencewith Loneliness is one of my favourite manga of all time. So I don't particularly hate Umibe no Etranger because it is BL. First I would like to praise it for having good visuals and voice acting. The art style is pretty decent but the animation is eye-catching and the background visuals perfectly fit with the character emotions and the mood of the show. So that's the only praise I have for this thing. Before talking about my problems with the show I would like to say what I think is the most important thing about Romance anime. "The romantic progression between the main characters (why and how they fall in love)". Now talking about my first problem with this anime and that is the romantic progression between the main characters. We don't know much about both of our main guys especially Mio. We know Shun lives with a lesbian couple and an old lady and his parents were against him being a 'Gay' and Mio lost his mother and always sits on the bench outside where Shun lives. And Shun started having feelings for Mio. Why? Because he is gay? Is that how straight people think about Gay people? that they like whoever they see as long as it is a boy? At first, when Shun talked with Mio, Mio yelled at Shun coz he thought Shun was just talking to him out of Sympathy. And by looking at that it's obvious that they won't be able to get along with each other for quite a bit of time. But No. Mio immediately apologise to Shun the day after and decided to spend a day together. And Mio decided to go to the mainland and he returns to Okinawa after 3 years and confessed his love to Shun. Everything progressed way too fast that it's unlikely for people (at least for me) to care about the characters and their relationship. What I hate about most romance anime is that " Characters will fall in love even tho they have no logical reason to" and what makes it even worse is when characters fall in love with each other but we dont even know much about either of the two. Why should I care about the love story of 2 dudes when I barely know them or I have barely seen how they've grown their feelings for each other? Its like watching some random kids in public fight. We enjoy watching them fight but deep down we wont care even if someone dies right there. And for a romance anime if you cant make viewers care about the main relationship it's pretty much impossible to make up for that flaw. Now about my second problem with this anime aka. "The Characters" Shun and Mio are bland as fuck. They arent blessed with many character traits. The only thing we know about them is that they are 'broken' and love each other. And that's the only thing we got when we asked more about the main guys character traits. The author tried to rely on their not so good childhood to make viewers care about them but failed to do so. And even tho the author showed us some bits of Shun and Mio's childhood we never saw the complete picture of it. Which further makes their 'Broken' trait even less interesting and makes viewers care even less. And supporting characters are almost nonexistent. The Lesbian couple did some teasing to Shun and Mio about their relationship and that's the only thing they did. And Sakurako who had some sort of role in the story was not executed properly too. She was there to make Shun overcome his trauma (his parents being against him being gay) and make Shun return to his home. But we didnt see Shun doing so. So I'll say she was a wasted character. Now about some problems I have with the show that some people might not have problem with. 1: Their first kiss was stupid and forced asf. It was only there to satisfy the thirst of some fujoshi. 2: There is a time skip so early in the series that makes the relationship of mc's even more confusing. Especially considering what Mio said to Shun at the ending of the show " I love girls but still I fell in love with you". But but why? What happened in those years that Mio fell in love with Shun? Guess we'll never know. 3: Like the Kiss scene I was talking about the S3X scene in final part of the show is uncomfortable asf and the comedy between the scenes ruined it even more. Those are it. Umibe no Uranger is my most hated show of all time but I don't think it is the worst thing ever. It might be pretty enjoyable for the targeted audience. A lot of unexplained stuff, lack of depth in character, pacing issue, lack of logic behind romantic progression etc ruined this anime to its core. Only if the main guys had a bit more depth to their character, instead of the huge time skip if it was focused on their romantic progression and if side characters were focued slightly more this anime would have been somewhat enjoyable to watch but we can do nothing except for imagining about it. In Short/ Tldr: Watch 'Doukyuusei' or 'Bloom into You' instead. Thanks for reading. I am open to criticisms so feel free to comment if you disagree with my review. Have a good day/night.