[REVIEW] ef – a tale of memories

Do you have memories you don’t want to forget?

Plot Summary: The anime revolves around two protagonists, Hirono Hiro and Asou Renji. On Christmas Eve, Hirono Hiro meets a girl named Miyamura Miyako who was chasing a purse snatcher. Hiro later finds out that Miyako also goes to the same school as he does and they start hanging out together. This made Hiro’s childhood friend, Shindou Kei, feel left out. Kei then tries to compete with Miyako for Hiro’s affection and a love triangle ensues. The anime also tells the story of Asou Renji. Renji meets a girl named Shindou Chihiro at an abandoned train station. He soon learns that Chihiro suffers from a type of amnesia where her memory span only lasts for 13 hours. He also discovers Chihiro’s dream of writing a novel, but she has never been able to fulfill that dream due to her condition. Renji then decides to help her fulfill that dream. [ANN]

Story: It’s a two-way story on 2 different guys, one involves a love triangle and the other had problems on their own. Think the story isn’t too original? Better think twice. Although the story isn’t that common, we’ve seen it a few times on several movies and some TV drama but this one primarily focuses on one thing, MEMORIES. It was conveyed that memories could cause sadness, despair, loneliness, heartbreak and helplessness, but there isn’t a reason to stop and carry the pain for the rest of your life. The first episode may be utterly confusing, I personally didn’t like it at first because I wasn’t able to understand the whole thing, but once you’ve clearly got a good grasp on the concept, it’s fairly easier to predict and you’ll just leave that right there and focus how your emotions will react while watching from one episode to another. Other than that, the series was very well planned that you can’t find any holes in the story.

Animation: Stunningly beautiful! This is the anime where creativity was applied to it’s fullest. As the mood of the story shifts, so is the animation. The animation here doesn’t define how vivid it was or how it has good perspectives but rather they mainly use still images and make use of colors as a primary spice on the viewer’s eyes. The animation signifies every mood of the story that will make the viewer’s emotions go with it. The animation as well gives the impression of the character’s inner desires in a psychological point of view. It was clearly presented in the animation how the characters were feeling that you don’t really need to hear any narration or talks just to understand it. It was presented in such a unique concept that seems completely new to Japanese Animation.

Sound: The sound goes fairly well with the animation. It helps to illustrate and build the tension that the animation brought. Not much to say about this.

Character: The characters were very well developed and well defined as it goes with the story. With them struggling with their frustrations and some psychological issues, you could see how much they’ve evolved in just 12 episodes and it doesn’t seemed rushed at all. The development was mixed fluidly all throughout.

Enjoyment: Definitely worth a perfect score, writing a review isn’t really my thing, but after I gave the last 4 episodes a marathon last night, I felt that it’s unjust if I won’t give a review at all. I felt ashamed that I opt to halt watching this until the next summer break, I could have missed a once in a lifetime anime. And not to mention that I already started to cry before a minute passed when I started with episode 9 last night. My tears fell nonstop until the very last minute of the final episode.

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