(12ish episodes ?)
What’s it about ?
Adaptation of a dating sim visual novel.
Characters
Sou, our dense and clueless male lead. He seems to be only interested in astronomy, to the intense frustration of the girls clustering around him. I’m with them, so much (deliberate ?) inattention to his surroundings is quite annoying.
Kaori, his longtime childhood friend. Why she’s leaving in the same house is left completely unexplained at this point. Anyway, she’s effectively been friendzoned, and she responds in pure tsundere fashion, alternating between pouty passive-aggressiveness and hopeful wishful-thinking.
Airi, the president of the astronomy club, also has a thing for Sou, and does have better chemistry with him to the point that Kaori feels threatened… But Airi is intent on playing matchmaker so that she can move on. Also, she’s not entirely defined by her relationship with him ; her main thing is to play “mediator” between any troublemakers at school by beating the crap out of them. (For some reason, the Student Council even encourage her.)
Nagisa, the senior in the club, has the uncanny ability to show up out of nowhere (“I was here from the start”), which has obviously helped us gather blackmail material on just about everyone. Which helps a lot to smooth things over after Airi’s bursts of violence.
Kenny, the foreign exchange student who seems to have no real purpose in the story beyond being weird and randomly funny. Maybe he’s a figleaf so that the Astronomy Club isn’t just Sou’s harem ?
Now, things get weird towards the end, as Kaori finally finds the nerve to confess to Sou, only to be hit by a truck. No, seriously. Except everything’s back to normal in the next scene, as we seem to have slided back in time slightly… and then a naked girl shows up in the next room over from the Astronomy Club’s. The heck ?
Production Values
Perfectly decent. I could do without Airi flashing her panties whenever she kicks people, but it’s a blip in an otherwise fairly tame series.
Overall Impression
Well, that was weird. This looked like an utterly forgettable and generic romance series until the episode’s bizarre conclusion. That definitely got my attention. It does help that it wasn’t actually bad until then ; the characters had some likeability and were better written than average for this type of thing.
On the other hand, I’m wary of the gratuitous Proust reference in the title, which feels more than a bit pretentious. (Especially as the subtitle is complete gibberish.) Can the series really follow up on such a start without messing the landing up ? That remains to be seen.
Still, it bought itself a second episode, which is more than I thought going in. Don’t waste it.
