(13 episodes)
What’s it about ?
Well, it’s a PA Works original production, so it’s set in a small country town and features a group of high school students. Here, the hook is… glasswork ? Some kind of future sight ? Frankly, I’ve got no clue.
Characters
So, there’s this tight-knit group of friends :
– Touko, our ingenue protagonist, whose family works into making glass objects
– Yuki, the boy who seems to have a jealous crush on her, but does a decent job of hiding it until the episode’s end
– Hiro, the goofball
– Yanagi, the slightly “wilder” girl of the group
– Sachi, who seems to have a medical condition that prevents her from going out as much as she’d want, and sometimes takes her frustrations out on her friends
Most of the episode is spent on establishing the group’s dynamics, through a festival and then an epic quest to try raising chicken. Thrilling stuff.
And then there’s Kakeru, the new guy, who seems to have some sort of psychic link with Touko. They hit it off quickly ; her friends (especially Yuki and Sachi) are way less welcoming.
Production Values
This studio is known for their scenery porn and lavish animation, and this is no exception. There are some weird freeze-frame instants (with non-naturalistic colouring) to indicate that there’s something more going on, which is a nice effect.
Overall Impression
I went into this hoping to learn how you make an anime about glasswork. I come out none the wiser, baffled as to what this show’s premise actually is. This makes the choice of focusing on its characters first, which is a shame because none of them besides Sachi are particularly interesting ; you’ve seen all this before, and better done, including in other PA Works series.
I nearly fell asleep watching this. And what woke me up… was a cringeworthy surge of melodrama towards the end, including laughably overwhelming music. That’s not a good sign.
I’m giving it one more episode to convince me otherwise, but this looks like a dud.
