So my boycott lasted half a day. Well good job by w.0.0.f in getting a sub out fast. Another great series has reached its end, and I do hope P.A. Works continues with beautiful projects in the future. You’ve got KyoAni on the run, potentially. Or at least your writing staff does. I await the American release of this series’ DVDs, because I really need to share true tears’s excellence.

Analysis

LianYL wrote an analysis to end all analyses of this series. There’s no way I can top such an understanding of the story of Raigomaru and Jibeta, comparing all that it means to the characters of the series and then to the meaning of life itself. It’s a ten-page review, but the prose and diction keep you reading. And it gets you thinking, too.

The basic concept is that everyone in life should seek to “take flight.” But this doesn’t mean everyone has to work hard and achieve miraculous things. You could very well be mediocre and have “taken flight,” living a happy life like that. The idea of “taking flight” is to choose your path in life and stick with it. Being indecisive and wavering is what is bad and gets you scolded by Noe.

And so “true tears” are those that are cried when one has not only chosen a path to take, but has done so with the love and support of another. Tears bred from selfishness or indecision or an illusion (viewing others as people they aren’t or trying to force a personality on someone who isn’t that personality) are not “true” at all.

It’s just really neat; you should go read it. Other than that, you really just have a romance story with a love polygon. And if you only want to look at true tears at this surface level (which is fine as long as you’ve committed to doing so), then you still have a complete series of people going through their first relationships and discovering what means most to them. Life is full of many decisions — forks in the roads with no definite right or wrong path — and the act of choosing (or not choosing) is just what the dynamic unpredictability of life is all about.

Characters

So Hiromi wins in the end, not by any huge miracle or because she and Shinichiro were destined to be together. It was a love that developed over a long period of semi-familial attachment and friendship. Probably a little bit of honest physical attraction in there, too (I recall the “x-ray vision” scene from much earlier in the series). What they have was long-established and just lay dormant. Perhaps Noe was a catalyst to help awaken that love.

And Noe was a true attraction for Shin as well. Usually that’s what it needs, for a guy to like someone else before realizing who he left behind. One of those “you don’t realize what you had until you lose it” situations. Shin knows he’s in love with Hiromi, but his heart wavers when he sees Noe. So there could very well be a Noe end, but only in an alternate universe (or OVA, if PA Works wants to follow what’s being done with Kiminozo).

Noe herself went through a lot of growth, realizing others’ feelings too late or not conforming to her predictions. I’m happy in the end that she wasn’t heartbroken. Or rather it was slowly broken for a while now when she realized Shin would still look to Hiromi. So she had been slowly letting him go for a while, while also starting to take flight again herself. And at the very end there, we see a tear from Noe, who is able to reflect upon how her life has gone and how she had affected Shin and how he had affected her.

Ai got the shortest story, I guess, but it wasn’t unecessary. She was able to move on from Shin and realize that her first love is not necessarily the only love she could ever have. With the desire for Shin pretty much out of the way, she can honestly start over with Miyokichi on much fairer grounds. And he’s a great guy, too.

Poor Jun. At least he’s decided on his path, but so sad for the siscon fans that the drama was so short. But it was realistic, I suppose, in that he knew what he couldn’t do … and so the only way to keep the pain away was to separate himself completely. He wasn’t going to force Noe into a situation she didn’t want or didn’t believe in. And before he left, he did answer Hiromi’s question and settle that part of his life. So he’s not one to leave things unfinished.

Production

Again, the music is grand, and the artwork superb. The soundtrack isn’t as expanse as Clannad’s, but it carries a lot of emotion. I’m sad there wasn’t a really dramatic crescendo in ep13, because they had lots of impact when used in previous episodes. Nevertheless, the piano rendition of “Reflectia” echoing here and there still works in most soft, subtler scenes.

Very significant to the artwork quality is the smooth use of CG. While some people still look a little still when walking, it’s certainly different from having them all drawn or drawn flat. Even in the credits scene with Noe standing still in the wind, you could see other students walking home in the distance. It’s just that touch of realism that gets my praise.

Lasting Effect

true tears was quite the talked-about series. Among LianYL’s analysis are plenty of other writings, essays, and defenses for characters and concepts in this series. We had a strong Noe following and Hiromi following, and both sides played cleanly really. Because the series just kept it so ambiguous and uncertain as to how the series would end. So all we could do was debate honestly and honorably to the bitter end, because we had no other clues or “Oh it’s so obvious!” moments. Again, interesting to note is that Shin did love both of them! He just had to choose… Such is an original story not restricted by the plot architecture of a visual novel or eroge. Although I would love to play a visual novel based on this series…

This is something that will be remembered for a while and referenced often in future romance/drama series. I also hope to see production quality equaling this series’ in future works by all studios. Anime really just continues to get better and better.

Not sure if companies can spam the merchandising front. I don’t expect to see a 1/8-scale Noe figure anytime soon, even though it’d be really cute. The posters in Megami and such are nice, though. And has there been a shortage of wallscrolls in general lately? Or am I just not looking in the right places for them…

–Oh yeah, ep13 forewent the OP sequence, which gets thumbs up forever in my book. Again, not because I hate OPs, but because the extra 90 seconds is necessary to finish the storytelling.

~Crisu