Anime review of 'Say "I Love You" '

And welcome back to OtakuNoVideos, always thank you very much for joining me. Where today, I'm giving you a spoiler-free review of Say I Love You. A recent anime series from I believe 2013? Possibly 2012, I'm forgetting right now. That's okay. A very recent anime series. And it's directed by the guy who directed and storyboarded Strawberry Marshmallow and Nia Under 7. Now this is a straight high school romance series. It's about two characters and their relationship with mostly drama and some comedy. Now the animation in this is minimal, but that's okay because this director shines at that. He excels in stillness. Many of the moments I remember from this series involve no dialogue and no movement. Just stillness. And they say a lot about their characters. The art style, interestingly, tends towards soft colors with a relatively dark palette. And I think that's intentional. It's a mostly sweet story about characters that have a lot of darkness around them. It really, really fits. Now the direction, as with most shoujo series, focuses on close-ups and medium shots. They really get in close on the action and really communicate as much as possible about the emotion that the characters are going through with these close-ups of their faces. Alright, so what's the concept? Now this may sound cliched and unrealistic. Shy- shyest girl in class is suddenly being dated by the most popular boy in class. But I like how this is handled. He's dated a lot of girls and he dates her because she's dateable too. It's not pity, it's that, you know, he likes dating girls, he likes girls. And there's a girl and he's broken up with his most recent girlfriend recently and sure, I'll date you, that's fine. Moreover, it's not like he suddenly can't imagine liking any other girl. Now within their relationship, he's completely monogamous. But, you know, his behavior makes sense. It's also interesting seeing how the girl reacts now that she's in this relationship. She's never really had a boyfriend before. And so she gets flustered when they kiss, for example. And this gets into one of the ongoing themes of the series, namely communication, as kind of the key to relationships. As the boy points out, he's dated a lot of girls who've gone a lot farther, a lot quicker than kissing, you know, at any given point in their relationship. Moreover, he explains that, you know, that boundary about kissing and that concern about how fast he's going, that's fine. She can have those boundaries, she just needs to communicate them to the boy. You know, different people move at different speeds, and they need to explain that to each other. The writers also do an impressive job of showing us why characters behave the way they do. Without getting into any spoilers, there's one character who's a solid antagonist for much of the series, and then suddenly we get five minutes of backstory, and suddenly I felt so sorry for this character. Everybody in this series behaves rationally, and nobody's perfect. Well, the boyfriend comes close to perfect, but this is shoujo after all. Now, when it comes to dialogue, each character speaks distinctively, though not dramatically so. Some are outgoing, some are more shy, and they just each have a slightly different pattern to their voices and dialogue, which I do think fits well. As to the overall tone of the show, while there is some comedy in there, it focuses mainly on melodrama. This is set in the real modern world of cell phones and fast relationships, with no coincidences and no wacky hijinks. And that's one thing I actually deeply appreciated about this series. This is about modern teenagers dealing with modern pressures. Some of them sleep around shamelessly, some of them are violent. That's just reality.