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| Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
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| Unevaluated | Stretch | # | ||||||
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(Five episodes watched): I was delighted to see a second season of ef, a thinking person's anime, coming about. Again there is stylized, distinctive artwork and two more-or-less seperate plots. I was afraid at first that this was going to be so cryptic that I might not be able to make much sense of it right from the start (this "Otowa" business, for one thing), but after the prologue it became much easier to understand. Memory loss still seems to be a theme, at least in one of the two plots. The only character I recognized from the original series was Renji, who it seems will play a minor part here. Ten minutes into the show I had given up hope of a cool OP sequence appearing, then suddenly it burst out of nowhere. I didn't like it as much as the first one, but still couldn't help grinning and saying to myself "this kicks ass"! Afterwards, the technique of sound effects, etcetera, used to introduce some jokes seemed discordant with the mood of the original show. That one didn't completely lack humor, but it was more witty and restrained. So, I'm not sure if this new approach is good news or bad. Anyway, a guy meets a childhood friend after being seperated (by memory loss?) for ten years; and Renji's cousin meets Kuze, a professional violinist--who has a problem. So far, so good--both my hopes and expectations are high for this one. Again, I'm feeling a definite preference for one plot over the other, in this case the Kuze one. I had thought that he was 30-something years old, given his fame and the tone of his voice, but apparently he's a high schooler like everyone else. ef is definitely dialogue driven, to the extent that some people cannot understand why there's "nothing going on" and abandon it. I must admit I have a hard time keeping track of the complex storylines from one episode to the next--again, just like during ef Memories. Still, it's a more interesting show than most, with complex and odd plots plus avant garde artwork. Another odd thing is that the show seems to take place in Europe although most of the characters are visitors from Japan. Correction, "Otowa City" seems to be in Australia, and what's more there's a city by the same name in Japan as well. In episode five a couple characters actually travel from the Japanese city to the Australian one, which made it occur to me that maybe my assumption that everything was taking place in the same non-Japanese city was mistaken. This seems to be one of those shows whch flirts with dreams/magic, which may or may not be influencing the plots in a subtle way. Yuuki is definitely hiding something. It's curious how an all-dialogue show manages to remain so sophisticated and interesting. Last updated Monday, November 17 2008. Created Wednesday, October 08 2008. | ||||||||
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Other Sites
| Name | URL |
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| Official series site (Japanese) | http://www.ef-melo.com/ |
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