Review: Sasameki Koto

Before I begin, I apologize for the lack of content in, what, over a year? I attribute this to being far too caught up in personal stuff and just forgetting about this place. It tends to happen when I'm not committed. But seeing as how my situation has changed a bit, I'll try to contribute more to this site, at least until I get overwhelmingly busy again.

Anyways, enough excuses; let's talk anime.


Sasameki Koto (Whispered Words)

Source: Manga (written by Takashi Ikeda)
Vintage: 2009
Animation: Anime International Company
Director: Eiji Suganuma
Writer: Hideyuki Kurata
Genre: Romance, comedy, yuri, slice of life
Length: 13 half-hour episodes

Our Cast

Sumika Murasame is a very tall, athletic and gifted student. She also harbors a crush on her close friend, Ushio Kazama, a soft spoken young girl who is very open about her lesbianism. However, she has an admiration for "cute" girls--as in, very pretty, childlike, ditzy, innocent, etc.--and cute girls only. That, combined with the fact that they've been friends for years, makes it difficult for Sumika to confess to her. Even so, she must come to terms with her sexuality and find the courage to admit her true feelings. Of course, she has to do this whilst in a sort of "lesbian club", started by Tomoe Hachisuka, a rather passionate and outgoing upperclassman, her junior and lover Miyako Taema, a yuri fan and aspiring writer Azusa Aoi and Masaki Akemiya, a feminine looking boy who was only roped in because he secretly crossdresses as a woman, under the name "Yamasaki Akemi".

Oh yeah, and this other chick named Kiyori Torioi. She's friends with Sumika and Ushio. That's about it.

So in case you couldn't tell, this series falls into the "yuri" category rather blatantly. Of the seven main cast members you see here, only two of them are straight. Everyone else is a lesbian, either openly or closeted, and the series tends to deal with the kind of repressed and lonely feelings that seem to permeate in a lot of young lesbians in Japan. They want to express their feelings just like anyone else, but the problem is that there are those who find it too scandalous or strange, and so they are ostracized for this. It's a real problem found just about anywhere in the world. And this is touched upon since, unlike most high school yuri anime, this one doesn't take place in an all-girls school and it's actually co-ed. Granted, there only seems to be one male character who actually matters in this show, and even he dresses up like a girl most of the time. Still, it offers some very straightforward commentary on the repression of teenage sexuality.

Then again, this could just be from the manga version, because this subject matter is rather downplayed in the anime adaptation, in favor of slice-of-life comedy antics that permeate the greater part of the show.

One of the best moments of the show, and it happens too early

In the first couple of episodes, the tone seems very slow and kind of melancholy. Ushio is crushing on this girl working in the library, while Sumika desperately longs for Ushio. The music is somber and sad, the events are dealt with a sense of gravitas and weight and you can feel the pain that the two leads feel in regards to their rejected desires. Granted, it wasn't particularly interesting at first, since there wasn't much to the characters other than "lesbians", one energetic and one a bit more quiet, but it definitely was setting itself up to tug at your heartstrings and make you cry.

But as the show goes on, comedy begins to creep in and by the fourth episode, the serious mood has been replaced with "watch lesbian characters do funny things", a.k.a., just about everything that most high school girl anime made these days ever does anymore. Oh, but they're gay this time and not talking about cute boys, but girls. Isn't that so different? And the one guy they have dresses up like a super cute girl all the time, isn't that so funny?

The one on the left is a guy. Seriously.

Honestly, it just feels like too big of a tonal shift. When you go from a rather serious drama to Sumika getting into karate fights with big fat faceless blobs in an alleyway, cooking explosions ruining maid costumes and finding secret scavenger hunt clues across the school, you know you've just lost the audience that wanted more realistic fare. Hell, Sumika's brothers all look like Ryu from Street Fighter. I don't get it, is it because she's into karate so her whole family is?

That being said, there is some plot, mostly in Sumika wanting to spend time with and establish a romantic connection with Ushio, but also wanting to help her friend Azusa write a yuri fanzine for a convention, whilst being dragged along by the uber lesbians to do stupid stuff. It's mostly a character piece, and they do become much more colorful and defined than in the first couple of episodes. I just wasn't a fan of the much more comedic tone it took on, yet at the same time, I can't deny that it didn't make me laugh once or twice an episode, sometimes a bit more than that even. It did still have its more dramatic tearjerker moments, though, and the dilemma in the last episode, while somewhat mundane, does carry a lot of emotional weight and importance to it. It's just that there's not a whole lot of that when the first episode made it seem like that would be the focus.

The art style is pretty standard, but the animation has a tendency to be really cheap. This is sort of a problem I've seen with shows by AIC; they have nice designs, but actual animation looks stiff. It's passable for the most part, but they do seem to have a problem with having people moving toward or away from a "camera", and sometimes limb movement looks like it took all of three frames. Again, it doesn't happen too often, but the animation was a lot better in the first episode. What's weird is that the art style seems to change a bit as the show goes along, and I don't just mean the overabundance of comedic faces that pops up later on. Again, it probably is to create a more humorous feel, but it just doesn't look right anymore. 

Voice acting is only in Japanese, but it all seemed decent. No one turned in a bad performance, but there wasn't anything all that standout, either. Music also does its job well, and the opening theme and score in the  first episode set a wonderfully melancholy mood. The later, more lighthearted stuff also works, but only because it's needed to set the new direction.

Overall, Sasameki Koto is okay. It has some genuinely good, dramatic moments and a very sweet relationship, but it spends far too much time being funny than it is advancing the romance story, which doesn't really end so much as trails off into nothing. It will make you laugh a little bit, but nothing that will stick with you for a long time. Still, not a bad example of yuri if you're into it, but there are better.

Even high school lesbians do the "robot voice through a fan" thing.

The series is currently available to stream on Crunchy Roll, but it'll be removed by the end of the month due to licensing restrictions. Get on it while you still can.  Gone now. Your only hope is either to import it or resort to less...legal means.