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Goo-oogle!

Favorite Scene
Since there's really nothing that stands out in this anime, I suppose I'll go with the part where the viewer finds out that Shiori's phone pal is the girl who's been watching her. It's one of the few scenes that make sense to me, amidst the wide array of female characters. It's interesting how they've been talking about the guys they like and it ends up being the same guy. Only the phone pal knew this, though. Yes, it's interesting in a creepy, stalkerish way o.o

Tokimeki Memorial
Synopsis | Review

I was particularly interested in Tokimeki Memorial because of Episode of Miku. In that manga, Alexander Howell names one of the tennyo clones as Shiori, after the main character in Tokimeki Memorial the videogame.

So when I found that Tokimeki Memorial is available as a 2-part OAV, I wanted to see it. It was a long wait for me, however. I usually don't see series that are not completely available. When I discovered the Tokimeki Memorial anime, only the first OAV was fansubbed. So I waited.

Finally, the second OAV was available via fansub. I sat down and watched the whole thing. And it left me perplexed. It's a confusing anime. I think you'll have to watch it two or three times to really get it and perhaps even appreciate it. The anime was based on the videogame dating simulation franchise. And yes, the main character is a girl named Shiori. In the videogame, she's essentially the girl that the player strives to win. Evidently, the game is targeted towards males.

Synopsis
At Tokimeki Memorial High, Fujisaki Shiori's school, there is a tree. According to the school legend, if one confesses to his or her love under that tree on graduation day, the two of them will live happily ever after. The catch is that if you plan on having such a confession, you're not supposed to tell anyone about it.

The main story revolves around Fujisaki Shiori. She's in love with the guy next door. This guy confessed to her before, but she turned him down. No, he didn't confess under the tree xD. Maybe he should have. But I digress. As time went by, Shiori slowly realizes that she does like her boy-next-door after all. And she has this sneaking suspicion that he likes her as well. After all, doesn't she almost catch him looking at her during class?

Shiori got around to thinking about her own love life especially when she picks up the phone one day and strikes up a conversation with a stranger. What? Let me elaborate. A girl meant to call her crush and accidentally dials Shiori's number by mistake, and Shiori gets around to chatting with the girl about the crush. It was the beginning of several phone conversations with the strange girl.

Aside from Shiori's story, the anime also focused on her other female classmates' love lives. And this is where I got lost @_@. There's just too many characters, of different personalities. There's Shiori's best friend, Mikhara Megumi. She's the only one who really stands out, aside from Shiori. The host of supporting characters include the genki lowerclassman, the elegant and mysterious girl with a fan club of panting males, an athlete, an artist who tries to be an athlete, a cutesy girl, and a girl who watches Shiori a lot. I'm pretty sure I missed a bunch of others @_@. In fact, there's so many female characters that I wondered if this anime is yuri. It's not. There's a couple of male characters--the genki lowerclassman's older brother and a really suave and really rich classmate.

The first OAV ends with Shiori waiting for her boy-next-door under the tree on graduation day. And yes, he arrives. The end.

Enter the next OAV. This one shows more things that happened in-between the first and the last scenes in the first OAV. It was a little disorienting for me. In this OAV, Shiori puts together a classical music appreciation club. Its initial members were only Megumi and another girl, but the membership expanded to include the really rich classmate and a whole bunch of other classmates. Shiori formed the club as a way of getting close to her boy-next-door. She was hoping he'd attend, but he never did. Another reason for her club was that she wanted to do something significant in high school before graduating.

There's more tension in the second OAV. Shiori finds out that her boy-next-door dated the elegant and mysterious girl with a fan club. The latter only did so because she wanted to give the average joe a chance. Shiori also continues to talk to her phone pal, who settled herself watching her crush from afar. Towards the end of the anime, the phone pal calls her in tears. She confessed to her crush, but he turned her down. She then tells Shiori to go ahead and confess to her boy-next-door. It became apparent from this conversation that the phone pal is the same girl who's been watching Shiori.

The second OAV closes with Shiori's more detailed confession to her boy-next-door under the tree. And yes, he accepts her confession.

Review
And this is where I grouse about my main beef with the anime. Not once in the whole anime was the boy-next-door shown. There would be views of his back, his silhouettes, and quick snatches of when he was watching Shiori only to hide again. But never his face. Yush, the anime people did it on purpose. Even in the end, the viewer just had to assume that he accepted Shiori's confession, because after a pause, she cried and asked him to take care of her. I understood the reason for this concealment after I learned more about the videogame, that it involves striving to get Shiori as a girlfriend. The boy-next-door is meant to be the guy who plays the videogame, so he's left faceless in the anime. Boy oh boy. That sure doesn't give me any satisfaction.

The graphics are average. I just realized that the girls' uniforms are similar to the uniforms in Sailor Moon. But anyway, there's nothing in this anime's technology that stands out.

This anime is great if you want a quickie little series, or if you're so obssessed with Ayashi no Ceres that you just want to find out everything and anything that it mentions. It's not really meant to be deep and profound, so you might be disappointed if that's what you're looking for.

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