If you take one line away from this review, it’s this:

They didn’t lie when they said “H2O will rock your soul.” Not in the slightest.

If you take two lines, the second would be to not believe everything you see in H2O - style-wise and certainly character-wise. I know that I was for sure completely turned off the show on the first episode, ambivalent for the next two, and wanted to scratch my eyes out with rusty spoons by the fourth. It was essentially fanservice and pandering central…plus a now-infamous trap.

But, lured with the promise of improvement, of insanity, and yes, of soul-rocking, I soldered on, and my God, did H2O take off like a rocket. It really showed how it is unlike nearly no other visual novel show in recent memory, for few reasons.

The two that I could closest compare to, though, would be Shuffle and sola. The former, simply because of the similarities in how the first half was utter rubbish and the second half was beyond parallel, and the latter due to the style and feel of the show. Both sola and H2O are very impressive visual-novel-types, and while sola didn’t touch on romance or on fanservice quite as much or at all, both shows managed to be great plot-twist tour-de-forces that really leave you thinking.

Unfortunately, if you think too much, you realize the show is shot full of holes, but as a dramatic work, it’s top-notch.

To call H2O the best show of recent memory would probably be a lie. There’s too much of a rough taste in my mouth from a painful start and a mindscrewing final arc to give it such accolades. But it’s easily good enough for me to want to retract my allegations from earlier regarding it’s quality, and give it a solid reccomendation, for being unmistakably different than what we’ve seen in the past from this genre.

(Spoilers after the jump.)

Going to the controversial title first, H20 been claimed by Moogy to top even the perennial frontrunner in visual novel works, Key’s Clannad, in terms of the anime. To make a claim like this is something that gave me much thought, but I’d have to disagree … although I think that True Tears, the other strong challenger to the ren’ai throne, should start looking over their shoulder.

H2O’s first four episodes are something I’ll probably pan it on for the rest of my life. If it’s not the blind-guy groping fanservice, or the disturbing way the town beats down Hayami (or Hotaru vs. her grandfather, so on so forth), or - one word is needed here - Hamaji, it’s just the incredibly typical, been-there-done-that service that H2O dishes out, like it’s not even trying.

Clannad, in comparison, mails it in too with far too many episodes of, as it’s famously known, “Dozo! Have a starfish,” but at least that show had many, many legitimate comedic moments and made me feel less like a dirty person. Not to mention, it’s one hell of a looker, while H2O at times looks like it came from a few years ago.

Clannad’s character designs are something that give it an edge to me too; maybe I’m a sucker for moe, but H2O’s designs aren’t really anything memorable to me. Maybe it’s how the show was set up, but I was never too attached to any of the characters except Otoha. Yui nudged the adorable-meter by bashing down the door of the Nayuki Club, considering she actually had a thing for Hirose in the end, and Hotaru was a sweet character, but none of them quite click like the way shy-but-strong Nagisa, meddling tsundere Kyou, amusingly romantically disconnected Tomoyo, and moe genius Kotomi did.

The storyline and twists in H2O are what could potentially push it into first. Clannad is strong throughout - Fuuko and Kotomi’s arcs are typical cry-fests, Kyou and Tomoyo’s stories are heart-tearing, and Nagisa’s persistant growth throughout the series is admirable. But it doesn’t give that great sense of going beyond - I didn’t find myself incredibly moved by any of the arcs, and although I enjoyed the show a lot I felt it didn’t quite have the impact of its Key predecessors.

On the other hand, I’m a fool for twists and shock events and H2O absolutely delivered in that regard. From the very first shock around episode seven that it didn’t actually suck - along with the Hotaru / Hinata double switch that actually caught me off guard - H2O established itself as a strong plot-driven show like Myself;Yourself or sola, and it kept pushing through, with the induced insanity of episode 8 (Otoha), the multiple reversal revelations of Takuma’s past, and the entirety of the final episode, right up until the very last scene of the show.

Not to mention, the biggest shock of all, that Hamaji functions well as a man and a woman. But I digress…

Now plot-driven shows may not work for everyone. There’s a decided lack of grounding in reality for sure, especially how H2O moves from one trigger (maybe Otoha, maybe the village elder, maybe another random revelation) to the next, but not every show has to be bluntly realistic for it to work. Maybe it’s a bit escapist to say “sometimes it’s good to get away from the real world,” but as a work of fiction, H2O does a good job of spinning a world disconnected from reality - right down to its rural setting - and creating a moving, dramatic story.

But in the end I’m giving Clannad the nod over H2O, by a small but sizable amount, if only because the former has had more time and more ability to flesh out its own world, smoothing out the holes and giving each character their time in the spotlight. Clannad may not be an superlative emotional work like Kanon or AIR but it was a very strong comedy and a very strong dramatic work, and H2O could only really reach one of those bars consistently. Maybe I’m a Key fanboy, but H2O will have to settle for second here - although what has been done with limited time and ugly art, is quite impressive.

Impressive enough that, like I said, I’d have to put it over True Tears at the moment. I’m probably biased in the sense that I haven’t watched True Tears in about a week, compared to my seven-in-seven-days H2O marathon, but True Tears strikes me as a very great show that works only inside the box. In a sense it’s very typical, from the guy plus childhood friend plus mysterious girl (plus the third wheel) setup, to the relationship drama between the characters, to the striptease way which the story is revealed and then covered up.

Don’t get me wrong. True Tears does what it does extraordinarily well. It has animation quality worthy of the market leader Kyoto Animation. It has characters that have contradictions and depth, and are quite adorable (Noe = moe, etc.). But I appreciate H2O at the moment just a bit more for daring to be different, for jumping outside the usual bounds of visual novel / harem shows, something that True Tears at times seems reluctant to do.

Sometimes H2O makes some strange calls with it’s unorthodoxness (Yes, finally, I’m talking about the show.). Watching Hayami get beaten up by the school thugs again and again in the early episodes is something that will leave many viewers queasy and feeling dirty, almost as much as when they shove Takuma’s head up Hotaru’s skirt. It looks to create a setup that is rather typical, a “guy saves the girl” situation where Takuma steps in to save Hayami. Yet, somehow, in the end, the truth couldn’t be further opposite that mark.

Yes, the beatings and oppression of Hayami (and to a lesser extent, Hotaru) are quite the disturbing sight, but it establishes a great sense of conflict in the show that will be explored upon later to greater extent, as everyone finds out how deep the rabbit hole goes between all the families of the village (plus the Hiroses). And to keep hammering the uniqueness point home, what other show would you see that drags characters, sometimes literally, through the mud in order to give them depth and backstory, instead of just giving them the comparative high road?

Sometimes I feel like most visual novel shows are too tranquil, too peaceful and kind (there’s that sense of cynicism again, but ignore that), and H2O shows a different reality than most in actually not being afraid to characterize that sense of being outcasted that many say is pervasive in Japanese society. It’s a little bit of stark realism amidst a strong fantasy world, in seeing the clash of viewpoints between the stubborn elders (and, less so, students) and the revolutionary youth.

Takuma is a great example of that revolutionary as well; he, despite being as wimpy-looking (and sometimes acting) as many other harem-style leads, actually is a quite intriguing and interesting character. While most characters of his type don’t have much backstory other than how they flirted with five different girls at the age of ten, Takuma has a genuine, locked-away past that isn’t what it seems at first glance (similar to Sana’s of Myself;Yourself, but less incredibly obvious), one that troubles him and causes him to lash out and drop his always-pleasant harem-lead demanor at times.

He struggles with the truth but isn’t afraid to force truth upon others, coming to the defense of Hotaru and Hayami much faster than most waffling harem leads do. He’s resolute, he makes decisions, he doesn’t spend forever flirting with everyone, and he can strongly express what he feels. He’s not going to beat out Akio Furukawa in the manliness department, clobber Kyon / Yuuichi / etc. in the wit category, or defeat Renji Asou in the “great insights” battle, but he’s miles ahead of a Kouichi, a Yuuji, a Riku.

And in the end, he does what very few characters dare to do today and go completely insane. Mako-cakes, you have nothing on this kind of broken. Nothing.

The final arc of H2O is something that viewers will probably either love or hate, much like the Otoha episode. Both are incredibly confusing, twist-and-twist-again (bure bure bure bure, etc) roller-coaster rides that may not make much sense, but are quite the adrenaline rush. Just following Hayami is something; from the near-execution, to the move to the city to care for Takuma as his “mom”, to the shocking scene on the train tracks, right to her appearance in the final scene, it’s a tour de force with highs, lows, and a whole lot of shock.

The one thing that catches me about it, is that while a whole lot is explained, a whole lot isn’t. I’m not fully sure of whether Takuma’s vision was ever really there or not. I first wanted to say that all he did merely reverted back when Otoha’s magic wore off, but the show raised a possibility that he was decieving himself all along. This explains why everyone accepted his vision so easily, and explains a few events in the show, but doesn’t explain many others (the biggest of which being his interception of Hayami’s execution).

Or what about the painfully open-ended ending of the show. Simply, Hayami came back. It was a very mixed bag of emotions for me; ever since she got run over 5 minutes before, I was screaming out for some sort of closure. It just seemed so, so wrong for Takuma to go full circle like that twice, seemed too much of a sacrifice for Hayami to do something like that for Takuma’s sake. But I was expecting some sort of ‘life goes on’ ending, similar to sola’s. It seemed too cheap, too easy for Hayami to come back: to bring her to life would nullify her death, and to bring her back as a spirit (another possibility, although I thought Otoha’s talk with ‘arguing with the Spirit Council’ was in regards to herself being born into a human body) doesn’t seem fulfilling enough, seems like too much teasing; “here I am, but you can never have me.”

The other side to the coin, though, is the religious overtones of the show. I’m atheist myself, and so this was the closest thing I unintentionally did to celebrating Easter yesterday, but thinking of H2O in a slightly religious manner puts all sorts of interesting spin on the situation, and gives it surprising depth. The biggest one is of course the monologue that I think Otoha spits out about God being with a man walking along the beach, and carrying him in times of crisis (why sometimes there are two sets, sometimes one set of footprints in the sand), a message that seems to apply to Hayami and Takuma first and foremost, although Otoha could be spun in there as well.

Both Takuma and Hayami did their fair share of carrying the other when times were tough; I think Hayami acted as the God moreso, ironic considering her original title as a cursed being (or demon, or something) from the beginning of the show (which I first thought was literal). It could also be said that Otoha was the God, since she is a spirit, and since she guided Takuma down his path to discovering himself, picking him up when he tried to shut himself in his own delusion.

As Demian puts it bluntly in the title of his post two paragraphs up, Hayami plays a role almost like that of Jesus in H2O as well, if you read the ending right. When I watched Hayami run onto the train tracks, and Takuma’s subsequent revelations, the first thing I thought (well, when I was able to think again) was “Hayami died for your sins, Takuma,” and her reappearance in the final scene could be considered her resurrection of sort.

It could be argued in a way that Hayami presumably coming back to life isn’t cheap at all; in a sense, it’s Otoha’s reward to both her and Takuma for the good things they did in life, for each other and for their village. I’m not 100% sure on this point and whether I’m satisfied with it, but even here it shows how H2O is a show that’s much more inviting of analysis - in some points, anyway - than it first seems.

(Speaking of not what it seems, a point that I haven’t mentioned yet: Hotaru’s pandering to Takuma by jumping all over him … while it seemed to be just that, pandering to make the fans drool, arguably it’s purposeful how over-the-top it is, because of her grandfather’s insistence that she get Takuma to marry her. It’s a tough call how much of her feelings for Takuma really are her own, but it’s clear that she’s at least level-headed enough to admit defeat to Hayami in the end.)

I still hesitate to put it up with the greats. For all its shining points there really are flaws that hold it back, if not the fanservice, if not the slow start, then the way which the show really probably could be taken to bits given enough time and effort. Dramatic tour de force shows like this work extraordinarily well as what they are and can make a impression easily enough, but the real lasting marks are the shows that don’t just live in their own world but also reach out to the viewer; the ones that make people question themselves, question life, make them really think. It’s this kind of induced self-analysis that I really adore. A good work of fiction will make you think about the characters … a great one will make you think about yourself. That’s what I believe.

And H2O, for what it is, mostly lives in it’s own self-enclosed world. There’s a couple points in there, perhaps, whether it be the religious overtones, the way which Hayami is treated, or the way in which Takuma denies himself, but it’s not world-shaking. But I won’t deny that the story itself, true to name, is soul-rocking. H2O is a definite must-watch for those disillusioned with the same old harem / visual-novel adaptations.

-CCY

(A more full review of H2O, instead of a aimless rant / rave, might follow in the next few weeks. The purpose of these “decompression” posts are to evaluate what I think of the show right after it finishes…we’ll see how the opinion changes over time.)

(I really didn’t mean to be posting this much, but such is the perils of being an anime fan in the middle of many powerful endings. Even the Clannad and KimiNozo reviews are getting shafted now…)

If you liked this post, try...

• May 20, 2008 -- ‘Team Clannad’ Theater: In which Clannad the Movie gets reviewed … somewhere
• May 17, 2008 -- Harem Personality Quiz: ask your blogger what harem anime is right for you!
• May 14, 2008 -- A Month Late, A Couple Million Yen Short: Kaiji, reviewed
• April 30, 2008 -- Team Clannad reviews … themselves (Series Review: Clannad)
• April 12, 2008 -- Emotional Sonic Boom: Five Centimeters Per Second, (First) Final Impressions

This entry was posted on Monday, March 24th, 2008 at 2:03 pm and is filed under H2O ~Footprints in the Sand~, Series Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.