“Seventeen years it had taken him to learn?what kind of meaning was hidden beneath the walls of text. O cruel, needless pretentiousness! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the world of logic and sensibility! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved ef.”

Why make sense when you could make awesome?

i Can try to explain why ef is probably disproportionally HIgh on the list of sHows that I consider completely and utterly soul-ROcking and world-shaking, but I‘ll probably Sound like a Maniacal, idiOtic pÉrson.

For really, the reason why ef makes me so, so happy inside – aside from the story – is the reason it will turn so many people off.

Somehow the one thing in anime that
entertains me more than I really believe that it should is
named
pretentiousness
and
i’m not ashamed at all
Ef features a lot of other
notable things that make it stand out as well that
effectively make it a well-
rounded package full of so much awesomeness that a
grain (or rather a truck full of) of eccentricity only makes
you (or at least me) love it more

Well, anyway, I stare down the barrel of the eleventh episode of the second season, with the impending closure of the story growing closer every day (and I’m just about in Aniblog Lockdown as a result), and I can think of nothing but praise for ef as a whole.

Granted, it’s praise with strings attached – I fully understand that ef is a hit or miss show. Sometimes it jumps into the deep end
jumps into the deep end
jumps into the deep, deep end
jumps into the deep, deep, deep end
jumps into the deep, deep, deep, deep end
jumps into the deep, deep, deep, deep, deep end
jumps into the deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep end of unintelligability, pretentiousness, insanity, of repetitiveness and overly long camera shots and really strange directive choices all those deep choices which have meaning but sometimes you see a wall of text in German and you just have to ask

WHY

and in the end it’s just a visual novel adaptation. No amount of good story can save it in the eyes of some. But why focus on the negative?

“The command of the old despotisms was Thou shalt not. The command of the totalitarians was Thou shalt. Our command is Thou art.”

ef is something I treasure for many the same reason as Higurashi. It hides within the cozy, familiar genre of visual novel adaptations (here, more of a romance story – stories, rather – than a harem show), a core that is far different than that of many of its brethren.

006 [the]
007 [pretentiousness]
003 [don't]
002 [I]
005 [just]
004 [mean]
008 [either.]
001 [And]

Rather, what impresses me a lot about ef is that it’s not just a story about some generic no-face guy coddling with and sucking up to (and then later, sucking off or whatever euphemism applies) a bunch of screwed-up girls … rather, everyone in ef is … well, screwed up, in their own way.

And while this may not be the style for everyone, I rather enjoy the sort of balance that this lends ef.

Like in Kodomo no Jikan, the question of belivability comes into play, and while ef stretches it a bit, especially if you come at it from a ‘plausability and realism’ standpoint.

But I think that the above point in addition to how ef plays itself across, makes it work very well as a ‘dramatic’ type of story, closer to the Higurashi or sola end of the scale than, say, KimiKiss or (maybe) true tears.

It’s a story where everyone has a story to tell, a work with a lot of incredible coincidences – the Shiori-esque may say ‘miracles’ – which all build together to make a brilliant emotional climax to it all. By removing the limiter of real life, probably even going past Owen’s concept of ‘hyperrealism’, ef can charge at full speed. It can will into existence, in the hearts of the viewers, characters like Chihiro and Yuuko.

For even if they do have astoundingly weird, almost supernatural, problems … in the end, a lot of what their troubles boil down to can be surprisingly down-to-earth. Maybe not the bluntness of a Five Centimeters Per Second, no, but as they say, the language of love is universal, even if it is obscured by strange memory defects and funny black-and-white camera shots.

(Part of a 12-day series fondly remembering some of the best moments in anime this year. Participants include: lolikitsune, lelangir, FuyuMaiden, Zeroblade, Nazarielle, ghostlightning, TheBigN, ETERNAL, Mike, A Day Without Me, digitalboy, Josh, otou-san, Culchann and Pontifus, IcyStorm, Cokematic,
koneko-chan, and miz, and you’re welcome to join too!)

Maybe you don’t know people who have experienced the exact same hardships as those in ef (whose hardships often read like a checklist of things to get screwed over by), but whose heart doesn’t ache when there is someone you want to help but can’t, someone you could have helped but couldn’t, something you could do but won’t …

Perhaps it’s a complement to Five Centimeters Per Second, hammering home that pang of regret. Equally so with that underlying message of being true to oneself, what with all the people hiding their true feelings / thoughts / faces / etc.

And despite all the stuff ef tries to heap on top of it, somehow, it ironically boils down to something that simple. The Power of Love, almost.

“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”

Like you see with so many hardened people. They swear not to love again. They push people away because of their own pain. Take your pick of excuses: they don’t want to hurt others, or they don’t want to be hurt.

But inevitably that’s not really what they truly desire, is it?

Just like every slice-of-life show tells you, there is a little bit of love inside of everyone (world is wonderful in the eyes of wonderful people, etc), and that shell cracks. All it takes is the right person.

In the end – or at least, the feeling I get from the 11th episode of the second season – ef really is, somehow, that optomistic. It just arrives at that conclusion after a much, much more emotionally painful ride than the normal visual novel.

I really appreciate both sides of the coin. I like an anime that can make me feel strong emotion (I won’t say ‘cry’).

And ef can affect me. I don’t know if it’s the same for everyone else out there but even when I’m hating it (hi melodies episode 10) it’s still hitting a nerve somewhere. Maybe, it’s the power of the first season rolling over, combined with hype, to almost subconsciously will me to feel something, but damn. I think they could overlay ‘ebullient future’ on a montage of Hitler dying and I would get that feeling in my stomach.

Yet, somehow, ef can uplift you too. Somehow, I just don’t think it chooses too. I mean, take the 11th episode of melodies. It’s almost unreal in how upbeat the tone stays throughout the whole thing. Or what of the last episode of memories? It’s because there has been so much suffering that the happiness becomes that much sweeter.

Am I going to pick a moment from ef? Maybe. It really depends on what you’re looking for.

As said, for the happiness, there is Melodies 11 and Memories 12.
For the emotion, Memories 10-11, maybe Melodies in the middle half.
For the insanity, it’s around every corner.

I think by this point ef has transcended the boundaries of anything I can rationally talk about, evidenced by the fact that my ramblings on it are diverging off to positive infinity rather than converging on something sensible.

I don’t feel as instantly compelled to watch it immediately on download as do I with One Outs or Toradora, but this is probably just an effect of the emotional preparation I almost have to do to watch something like ef. It’s not something to be taken lightly.

Doesn’t everyone have a series like this, though? Reason can only carry you so far, at least when you enjoy being charged with emotion and passion as much as I do… which is probably why I love ef.

-CCY
(was tempted to pretentious it up more, but really lacked the time and the sanity, and somehow I feel you all will thank me for it)

12 Moments of Anime 2008
#02: ef ~the two tales~