Wandering Son was a near-universally lauded anime adaptation at a time when that reaction was not exactly universal on the blogs where noitaminA was concerned. I found episode 5’s focus on the maudlin Saori Chiba to be a heavily affecting bit, for some reason.
Anime can’t hurt me with its melodrama the way it used to, so it takes something especially well-done — or maybe it’s just something specific? — to make it work. Whatever the case, Saori’s painful emotional self-torture delivered the goods, and sealed in Wandering Son’s solid ability to use really broken characters to illustrate some very common adolescent feelings that a lot of us can identify with. Here’s the post.
And that was only one of its many strengths. Wandering Son was easily one of the best anime of this year.
Now let’s get this thing licensed for physical release over here, shall we?
Easily my favorite “pastel-colored, well-written adult drama” anime.
Oddly specific?
this is true. Does it have a lot of competition in that field?
yes. Honey and Clover, Nodame Cantabile, Asatte no Houkou, Aoi Hana, Usagi Drop, I’m sure I can come up with more, but this is the top of my head.
it won’t let me edit my comment…
EDIT: Kimi ni Todoke might count too. I consider this a whole genre, largely propogated by Kobayashi Shichiro and J.C. Staff, though also becoming a recurring thing with Production I.G.. Hourou Musuko is the oddball in the group having been done by neither studio.
<3