Preparing for more effing ef
Get out your eyepatches, yarrrr
As you may have heard, a sequel to the popular visual-novel-turned-anime ef: a tale of memories is coming in the next few weeks, hopefully to power us through the fall season angstily. ef seems to be a touchy topic: some people find it a perfect case for attempting to give an anime series a handjob, while others condemn it as artsy pretentiousness. In preparation for the upcoming ef: a tale of melodies, here are some nice election-year-ready arguments you can use around the dinner table when dealing with both the ef-ignorant and the ef-haters among your family and friends.
“I don’t like visual novel adaptations.”
This is probably the hardest one to start with. ef has all the trappings of a VN story. The girl with the tragic yet mysterious problem, the love triangle, the childhood friend, the mysterious stranger who observes the situation, and most of all, the wrenching melodrama. But you really have to boil it down not to what makes a VN what it is, but what makes it suck — and what ef does to counteract that.
- Two stories, two males, three females. There’s your character roundup. Compare that to, say, a Shuffle! or even a Clannad, with a single male protagonist going up against a virtual Hinata Inn of girls. In ef, all characters are actually characters, not just potential pairings for a male lead. Essentially what I’m saying, a VN adaptation doesn’t necessarily mean a harem show.
- The tsundere, the genki girl, a loli, the space cadet genius, blah blah, you won’t find them here. Miyako’s a little crazy, but like True Tears’ Noe, she’s a believable kind of crazy that you may have met/dated/gotten 100 voicemails from before.
- It offers something different than just regular unrequited love or fake-ass distant courtship. I get so damn tired of these chaste anime kids who can’t even manage to hold hands. ef’s characters kiss, call each other out for corny lines, and even enjoy a little bit of the old in-out. That’s refreshing.
- Speaking of refreshing, try this spoiler: Show ▼
- How many VN adaptations have the elements of suspense and darkness in ef? Not many, I’d wager, and School Days spent its first half being shitty.
“It’s all style and no substance.”
Well, it does have style. I suppose that means that most VN adaptation have no style and no substance? Fine by me, you go ahead and watch those, I’ll watch the one with style.
“Everyone thinks it’s so deep.”
I don’t see how that’s the animation’s fault. TV anime usualy lacks depth. Even Kaiba didn’t have that much to say in the end, though it said it well. So when something comes along that even implies a little depth, it’s latched onto by fans and the blogging world pretty quickly. Not the series’ fault if some people projected too much depth onto it. Perhaps the style seemed to imbue ef with a hidden meaning or depth that it didn’t really have. Either way, even if nothing was behind it, ef was provocative, and I don’t see how that’s bad.
“The animation is distracting.”
Touchy subject, so this one is multiple choice:
- I find your breath distracting.
- Your MOM’s distracting! Hooooo!
- Give it a chance, it just becomes part of the show eventually and it’s not distracting anymore.
- That shit was necessary. Without Shin Onuma and Shaft’s self-conscious “artsiness” (as an art-ignorant Philistine like yourself may call it), we’d never have The Phone Card Scene, one of the most harrowing and nail-biting bits of (melo)dramatic anime ever made.
“There are no lesbians.”
There are in some versions.
Anyway…
For a VN adaptation, or for a dramatic anime in general, ef works pretty well. It did away with some of the more standard symbols, shortcuts, and easy routes that anime romance often follows, and it did so with great style. This time around, we’ve seen all the tricks that ef had to offer, so is A Tale of Melodies going to have the same impact? Probably not, but under the stylistic uniqueness and the head-spin factor, A Tale of Memories was a very good, well-executed story that stood up to multiple viewings, and that bodes pretty well for its sequel.
