Overall Review: Kotoura-san

In with a bang, out with a smile.

If you had told me at the beginning of the season that I'd be here today wrapping up my episodic coverage of Kotoura-san, I'd probably have looked you in the eye with a bewildered expression and said, "who the heck is Kotoura-san?" Though I didn't know it at the time, it seemed everyone else was aware of just who Haruka Kotoura was, and the jaw-dropping first episode of the anime surrounding the circumstances of her life was making huge waves before I even decided to try it. Once I did, however, I had to admit this was a lot more than I had bargained for. Kotoura-san's first episode was one of the best premieres I'd ever seen; it was witty, it was symbolic and full of playfulness and drama, and it manipulated emotions spectacularly. Once that shock factor was gone, however, the series had to find other ways to keep itself going.

Unfortunately, that proved a little more difficult to pull off, especially when it came to the latter half of the series. While Haruka entered a sympathetic character, her personality changes very little throughout the series and her development isn't the most natural (despite I myself knowing someone exactly like her in real life); her tendency to punish herself and forgive everyone around her for their horrible acts wears a little thin very quickly and despite getting reprimanded several times by the people who love her, she always chooses to forgive for someone else's sake rather than her own. Her mind-reading ability complicates relationships in an interesting way, but the series is very careful about not being too unconventional. Instead of jumping on every opportunity to break away from traditional comedic conventions, it shows that it has the potential to do so and ultimately chooses not to. It's a little sad to know this is the case, but at least there are some places where this series really does shine as a result.

In particular, that comes from the series' male lead, Yoshihisa Manabe. Unlike most romcom leads, Manabe is a real force to be reckoned with, a guy unconditionally in love with Haruka despite her involuntary invasion into his mental privacy. His straightforwardness and blunt honesty make him someone unperturbed by her mind-reading, if only because he has nothing to hide and is already as obvious as an open book. Even when he's indulging in erotic fantasies about his love interest, he's never far from his genuine feelings from her, and the fact that the series acknowledges sexuality as something normal and without real negative connotation is refreshing in and of itself. Though not unaffected by the series' incredibly rushed pacing and decisions to keep from going too far, Manabe remains the focal point of the series, the true draw for both Haruka and us as viewers, which is just as well. Kotoura-san is worth watching if only because of the strength of his character, and it's a shame the rest couldn't quite keep up. Despite that being the case, I did enjoy the series quite a lot, and though the penultimate episode was worrying, I felt that everything wrapped up as well as it was ever going to. Perhaps if the studio were aware of just how well received this would be, they'd have been a little less hesitant to go all the way with the potential for this drama parading as a comedy. For now, we'll just have to be satisfied with what we got, which isn't terrible in the least.