Life in Quadrant 4

Nowadays, the airwaves are flooded with less-than-satisfactory adaptations of eroge/bishoujo games, but as we trace back their roots, we end up at a little anime called To Heart. A dinosaur by today’s animation standards, To Heart really got me with its old-school charm and styling. From what I’ve read, To Heart originally aired in 1999 – over 10 years ago – in a time where people saw the potential of bishoujo game anime adaptations to be nothing more than ero-anime, To Heart turned heads by airing on national TV as a decidedly slice of life show.

Everything about the show feels so… old. In a nonnegative way. The music, the visual styling, the animation – especially the characters. It’s a breath of fresh (decade-old) air. Unlike many of today’s eroge type characters where there are strong dividing lines between archetypes, and that we can basically cherry pick from a list of moe “traits” to form an instant character, To Heart’s many heroines aren’t as hardcoded. Unfortunately, the fact that this is such an old work also shows, particularly in the pacing of the episodes. For the most part, the progression of the show is Hiroyuki meets girl -> Hiroyuki gets to know them better -> Hiroyuki solves problem. Although it’s circumvented by having usually having a combination of the main group of 4 – Akari, Hiroyuki, Shiho, and Masashi working on the problem, it more or less works out this way, after which the girl just sort of vanishes into nowhere. It would have been better to see more interaction among the girls even when it isn’t their arc anymore.

Another aspect of the show that really drew me to it is its slice of life factor. A lot of eroge adaptations often have contrived, complicated plots with plot twists, drama, and so forth, but To Heart is a kickback to the good ol’ days of high school romance (not exactly). It’s nice to just see the characters live their lives without getting them so messed up in needlessly complicated matters that make the viewing experience a more intense one. I hesitate to call this “iyashikei”-type anime, but it wouldn’t be difficult to associate it with the words “gentle” and “pleasant”, because those are perfect descriptions of the show.

It came at a great time for me, really. Had I watched this in my earlier days of “actual” anime fandom, I would have shunned this as a borefest, as I watched stronger and more action-oriented titles like Bleach, through fansubs, and things like GTO and GetBackers through Animax (you know, when it didn’t suck). Over the years, I’ve mellowed out; skipping on action-oriented shows and heading straight to the shoujo, seinen, and other less-manly-sounding shows has become the norm. I suppose tastes evolve over time.

Sadly, the To Heart anime franchise was succeeded by the rather infamous To Heart 2, whose production quality was so abyssmally bad that upon trying to watch episode one, I dropped the show 2 minutes past the opening theme. It is just that bad.

To Heart and To Heart 2 (2005) were animated by Oriental Light and Magic, now know as OLM Inc. Their most prominent works are Utawarerumono, To Heart… And Pokémon.

Despite To Heart’s vintage, the show was only recently picked up for English stateside release. Though Rightstuf recieved the master copies around 2005, being a cel-animated work captured entirely on film and not on a digital format, the remastering process the company was forced to undertake took another two years, pushing back the show’s American release to 2007. I suppose a low-key title like To Heart would’ve been ignored, despite the licensing frenzy that happened during the anime boom that occured years back. Furthermore, it’s most probable that typical American audiences, who were more used to the sex and violence stereotype that anime was so well-known for in its earlier days, couldn’t digest this peaceful piece of work.

Ultimately, I think I was lucky to have picked this during the drawing of lots[1] that took place last month. It hit all the right places – endearing characters (who unfortunately don’t show up much outside of their own arc), a peaceful atmosphere, nice music (asides the OP, whose vocalist was a bit grating to my ears)… All of these factors came together to form a lovely slice of life show that still works well a decade down the road.

[1] – Full disclosure: in a Filaniblogger Christmas get-together, ghostlightning (who is now a 33-year old daddy) decided to have us draw lots containing short shows each of us nominated and have use blog anything about what we watched over the month of January. This is the last entry in this “series”, so to speak. Sorry if I let you down orz