White Album 2 Review
Thursday, July 16, 2015
I'm not a big fan of pure romance anime, usually because they fail to hold my attention span for no more than five minutes at a time. So deciding to watch White Album 2, being a pure romance anime, I knew what I was getting myself into. However, after hearing raving reviews about this anime by many people so I thought I would check it out.
Have to say the majority of the anime was way too boring for me, the liquid gold of White Album 2 really comes during the last 4 episodes. So if you can survive the first 8 episodes of boredom, I promise you that it would have been worth the wait since White Album 2 is able to depict a story that is oh so relatable to everyone in terms of "love." It's a story about Haruki Kitahara forming a K-On group at school with pianist Kazusa Touma, and vocalist Setsuna Ogiso, to perform a few tracks for their school festival. So yes it's going to be a love triangle, and it's probably the most relatable love triangle I've seen in anime so far. A real story about love and how ugly it can get sometimes; this is the shortest summary I can give without spoiling it too much.
Looking at the animation I felt like they could have done so much better. The character designs are so atrocious in terms of 2013 standards, I could not stand the oversized eyes, Setsuna's hair, Haruki's hair and everyone looking like a string bean. However the detailed animation and sharp colours sort of make up for that. The music was better than the animation by a landslide. Obviously since this was also a music based anime the OST was a great listen to and my favourite track from the album was everyone's favourite, which is White Album by Setsuna Ogiso. Left a piano version of this song down below, the one with vocals is much better, go and YouTube it!
The human heart is a very difficult object to analyze in terms of "love." White Album 2 is able to shed light of the best and worst sides of this emotion through it's compelling characters. I'll be giving my opinions on all three of the main characters since they serve an integral part in the anime when conveying the story.
Haruki Kitahara: The douchebag? The idiot? The moron? Not sure that to call this guy since he's the one caught in the middle of this love triangle and comes off as a piece of trash two girls want. Not exactly sure what he represents in terms of real life behaviour other than being indecisive and unable to pay attention to red flags.
Setsuna Ogiso: This girl represents the dark side of everyone. When I think about it more she represents human greed at it's best. Nice girl on the outside but by the time the anime comes down to it's last few episodes she reveals how ugly and greedy we can get when we come face to face with jealously.
Kazusa Touma: The most relatable one. We've all been in her shoes. We all have meet someone that we initially did not see as someone we could get along with but as time goes by things happen and before you know it you're friends and then that relationship leads to something more that you never expected. And most of the time those feelings are one sided. I guess she represents fear and White Album 2 did an amazing job at doing this.
Overall it's a phenomenal anime that depicts the dark and positive sides of love. Hands down the best pure romance anime I have seen in a while with an actual message to get across. If you can get past the lacklustre majority of this anime in the beginning you're in for an emotional rollercoaster by the end of it. If you heard people online comparing this anime to School Days, please disregard those comments since you cannot compare the two together. Although the messages in both anime seems to be similar, they are quite different, where White Album 2 takes a MUCH classier route to get their message across. And no you do not need to watch White Album to watch Album 2.
And if you have made it this far into my review, thanks for reading! Please leave a comment below on your thoughts about this anime or my review. Thanks again.
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