First Impressions – Orange
Orange is the color of her cheeks from blushing so hard
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Shoujo anime time! I was going to read the Orange manga a few months ago, but then was informed it would be an anime this summer. So as is prudent, I waited for the anime first, then I can read the manga if I still want to. |
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Orange so far is one of my favorite shoujo manga I’ve ever read, and I love every part of it (except the ending). Obviously, I want it to be the same just like the one in the manga, so let’s see how it goes. |
Who Writes Letters Anymore?
When it all begins
anaaga – The concept of future letters in Orange reminds me of the second part of Inu x Boku SS, where the reincarnated characters send letters to their past selves so that they will not do the mistake they did in the past. It is such a new concept for me, seeing I only read 2 manga with such concept (and I would love reading more of this kind of manga). This is probably one of Orange’s plus points. It has such an odd concept, and they are using it as means of character development and changing their so-called destiny. I have seen/read many things where the characters tried to change the past, but what I never see is the part where they want to change themselves into something better. That’s probably the part of Orange I was impressed with – something from the future can change not only our fate, but also ourselves. And don’t worry, Naho won’t just obey the letters just like that, heh.
“This person has such good handwriting!”
Highway – One of the things that I found interesting about the future letters is speculation about the granularity and possibility of two-way communication. How do the letters get there? And are they all written at one time so that future Naho doesn’t know what past Naho did? Or can future Naho chew out past Naho for not doing what she says? I guess I’ll see what the possibilities are by what they do with it. I do know that usually people complain about time-travel stories because they make mistakes, but maybe this setup, as limited as it might be, can avoid a lot of the storytelling pitfalls of time-travel stories.
Some very good composition in shots like this, I thought
Sometimes Things Don’t Come Through
The whole gang on their way out
anaaga – But of course, things can never be perfect, and the same can be said about Orange anime. I was surprised when they character design was really mature; it’s as if they aged up by 5 years or something. They look more like university students instead of high school students, and this is probably the setback of the first episode. They are high school students because they are teenagers, and many things that will happen in the future happened because they are teenagers. Their hormone will contribute to many of their decisions they are about to make in the future, and most of the conflicts is deciding whether Naho will stick to her emotion or to the letters. But now that they don’t look like high school students anymore, of course I’m going to forget that they are still kids. Thank you so much TMS Entertainment for making my beloved characters look like adults who keep repeating their first grade of high school. Now my emotional soap opera is going to be about a bunch of mature-looking teenagers not acting mature at all.
The turning point
Highway – Not having read the manga, I didn’t really have anything to compare the looks against, but I didn’t find it particularly jarring. What I did think was not that their looks were too grown up, but that their behavior was a little bit more grown up. They were having fun, but they weren’t being giggly. And things like Naho’s assumption of responsibility with pinch hitting in the softball game stood out to me as adult-like weighing of pros and cons, pushed by her future-self’s regrets. But then things like not standing up for herself at all with the size of her shoes helped pull that age back to just about right.
A personal touch makes things happen
Even though I love Orange, I want to be honest here – it was boring. The first episode is extremely boring, and it was unbearably slow (even slower than the manga). Somehow I wasn’t able to grasp the emotions of the characters. They weren’t as expressive as they are in the manga. Kakeru didn’t look depressing enough to show that something did happen on his first day for school, emphasizing on the mistake Naho and her group did when they invited Kakeru to go out on their first day. Naho also doesn’t look as shy as she was in the manga, which is disappointing since what we will be seeing is the change in Naho’s character and the progress of their friendship. I guess some things are better expressed on paper. But I was also cynical of it when I read the first few chapters of Orange, so I guess the first few parts are bound to be boring for those who don’t like shoujo with a hint of slice-of-life in it. It will have progress though, and the progress is the one that kept me going until the end although I was curious about Kakeru’s fate too. So sit back, relax, and enjoy being frustrated at Naho the story.
I enjoyed the show, having gone in without any expectations, which seems to have been the right choice (going by anaaga’s view). I do wonder if the show will do anything with the possibility that we are shaped by our choices. Will the things that happen in the letter start diverging from the things that Naho experiences, as her elimination of regrets changes the path of her future? Or is it going to be more like Doctor Who or Discworld posit with possibilities: Things are supposed to happen one way, and will happen that way, no matter what you try to change? Or maybe all of this is too metaphysical for a shoujo romance show, and instead we’ll just worry about who likes who and who can’t confess.
And back to the future
About Tag Team
We live, laugh, enjoy and strictly believe on "more the merrier". When together, we usually come up with very chatty, conversation-based episodics and interesting posts.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10997 comments
I see it more as a literary device than a sci-fi element; that is if the first ep is anything to go by. I hope they keep it as such, there is plenty of sci-fi out there that bothers themselves over such details. I would love to see a straight-forward shoujo version of it.
So for right now, it looks like it’s imitating the feeling that all adults get. “Oh, if I only appreciated this event more, or appreciated it this way, because now I know this stuff”. It looks like instead of changing time itself, they’re more interested in adding “more color” to their past selves.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
Yeah, it doesn’t seem like it’s a “I want to change my future” like Quantum Leap or Erased or ReZero are about. It’s more like “These are discrete things that I think I messed up, and I wish I had better memories of them. Please make the other choice so that you/I have a better memory.” I just wonder if there’s a chance that erasing those regrets has other effects on other choices and whether it will get into that.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10997 comments
…that last bit seems like the sort of development that would enrich the show…
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
It would, but that would necessarily have more of that sci-fi element that you talked about in your first comment. That would seem to push for multiple communications, not just one letter. For instance, what happens when, after Naho does something that the letter asks, the next situation the letter describes doesn’t happen at all, or happens in a significantly different way?
It would be an interesting type of show, but as you say I don’t know if it’s what THIS show would do.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10997 comments
Oh, then it relies on memories, and we’ve talked about how plastic they are, right?
POWUH: and Athenaeum Châtelaine with 2212 comments
I like a good romance, at least in most cases. There are however a few cases where they can become a turn off for me. One of those times are when you either you know, or they let you know from nearly the beginning that one half of your romantic pair will die by the end of the story.
I don’t watch romances to cry, unless it is to cry in happiness or a sad penultimate moment before the happy ending, and Orange looks like it may be neither of those. My logic is, that I am not about to sit here and get emotionally invested in these characters and hope they come together, if I already know that they never will (or will for a short period) because tragedy will strike.
Seeing Naho and Kakeru together, only to know that he will inevitably die and Naho will move on and have a happy life with Suwa, kind of puts a damper on the whole thing. Even if some way, her writing the letter will cause Kakeru to somehow survive, I don’t think that’s right either, as it would completely destroy the one she has now with her husband and child. Also, it all makes Suwa kind of feel like second fiddle.
I’ll stick with it for a couple more episodes, but this doesn’t look like it’s my type of romance.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
It certainly seems the whole point of the show is for Naho to do what she can with Kakeru before he dies, as in it’s a when, not an if. But I think they’ve got a good path to address the worries about tragedy, having shown us Suwa and Naho as a happy couple and as parents. And Naho talks about how happy she is with her life in the future. That means that even with the loss of their friend, and as sad and tragic as that might be, life goes on and is happy and fulfilling. I think bridging that end period is an important way to keep the show from being a drudge.
POWUH: Lovely-pyon~ with 261 comments
I was wondering that who brought the letters…Hmph…
No wonder that letter instructs to save the poor Boy (Kakeru Naruse…Right?!) that…
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POWUH: and Yaoi Fangirl~ with 2320 comments
I don’ know if they put this in chapter 1 or later on, so I’ll just put it in the spoiler
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Gotta follow the rules even though we’re sending letters from the future!
POWUH: Meta Team and Meta-Analyst with 3844 comments
Two things:
1) Time is like a flowing river, you cannot change its flow. I believe the Time Abbots have a collorary to that though.
2) Great Scott! You cannot change the past Marty or you will not even exist! 😛
For we all are the sum of the decisions we make in the past.