Avalon: Hatsukoi Limited Review

Yes I am VERY late in posting this and my Sengoku Basara review and you can blame laziness of which I have a lot of. I finally decided to post this after watching the 2 specials which were pretty darn entertaining I might add.

This anime started out better than expected, then lost my enthusiasm, then regained it. In other words, I was surprised how much I actually enjoyed this anime. Focuses on the romance of multiple girls and guys.

Animation – 7.5
Nothing bad or amazing so good enough. This category will probably almost always be short.

Art-style – 7/10
I can’t say I loved the art-style, but I can’t say I disliked it either. I’ll just say that I wasn’t watching this anime for an interest in the art. Not saying everyone is ugly, but they’re not the best I’ve ever seen…at least for the female designs. Male designs almost always seem to be similar in anime, with some exceptions of course.

Sound – 7/10
None of the music really stood out to me, though I will say I always heard the first few seconds of the ending every episode and while all I ever hear is “Hatsukoi Limited…”…or I think the subs say “Hajikeru Limited…”…anyway, it gets stuck in your head friggin’ easily. I probably should have listened to the music more.

“Beast”-kun is an awesome character!

Story – 8/10
I actually enjoyed it even when I thought I wouldn’t after a couple of eps. I originally thought they were going to stick with the romance between the guy and girl of the 1st episode and I liked that, but they actually focused on a bunch of romances. At first that annoyed me and I thought I wouldn’t enjoy it as much, but they actually did it well and I got to like a bunch of the characters. Part of the reason it was so much fun was because the comedy was actually good and funny (at least imo). The characters were fun and their stories interesting.

Not much to say about it other than it is about a group of female friends who want to find love and how they do it…though that is a very simple explanation because it also focuses on the guys’ sides at times.

Characters – 9/10
By the end of the anime I liked all of the characters. At first some I really disliked, but the development was very well done will all the characters so they lost their annoyances as they matured. While I always enjoyed the 1st romance shown between Ayumi Arihara and Misao Zaitsu aka “Beast-kun” (his size and face are scary), I ended up really enjoying the interaction between Kei Enomoto and Kusuda aka “Kappa” or “Kappa face”. Those two groups are my favorite, but I pretty much liked all of them.

These guys are great as well.

Enjoyment – 8.5/10
Fun anime with laughs and nice characters. I can also be a sucker for good romance if done right and I was not disappointed. Even romances that didn’t quite turn out like I wanted were satisfying because they had decent reasoning behind them…not that their were many of those. All in all a good watch with only a couple annoyances early on that fixed themselves as the anime went on.

Overall – 7.75/10
I think I enjoyed this one slightly more because it was another one of the animes that I downloaded yet didn’t watch until I had like 3 eps at a time, at least some of the time. Good romance and comedy is always a plus in my book and I’m glad this anime pulled it off. I recommend this to anyone who is looking for romance and comedy that is not too overdone. I guess slice-of-life is also a big part of this since it’s just a school romance story so keep that in mind if you do plan on giving this a shot.

~ by Avalon on September 3, 2009.