• Title: ef - a tale of memories.
• Studio: Shaft
• Genre: Romance

Ratings (out of 5):

• Story: ♥♥♥

• Animation: ♥♥♥♥
• Characters: ♥♥♥
• OP/ED Themes: ♥♥
• Overall: ♥♥♥
  

Thoughts:
From the plot summaries I’d read prior to watching the first ep of ef-memo, I was expecting it to be a harem…but now it looks like the show actually has three plotlines that will (I assume) intertwine. First is Hiro and Miyako, who meet when she steals his bike to catch a purse thief. Then there’s Asou and Chihiro, who bump into each other at an abandoned train station. And the least-addressed is amateur videographer Kyousuke, who spots a girl named Kei running down the street on Christmas eve…to the dismay of his currently un-named girlfriend. I wouldn’t even count this as an additional thread expect he appears again towards the end of the episode, thinking about her.

Shaft is being a bit experimental with the animation, and while some of the funky visual effects work– like one where you see Miyako’s silhouette as a night sky pattern and the rest of the screen is black –but others can be a little bit jarring, or just seem random and weird, like Hirono spontaneously being in black-and-white instead of color. Overall I’d say that the animation quality is better than average, though.

As for the stories, well…there’s nothing particularly outstanding about any of them yet, and I’d say that Asou and Chihiro are outright obnoxious. Asou’s okay, but his strange hairdo bothers me…meanwhile, I find Chihiro’s voice and personality rather grating. They get the most screen time in the first episode, too, for reasons I can’t quite discern since their conversation is pretty inane.

I might give a second episode of this a shot, but only if I don’t get overwhelmed with other shows that hold more interest.