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Now and Then, Here and There

Shu and Lala Ru

When I first ran across this series on Netflix, the title intrigued me as I thought it may be similar to some other anime with similar sounding names that were quite good like Only Yesterday or I Can Hear the Sea or The Place Promised in Our Early Days. Boy was I wrong. Not that this series is bad, it was just completely not what I was expecting. 13 episodes in all, after the first disc of 5 episodes I was ready to give it a solid 8 out of 10. After finishing the other 2 discs, I originally lowered it down to a 7 but after sleeping on it, brought it back up to 8.

This is not a children's title despite the main characters being children. The themes and plot are seriously adult and the fact that it's happening to children makes it doubly worse. I must commend the storywriter for being hugely more optimistic on the merits of "no killing" and the extent that one should take it to than I. When I first finished watching it, I was left a bit uncomfortable and disturbed. After sleeping on it, I realized that the reason I felt that way was because even though the series seems to have had a "happy ending" at first glance, it actually didn't. [SPOILER ALERT] Sure the psychotic (and really freakin' annoying) villain was dealt with and the protagonist was able to go home but the casualties along the way lingers in the mind and just keeps gnawing away at you. So really it's not a happy ending at all.

So I don't know if I want to recommend this series or not. As usual it's not for everyone. I was pretty engrossed while watching it and I usually like recommending stuff that really gets my emotions going but I'm still hesitant on this one for reasons I can't articulate at the moment. But if you've got the time, by all means check it out and let me know what you think.

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on July 12, 2008 11:19 PM.

The previous post in this blog was Same Ol' Song & Dance.

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