Review of Sing "Yesterday" for Me

This is a show about a bunch of permanent adolescents who whine and bitch about stupid shit they shouldn’t be whining and bitching about anymore, and they do so all whilst acting like the petty elements of their lives which they’re whining and bitching about are actually mature in their complexity and worthy of deep contemplation. Ultimately, this show is either one of two things: a very young, amateur author’s idea of what adults’ emotional tribulations look like, or a cynical ploy by a very intelligent author who knows exactly how to pander to impressionable audiences and trick teenagers into watching a show by presentingit as being more high-minded than it actually is. Your ability to relate to the show on any given occasion is predicated on whether or not you’re a fucking crybaby, which would honestly be fine if all the characters were petulant little brats, but they’re not, at least not physically. They’re (petulant little) young adults...right? Is that not the selling point of the show? Because I forgot as it dragged on, and the show refused to remind me, because despite the fact all the concurrent events have the characters in their twenties, every plot-relevant detail to the drama is drama which took place in their highschool and college years—which, if nothing else, is the true marketing genius of the show: giving young viewers adult characters to project themselves onto yet also keeping the ideas at hand simple enough for even a toddler to lament.

The main guy is a loser who never came to terms with being a loser, and seeing as he had no reason to become genuinely, seriously depressed, he just became a gloomy incel who works as a convenience store cashier to get by with his shoebox apartment. Despite having no human worth whatsoever, he still holds feelings for his college idol who’s ninety lightyears out of his league—but wait! Her being above this guy in every way and the two having zero chemistry isn’t the real issue, the real issue is she herself held feelings for someone else, that someone else died, and she can’t get over him and move on. Then there’s Manic Pixie Dream Girl, a highschooler who breaks down the awkwardness between the two by turning the whole thing into a contrived love triangle where no one is actually in love with the right person because drama. Main Guy likes Tragic Heroine but that can’t happen because she’s held back by Dead Plot Device Boyfriend; Tragic Heroine insists she likes no one despite constantly leading on Main Guy and giving Manic Pixie Dream Girl the idea she has a rival; and Manic Pixie Dream Girl herself likes Main Guy because she borderline stalked him after they had one single human interaction which was so insignificant, he literally forgot it happened between them. There’s more characters, of course, like Seemingly Asexual Best Bro or Anti-Romance Younger Sibling, but if you’re looking for a character which can’t be permanently defined by an archetype you’ve seen too often to count, you’ll find yourself very much out of luck.

The show tries to come across as down-to-earth and relatable by keeping things quiet, but seeing as no character has even the thinnest shred of a personality, the plodding nature of the show just comes across as torturously boring, and that’s not even mentioning how much the set-up itself utterly butchers everything which it’s blatantly attempting to rip-off. If any facet of the concept sounded familiar to you, it’s probably because it is familiar. It unabashedly steals dramatic pretexts from genre staples like Maison Ikkoku and Welcome to the NHK and keeps forcing together this bizarre concoction of unoriginal plot devices out of their bastardized elements until the monstrosity that’s left can actually stand and walk on its own two feet, even if it’s less of a walk and more of a drunken stumble through meaningless interactions, trite conversations, and an absolutely depressing lack of any lasting character development whatsoever. Like, it couldn’t be content with just being vapid, it had to then go and reel people in with dramatic familiarity and unfounded nostalgia only to outright disrespect them, seeing as the price of admission for relating to this cardboard cutout of a show on any given occasion is your ability to project your real feelings onto the fake ones this show instates upon its non-characters for the sole purpose of killing time: both its and yours. A worthless coming of age starring individuals who should’ve already done so which glorifies the fact they have yet to.

Which I suppose is the one and only silver lining to this pathetic realization of a fundamentally hackneyed script, because if you take it to be intentional, you could then make the argument it is, indeed, actually the thematic heart and soul of the work. “The Asuka in your head and the Asuka in hers.” Shinseiki Evangelion described this dynamic ingeniously over two decades ago, and while I think comparisons to one work are not valid criticism for another, I also think watching three uncharismatic assholes project their emotions on one another until they’re all caught up in this maddening downwards spiral of melodramatic nausea and childish misunderstandings which don’t even resolve themselves over the course of twelve full episodes of TV anime is the dictionary definition of hell on Earth, and if that’s your idea of engaging media, then my review will be of no use to you. This show is cold, hard proof the current generation—Gen Z, Millennials, Zoomers, whatever you want to say—is so pathetically coddled, their immaturity has effectively pushed back the age at which teen melodrama can be acceptably portrayed in media. It repurposed elements from more mature and meaningful works as a vehicle to deliver on a product not only inferior and worth no one’s time, but a product which is so mind-numbingly juvenile, the stolen elements cease to even reach their intended audience any longer, and do little more than add to the already towering mountain of melodrama. While it’s easily Doga Kobo’s most beautifully animated project in years, it’s just as easily their most unenjoyable project since ever.

Thank you for reading.