Review of Sing "Yesterday" for Me

Probably this year's prime example of how the 12-episode format and the hardheaded insistence on it do more to damage anime than to help it thrive. Or even keep it alive, as the case were. Yesterday wo Utatte is about as common, simple and pedestrian a slice-of-life as a story can be, so if you expect it to distract you from real life, you're gonna be disappointed. The characters themselves are also perfectly normal, everyday people, if some of them a little too one-dimensional; I'm sure many of us can find one or more we easily relate to (or could, at one point or another inour lives). There isn't a whole lot of action, as befitting life in general - if anything, it spends a lot of time contemplating the trivial everydays in quiet melancholy. Mind and soul often take center stage, and even when a given character isn't outright analysing a stray thought or a fickle feeling, it's easy to pick up on how things are affecting them and why, almost as if reading all their diaries. Although it relies a little too much on "coincidence", and at a point feels like it'll adapt a wholly episodic storytelling where the side characters appear for an episode and then leave at the end, this seems to go on for a while, and if you like this sort of reflectional work, neither of these details will bother you.

[SPOLERS AHEAD]

It seems to go on like this... and ultimately that sort of becomes the downfall of the story. The problem is it barely (if ever) feels like any of the characters is going anywhere at all. Professionally, maybe, but even that's only the guys: Rikuo moves on from being a convenience store part-timer and finds a job he likes and is interested in doing, Rou finds a goal and manages to pursue it... But that's about the extent of it. With so much self-inspection, one would come to expect some form of growth. Changes to happen as people live their lives - changes that just aren't there. The stalker remains a stalker, the "maybe-but-not-really" couple dances their weird dance around each other, the woman who couldn't cope with the death of her crush never moves on from it... And they just keep hurting not only themselves but each other as well. The side characters seem to do more to push our main quartet forward than they do themselves, which, sure it happens, but not like this. It doesn't help that we're often not sure just how much time passes by between two scenes. There are cases when things are obviously directly connected, but about as many others where there's a gap in time between two events. Worse still is the fact that these gaps are absolutely random in size: they can be minutes as well as months (or more?). Such a generous application of erratic time skips really doesn't help make the story feel coherent at all.

And then we arrive at the last episode. No opening, it picks things right up where the previous one left off, and goes straight for the drama. Then we get a somber, indeed beautifully done and realistic discussion between two people who, seemingly, finally grew up. The end. Except not really, there's another half to it, one that turns everything upside down. There is absolutely nothing to explain or justify anything that happens here, indeed Rikuo himself saying he doesn't know how to explain it is a perfect summary of it. I'm not familiar with the source material - whatever the ending is, it might make perfect sense there. But that's exactly the elephant in the room. There's a huge amount of stuff that never made it into the anime... obviously, and that in itself would be just fine. However, for some inexplicable reason, it seems like whoever was responsible for it was not content leaving it unfinished and ending it on a note that would have made (at least a little) sense in the anime - no, they had to go for what is (apparently?) the original ending. Well, it fits about as well as the square peg in the round hole. Not only does the episode itself upset the whole tone and pacing set throughout the previous 11 episodes, switching to a lot more "action-packed" style; but it also comes off as a case of wanting to have the cake and eat it too.

All in all, the ending becomes the bullet that's shot into the foot. Without it, the anime would be a decent romantic slice-of-life, with some flaws that one could sort of squint at and maybe overlook through rose-tinted glasses while reminscing about their own similar memories of childhood and youth. As it is, however, it amplifies those flaws to a magnitude where they turn the decent attempt into a butchered, disjointed mess, in which if you thought you'd found characters to relate to, you'll conclude that they weren't characters, only certain traits or patterns - and they might actually be more harmful than you figured, too. It's a very unfortunate note to end a series on, and it might even leave a bitter enough aftertaste to discourage people from picking up the manga.

Overall: 5/10, simply because the art and animation were really good at worst and outright beautiful at best, the sound and voices were also well done and contributed a lot to setting the atmosphere. However, the characters having a rather gaping flaw or two at best, and being wholly one-dimensional at worst, with an almost complete lack of growth, plus the lack of any moral to the story in the end really soured whatever enjoyment the contemplations in the first half or so may have offered. And indeed, when you don't really have a "story" to tell, there should be other aspects to make up for it. Here, I guess it boils down to being a victim of this nonsensical anime format.