Review of Rumbling Hearts

Kimi ga Nozomu Eien proves that if the core foundation of your drama is strong enough, everything else can be second-rate and it will still hook you. I found nothing about the show to be outright bad, but most compartments had their share of problems. A lot of the conflicts could be resolved if a character just managed to speak one proper sentence to explain themselves – the industry standard. As a character, Takayuki is about as interesting as the color grey – rest of the cast I thought was good. There are some leaps of logic that could have used further explanation. Also, thisstory really didn't have to be an anime, I feel. The Visual Novel format probably served this tale a lot better than an anime ever could. Hell, almost any other form of presentation could have worked better for this subject matter. In this story, the scenes are often defined by their lack of motion instead of their motion, so going through the trouble of animating all of it feels almost pointless. The animation itself is a little inconsistent, but there's not much of a visual spectacle here anyways, so I suppose it's adequate.

The story is a good old love triangle, with a very cool twist. The real personal tragedy that is mixed into it, gripped me harder than what I was prepared for. The idea is maybe stretched a little thin, but I have no major complaints with the flow of the story. It's good.

It's been a while since I watched anything as grounded as this. Or even a show that took itself so seriously for that matter. I found a show like this to be very refreshing during this age of nonsense and visual noise.