Review of Whisper Me a Love Song

Whisper Me a Love Song - What was supposed to be a wonderful adaptation, got absolutely ripped to shreds by haphazard production. You know the drill: hyped series tend to get the adaptations that were supposed to be expected from, and if there's anything to learn from the AniManga industry in the post-COVID era, is that the industry itself will NEVER learn from their mistakes trying to pump more quantity than quality just to satisate their audiences, on top of having to spend and lose revenue over what is commonly sighted as "production delays". Case in point, one of the highly revered Yuri a.k.a Girls' Loveseries of all time, mangaka Eku Takeshima's Sasayaku You ni Koi wo Utau a.k.a Whisper Me a Love Song, whose reputation in Japan, is said to be comparable towards mangaka Nio Nakatani's Yagate Kimi ni Naru a.k.a Bloom into You, it's just that popular.

The anime, however, is a well-known case of production hell that is worthy of a case study on its own.

I know this is rather old, but picture this with me: imagine series like Winter 2017's Fuuka and Spring 2017's Fukumenkei Noise a.k.a Anonymous Noise, the stereotypical love polygon that's the staple of all rom-coms in the music theme, but make it Yuri instead. This is what you get with this series, which births your typical romantic love out of music from characters that just admire each other, to then only be seen as a one-sided "misunderstanding" that led to romance being an objective to be achieved from both sides so that their love for each other remains ethereal, pure, and lovely. The 1st Year high school student of Himari Kino having "fallen" in love with her Senpai of 3rd Year Yori Asanagi being the lead vocalist and guitarist for their SSGIRLS band, it's all based on her singing abilities that she admires, but having never actually fallen in love before, she misinterprets Yori's singing from a form of admiration, to one of being romantic. Likewise, Yori also being in the same shoes as Himari, also misunderstands her approach as one of love and not admiration, but this vowed her heart more than ever to want to one day have Himari wholly as her partner for life and get her to reciprocate her true feelings in time. This is honestly a romantic love so grounded in both maturity and reality that both girls give each other space to explore their options and tap into the romance if ever required, asking each other's opinions and embracing both their strengths and weaknesses, no questions asked (or rather, the appropriate ones), and so on.

Every romance should desire to be like Himari and Yori's, and so will the heavy drama be accompanying it, which is a story of lies, betrayal, and the love polygon drama that comes along for the ride, making this the rather complicated mess between all relevant characters. The SSGIRLS band, consisting of Yori herself, bassist Aki Mizuguchi, drummer Mari Tsutsui, and keyboardist Kaori Tachibana, the 4 girls are especially outgoing and love to hang out with one another, for playing music is their passion, and nothing else (besides the obvious of Yori wanting to embrace Himari as much as she can). As with any 1st Year joining a club (which is mandatory), Himari is accompanied by the Culinary Research Club that hosts its president of 2nd Year Momoka Satomiya, and the ghost member of Shiho Izumi, though things within the club are as typical as its name applies. But the drama that affects everyone, and most especially that will rock both Himari's and Yori's romantic bubble, is yet another band that is the result of a feud gone wrong: Laureley, consisting of the two girls in Himari's club, the 3rd Year drummer Hajime Amasawa (whom also has a tragic drama of her own), whom they want to best against SSGIRLS from the long-standing rivalry of its lead person of Yori or Shiho. If you're the type to love endless soap operas, this show has it all — from hatred and jealousy to pure romance as sidelined third parties. The drama in this series absolutely does NOT relent on emotions that are just for show but true emotions that test the vulnerabilities of the heart matter.

Sadly, its production is just one of the saddest stories of tragic misfires leading to animation so broken that slips and cracks begin to start showing at the very beginning of the series. Despite both studios being of one parent company, both the main studio of Yokohama Animation Lab and sister studio Cloud Hearts, for some reason, can't quite maintain consistent production values for the show. The endless and egregious complaints being summed that up of a PowerPoint slide show, it's very damning for a studio (let alone 2 of the same company) to have such deviances early on, leading to the delay until now (that is still not an acceptable late Xmas present or anything). To have a director step down due to health issues and let another one take over, the situation has already gone from bad to worse, horrible even. The finality of Cloud Hearts apparently "closing" its doors just after this high-profile fiasco, the AniManga industry once again takes a massive L for instances like these.

The music is front and center for a series like this, and the anime delivered to an extent. I'm actually OK with SSGIRLS's OP, it's not the best for indie projects like this, but it's serviceable at best. What gets me more is the diversity of the ED songs, which actually plays a more pivotal role defining the drama stages of the series' nature according to where it is.

All in all, it's sad that such a famed series like Sasayaku You ni Koi wo Utau a.k.a Whisper Me a Love Song get the anime adaptation that is the very literate definition of "go read the manga". What a shame that the anime was literally in shambles even before it was a "go" at the green light, much less butchering a revered series that has Eku Takeshima's art drawn so beautifully, reduced to mere drab art by anime standards, so much so that you can't really call this "anime" to begin with.

Just go read the manga, for real. The anime is NOT worth your time, unless you can dare to stomach horrible animation with a compelling story to tell.