Review of We Were There

Overall This one is up there with Kimi ga nozomu eien as the best romantic drama anime I have seen this far. It is funny, cute, heartwarming, emotional and, best of all, realistic. Animation Pretty average animation, but with gorgeous character design. Every single facial expression is thick with emotions and most people look great. There are also plenty of nice lighting effects. Sound The weakest point of this anime. Voicer acting is not top notch, especially Nana, but after a while you get to appreciate her voice as a natural part of her. Music is not great. The opening theme is alright, despite a bad vocalist and a badly tunedlead guitar, but none of the many ending songs were memorable. Background music is decent, but repetative (la la la la la...).

Story
A truly realistic love story with lots of ups and downs. Not too original, but VERY well directed and paced. There is so much being told every episode that I often thought it was time for the ending song when really only half of the episode had passed.

The story focusses on the main couple, with not much attention elsewhere. This usually means lots of fillers and a slow pace. Not so with Bokura ga ita; I was hooked all the way through it.

Vastly contributing to the enjoyment is the realism; I felt like a high school student again while watching.

Character
Wonderful human portraits with personalities and behaviour that you can understand. I won't call it logical (love isn't logical after all), but the psychology behind the characters' behaviour feels solid and real. I often thought "no! don't do that! what's wrong with you?". but never "argh, what is this? that's not human behaviour!".