Saturday 5 March 2011

が望む永遠/Kimi ga Nozomu Eien / The Eternity You Wish For


Kimi ga Nozomu Eien really hits me on an emotional level. Nutshelled, the plot is that a boy and a girl begin dating, even though the boy actually prefers her best friend. This best friend likes the boy too, but doesn’t show it because she only made his acquaintance in the first place to set up the romance for her friend. After some time passes, the boy starts to realise he really does like his girlfriend enough to fall in love with her, but then she is involved in a traffic accident, ending up in a coma. After three years, she wakes up – but the boy is now in a relationship with her best friend…and they have to keep it a secret, fearing the damage the shock of learning the truth might do.

The boy, Takayuki, makes me despair. He’s too cowardly to make a choice, so strings along both girls – deceiving his original girlfriend while letting the newer relationship crumble. I ended up wishing the girls would just leave him, especially the newer girlfriend, who he treats in such a cold, cruel manner. But of course relationship drama wouldn’t be drama if everyone made the right decisions all the time, and I doubt anyone put in such a difficult position would act much better.

I watched the anime at a time when it meant a lot to me…so it feels strange that it’s one of the anime from the period I remember least clearly. There’ve been OVAs since then, and it took a long time for me to even remember what happened in the original episodes when I heard the news. But Kimi ga Nozomu Eien is actually one of the best dramatic anime to centre purely on a relationship, and certainly one of the most mature anime to be based on a visual novel with sex scenes.

(Adapted from original impressions, 1.11.04)

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