Rating: 9.5/10

Review:

The beginning of this series started off slow, and to be honest, a little boring. Despite my first impression on this series, I thought that’d this anime would surely deliver more and the other reason I kept following it was because I really enjoyed the animation quality and character designs. I don’t tend to watch romantic series and I usually stop watching them at episode 5, but true tears made me want to know what would happen next. After watching one episode, I’d feel the need to watch the next and would simply think that a one week wait was far too long. The cliff-hangers were awesome and this anime depicted a lot of realistic situations that don’t very often happen. Since this anime was so good, there were a lot of debating about who Shinichirou will or should end up with in several forums. true tears had a lot to discuss about and the previews were always misleading, which got a lot of watchers thinking and predicting (including myself XD).

What I really thought was brilliant in true tears was the music. It created the appropriate atmosphere us viewers needed to feel. I found that Shinichirou’s decision in the end was a good one that should make everyone happy because Noe had always wanted to cry and she finally did shed some beautiful tears. Out of the three girls, Noe was my favourite because she seemed to be really enjoying life and was always trying to have fun. Although stubborn and naive and a little selfish at times, she showed a lot of understanding towards Shinichirou’s feelings and her brother’s. She became really down in the last few episodes but I’m glad she’s made new friends. She saw through lies but the only one she couldn’t see through was Jun’s, not until he tried to kiss her, of course. Noe was there for Shinichirou as a friend to cheer him up and help him out. He gave her back her tears and she made him move on by believing in him, thus he was able to finally admit his true feelings to Hiromi.

At the start, I saw Hiromi depicted as the “beautiful” one. The mood around her also seemed depressing, so I didn’t like her until she became brave enough to get closer to Shinichirou. I also saw her, in some way, a villain like Jun. She was the jealous type and through her eyes I saw the capability of committing murder, but that idea was forced to the back of my head because I knew there wasn’t going to be a Nice Boat ending. I’m glad that she too managed to figure out how to deal with things and the fact that she said that she didn’t like herself sometimes was an excellent way of telling us that Hiromi knows what she’s doing wrong. I never saw Aiko as a competitor to begin with and didn’t see much in her either. However, she knew that going out with Nobuse was a bad idea, so she tried to break up with him after Shinichirou had rejected her. Even though he ignored this, she continued to do so, not wanting to hurt him any more. When she asked Nobuse to start over as just friends, immediately I thought she was just lonely and needed company at the store, or because she felt really bad and was trying to make things up. That may be so, but in this series it proves that people in similar situations like Aiko can have a happy ending too, which I think is great. Usually these characters get tossed to the side, ending up alone, but I’m really happy for her and Nobuse!

Some people were describing Shinichirou as the next Makoto from School Days, and some were getting pissed at him for not making a decision. I think that making a choice between two girls who you like is very hard and even though Shinichirou could’ve decided sooner, it’s good to have a lot of time to think it over. Because in the end, one person is going to end up getting hurt anyway and that’s where the trouble comes in — who would you rather see get hurt? Noe or Hiromi? The cute one or the hot one? I’m a girl but I don’t see what’s so good about Shinichirou. On the other hand, this is an anime character I’m talking about, so there’s no need to go that far, hehe. I feel really sorry for Jun because he was only trying to get further away from Noe, but before that, give her happiness so he’ll know that she’s okay. I don’t hate him and I don’t think he’s a bastard at all — he was just trying to deal with his feelings, but knowing they were forbidden, tried to do whatever he could to get rid of them. Jun’s story would be good for all those siscon guys out there.

Overall, I really enjoyed true tears but I minus the 0.5 from the 10 because the first episodes weren’t that great and because of Aiko’s red-face expression that didn’t suit with true tears.