Dropped: Asatte no Houkou (TV)

Running time: 25 minutes
Number of episodes: 12
Vintage: 2006-10-05 to 2006-12-21
Age rating: ???
Genres: Drama, Slice of Life, Supernatural
Animation Production: J.C. Staff

Source: Anime News Network

The Good: It starts out pretty good.
The Bad: It runs out of gas very soon.

Status: Dropped

I don’t want to rant too much since I actually enjoyed a nice little portion of this anime. However, when it came to carrying on and developing the story after seeding the characters and the setting, the show fell apart and did not really unfold as beautifully as I thought it would.

Asatte no Houkou starts off in a typical rural town and introduces a few kind and apathetic characters with an unconventional aura about them. As you can probably guess, the characters have the same kind of conceited attitude found in most ’serious’ japanese drama that either you dig or you don’t. Catching your eye a few seconds into the first episode is a child named Karada and a grown woman named Shouko. For some reason the two characters have issues with themselves and each other (that you later learn about) and it all seems to revolve around Karada’s brother, Hiro.

Karada and Shouko met at a wishing stone, one that is famous in the little town for its capacity grant true wishes. As faith would have it, Karada and Shouko made independent wishes to trade ages. This starts off life for Shouko as a child again, where as Karada is now an adult. It doesn’t happen immediately, but when it does, they know exactly why. While overcoming the circumstances, they learn to cope with their new perspectives and somehow fix the anxiety they have and their relationships with Hiro and other characters.

The real catch is that although the show starts fairly well, the middle and the end is very poor, so don’t expect some kind of impacting scene or anything dramatic. It was just too easy to figure out what was going to happen, and worse, it just happens and leaves you stranded with no sense of satisfaction. It really boils down to how simple and crude it became, lowering it down to a bitter show that’s barely watchable but nothing truly memorable.