TRUE TEARS

TRUE TEARS
[真实之泪]
Aired: 06.01.2008 till 30.03.2008
TV Series, 13 episodes
Genre: Daily life, High School, Love Polygon, Romance
Producers: Bandai Visual, Lantis
Official Page: http://www.truetears.jp/
Based on a game by Broccoli, Circus and GameCRAB.

Q: This is one sweet and romantic love story of a guy (Shinichiro) and three girls that crosses his highschool life. But after watching all 13 episodes, I only understand 80% of it, so I am gonna watch it all over again. The story has very deep plot and involves many matters-of-the-heart issues; I think girls will understand this anime more than guys do.

Below info taken off AnimeDB and edited according to my perspective:
Shinichiro's childhood friend, Yuasa Hiromi, has been living in his house for a year along with his family. Hiromi's father was a close friend of the family, and when he died, Shinichiro's family took her in. Hiromi is popular and well-liked in school, always smiling, and is talented in sports - but Shinichiro knows there must be tears inside her.

Having an artistic tendency, he draws pictures of her and thinks about wishing to ease her tears. Yet he cannot bring up the nerve to talk to her even in his own house. Hiromi, too, is quiet and withdrawn in their house, quite unlike at school.

Shinichiro is also distracted by the constant teasing from his buddy Miyokichi Nobuse, for watching Hiromi from afar; a curse of bad luck from an interesting girl named Isurugi Noe, and being forced to perform in the Mugiha dance. By helping Noe, Shinichiro hopes to ease his own problems, yet he seems to have difficulty helping himself.

Q: Lemme intro the girls... and of these three, which girl melts my heart... hee...

Yuasa Hiromi
Hiromi lives in Shinichiro's house, after her parents died. However, Shinichiro's mother kept giving her a hard time; deep in her heart, Shinichiro's mother doesn't welcome Hiromi. On the surface, they treated her like their own child, but women-to-women aside, Shinichiro's mother made it known to Hiromi that she is but a burden to the family. Deep within, a women's jealousy, fear, suspicion and love for her husband and son made Shinichiro's mother suspect that Hiromi could actually be Shinichiro's real sister. Hence Shinichiro's mother never likes to see both of them get on friendly terms. Hiromi has since been withdrawn and kept to herself all this while, not wanting to cause any trouble for the family for their hospitality.

Hiromi and Shinichiro are childhood friends, and they shared a very sweet Natsumatsuri memory of each other. Hiromi loves Shinichiro, but what Shinichiro's mother said to her made her hold back her feelings for Shinichiro.

Hiromi is a sweet girl, demure, talented and everything. You'll feel for her.

Isurugi Noe
Noe is a rather eccentric girl, one can say. By fate, Shinichiro found her high up on a tree gathering "food from the sky" for the chickens below. "I'm stuck and I can't get down" (this scene is captivating...) then she apparently jumped on him as a cushion. Noe feels that one of the chicken wants to fly, and feels sorry that its locked up in the cage, so she is feeding him food from somewhere high up. But she doesn't wanna feed the other chicken simply because it doesn't wants to fly (she just knew it), and she feels Shinichiro is just like the 2nd chicken - "doesn't want to fly". The conversation broke into a little quarrel and Noe puts a curse on him.

Noe doesn't cry; she gave away her tears because her grandma took to the heavens along with her tears. So Noe is on a mission to retrieve her tears, and for that, she need to choose someone to give her their tears.

Subsequent encounters with Noe mostly involves chicken, red seeds (chicken feed), and about "flying" and being close to the sky. However, I think what Noe means is about aiming high and having your dreams that you work towards for. Noe openly expresses her interest in Shinichiro and her outrageous behaviour has had the attention of the entire school over their relationship, including Hiromi.

Noe and Shinichiro fell for each other. Noe gave Shinichiro the drive to complete his picture book he was working on, and Shinichiro became Noe's first ever person she fell in love for.


Ando Aiko (aka. "Ai-Chan")
Ai-Chan is a year older than Shinichiro and is also his childhood friend, whom Shinichiro looked upon as an Onee-chan and frequently confides with her. She opens the Imagawayaki Store selling pancakes and beverages, which Shinichiro and his buddy Nobuse frequents for a bite and cola.

Ai-Chan in fact holds a candle for Shinichiro, but the blockhead simply doesn't notice it. Worst, Shinichiro introduces his buddy Miyokichi Nobuse and highly praises his buddy to her. Shinichiro eventually made Ai-Chan listen to Nobuse's confession to her and Ai-Chan relunctantly agrees with going out with Nobuse, for the sake of Shinichiro, in that tight situation. But this little situation concreted Nobuse and Ai-Chan's relationship and Shinichiro sees them as a couple from then on. Poor Ai-Chan is labeled as "Nobuse girlfriend" when Ai-Chan actually loves Shinichiro. Ai-Chan just treasured every single minute she has with Shinichiro.

Ai-Chan jumps on every single opportunity to be closer with Shinichiro and in fact did many little things that melts my heart. She lied about Nobuse being busy and managed to convince Shinichiro to go shopping with her in place of Nobuse; a chance so hard to came by.

She picked a plain and dull sweater, contrasting to her style, all because Shinichiro laid his attention on it amongst all the colorful sweaters she seeked Shinichiro's opinion about.

She quick-wittedly convinces Shinichiro to let her feed food to his mouth (on a romantic scale) when Shinichiro walks in on Nobuse eating off Ai-Chan's chopsticks (on another scale). She convinces Shinichiro to let her measure his shoulder width under the pretext that Nobuse shares the same shoulder width and she wants to knit him a sweater but doesn't know his size. However, Ai-Chan in fact hand-knitted Shinichiro a sweater (so sweet~!).

All this while, Ai-Chan could only do these sweet little things under the label of Nobuse's girlfriend, but the last straw came when Shinichiro relates of himself going out with Noe. Thats when Ai-Chan broke down and begs Shinichiro to "look at me too...". So heart-aching...

Finally...
Shinichiro finally understands that he was the one who avoided facing everything. The chicken made a choice not to fly, but Shinichiro didn't choose a single thing by himself; about the Mugiha dance, his picture book, Noe, and Hiromi. Shinichiro didn't want to dance not because he couldn't dance well, but because he didn't want to be compared to his father; he couldn't draw not because he didn't feel like doing it, but because he was afraid to know his own limitations...

And about Noe... and Hiromi... he has to make a choice... who will he choose and why?

(I still feel that Shinichiro made a wrong choice of Noe and Hiromi...)