Yofukashi no Uta has been a very… interesting anime to say the least. Which you can say is good because that would mean it left a fairly good impression on me, but I beg a differ. Allow me to explain.
Kou Yamori seems like a typical middle school student on the surface. Relatively good at studies and amiable with his classmates, he puts a lot of effort into maintaining this facade. One day, however, he decides to stop pretending and quits school, developing insomnia as a result of having no daytime outlet for his energy. When taking walks alone at night, he feels marginally better, though he is aware that his inability to sleep should be considered a serious problem.
On one such walk, Kou meets a weird girl, Nazuna Nanakusa, who diagnoses the cause of his sleeplessness: despite making changes in his life, he is still holding himself back from experiencing true freedom. She says that he won’t be able to sleep unless he is satisfied with how he spends his waking hours. When it appears that she has resolved his current worries, Nazuna invites him back to her apartment to share her futon. After a while, unaware that he is only feigning unconsciousness, she leans over him—and bites his neck!
After watching the first three episodes, I cannot help but feel confused. I mentioned this in my most recent blog post as well. Yofukashi no Uta is turning out to be a rather confusing anime and that comes down to the characters.
I simply don’t know enough about Kou Yamori or Nazuna Nanakusa. Ko-kun (Kou Yamori) is particularly very difficult to understand because he himself doesn’t understand. What do I mean by that? The best way to describe Ko-kun is as somsone who is having an identity crisis. He doesn’t understand himself, people who call themselves his friends, the idea of socializing or the concept of love.
If you’re into someone who seems to have an enormously high ceiling when we’re talking about character development then Ko-kun is the person you’ll want to stick around with. Which you would think would appeal to be because of how much I rave about character development and how it can make or break an anime but Yofukashi no Uta is different.
The way it has gone about it so far hasn’t been something I particularly liked. Especially with how clueless of an individual Ko-kun is, it’s almost frustrating. We’ve had three episodes and Ko-kun doesn’t know what he wants or what to feel. All we know is that for some reason he wants to become a vampire, we don’t know why, all we just know is that he wants to become one.
Then we have Nazuna Nanakusa the vampire who has the tsundere personality (typical). The only thing going for her is for one reason or another, prefers to suck the blood from Ko-kun because it tastes better. Actually, there is probably another thing going for her and that’s because Ko-kun wants Nazuna-chan to turn him into a vampire. However, according to her, the only way for Ko-kun to become one is if they somehow fall in loves with one another THEN Nazuna-chan sucks his blood.
Personally I find all this to be a little unnecessary, unless there’s something far greater than a quest to become a vampire. Maybe it’ll be an anime where we have Ko-kun finding himself finally being able to understand his feelings or concepts that were once foreign to him. Or I could be totally wrong and Yofukashi no Uta can very well be an anime I won’t end up enjoying all too much.
Only time will tell.
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One response to “Yofukashi no Uta | First Impressions”
When I see an extreme level of cluelessness in a protagonist my first thought is that he’s really a placeholder. The idea is for the only slightly less clueless teenage otaku to plug himself into the role and fantasize what he do better.
Since it has only become a triangle at this point we can’t really call him the typical clueless anime harem protagonist. But the trope abounds.