Kotoura-san First Impressions--*Linkin Park Song Goes Here*

That was unexpected.

To be honest, I completely forgot about this show despite expressing slight interest in it when I wrote the season preview. I didn't remember it until I saw that it had premiered on Crunchyroll's website and decided to give it a go. I thought that I was going to get a light romantic comedy with some mind reading thrown in for laughs.


I was wrong.

Well, not completely wrong; the romantic comedy stuff is still there, but it's in the second half. The first ten minutes of this show are worthy of the finale of a Key drama, although it puts Little Busters to shame. No, that's not hyperbole. Our half-episode trip through Kotoura's past up until the point that the story begins manages to pull off the kind of drama that most shows try and fail to do. While the content admittedly isn't incredibly original, it works because of how it plays with expectations; I never expected something this heavy out of this show, and especially not in the first episode. That said, whether or not this setup will work for you depends on how you typically react to tragedy porn. This kind of stuff tends to be hit-or-miss with me; here, it was a hit.

 
It's also interesting how the opening colors the rest of the show; everything is else is pretty light hearted, but understanding why Kotoura acts and reacts the way she does takes a lot of the cliche out of the situation. The backstory is the kind of stuff that shows usually save for the end of a series with a dramatic reveal, but if the rest of the show is going to be like the second half of this episode was, then that approach would probably feel jarring. Instead, the rest of the episode is like a soothing balm after sitting through the first; Manabe's attempts to break through her shell and show her that not everyone in the world is completely horrible sold me on his character, marking one of the few times I'm okay with a bland personality in a leading role. It's heavy-handed, but it works.

At any rate, whether Kotoura-san will be consistently concerned with drama or not, it's got my attention now. And even if it does nothing further with it, I won't forget this episode for a while.

Images from Crunchyroll.com.