Anime: Ajimu: Kaigan Monogatari 5x3r4n

Ajimu: Beach Story is a weird case where a series is completely average and does not leave you with much to say about it yet it’s worth talking about. It also happens to begin in a most alienating way yet if you stick with it, it ends in a somewhat satisfactory manner.

The premise and overall story is as generic and predictable as it can get, it’s nothing you haven’t seen in another hundred romance stories, even by the time it came out. It’s this basic and overused premise of a guy immediately falling in love with a beautiful girl and then he gets to know her through misunderstandings, he gets rejected, later on he gets accepted but other characters blend in the situation, and a love polygon unfolds, you know the deal.

It even begins in a horrible way since the first episode is unbearably bad, every event that happens in it feels very forced to make Hirosuke get to know Ajimu and even more make him looks bad in her eyes, by being accused of molesting her in public due to a misunderstanding and then forcefully kiss her by accidentally falling over her.

The bad points don’t stop there since the episode follows with dried clichés and repetitive jokes until he meets her again by coincidence in several places and tries to apology to her every single time, he is so timid he can’t talk to her and thus it makes her believe he’s stalking her. I tell you, the first episode couldn’t possibly feel more forced in giving him a bad image. His attitude makes things even worse since he certainly follows her around and instead of apologizing properly, he remains silent, of course a girl would think such a guy is stalking her.

The visual department only makes things worse because it is terribly bad too. This is just a generic romance that normally wouldn’t require much effort to be presented with an acceptable visual department, yet Ajimu: Beach Story fails horribly even in that. The artwork looks horrible most of the time, the characters figures constantly go off-model, the movements are jerky, the backgrounds are clearly unfinished most of the time, and there are no remarkable special effects or directing tricks to make up even just a bit for such visual disaster. I understand that this was made in the early 2000’s and it was released through internet at that time, but come on, this level of quality is unacceptable.

Thankfully, there are a few times where the series looks good, sometimes the characters looks good in main frames, sometimes the illumination adds in delivering a certain emotion during a scene, sometimes the backgrounds look finished, sometimes. Also, although the character figures are bad, their designs are great, I mean, they are not particularly elaborate or memorable, in fact they look pretty simple and kind of generic, but for once here you have teenagers about to graduate from high school that look like young adults instead of kids from kindergarten. They even as university students in the first episode because of that.

Even better, the characters don’t have over exaggerated proportions and aren’t sexualized for the sake of fanservice. Ok, the series is not completely free of this, there is a panties shot and another boobs shot in two different episodes, there, two shots in the whole series. The girls also appear in swimsuits because, well, the events happen in a beach during summertime so what do you expect? Even then, the series never show these characters as walking fetishes, even when it could. You can show respect to these people.

So, the awful visuals improve a little but what about the story? Well, the misunderstandings are cleared and more interesting characters appear towards the end of the first episode, from then, there are both good and bad things to say about the plot. There are clichés and conveniences to justify why everyone know each other from the past and why everyone is attracted to a certain person within the same group.

There is also a dramatic event which came out of nowhere in the last episode, which happened just to spice things up and make the viewer believe there’s going to be a tragic ending, and there isn’t one. Normally I would shit all over a series for trolling its audience like that, but in this case it was a good thing because otherwise it would be a very lazy cop-out that came out of nowhere, tragedy for the sake of tragedy just for giving cheap feels to its audience.

There are two other things that bother me regarding the story, one is a fat chick who conveniently appears just to force misunderstandings, add silly comedy or help a certain character near the end, thankfully she doesn’t appear much. The other is that a seemingly very young girl is attracted to a 17 year old guy and a teenage girl has the hots for an old man. Thankfully either the guys know their places or the series never focus on such pairings, because nothing happens with them beyond that.

The good part has to do with the drama and the tone, as I said, there are no perversions here, the comedy does not really land but is never thrown when something sad is happening, the drama is presented in a satisfactory way because there aren’t exaggerated situations (well, at least not that much) and the presentation is not melodramatic. The conflicts the characters go through have to do with the people they like being in love with someone else or dealing with getting over a past love, and they don’t make a big fuss over those things nor they drag the situations, they are honest about their feelings and confront the people they love, they accept the response, and move on.

That is another plus of this series, the pacing. It is fast, no event is dragged more than it needs to because the characters face the other person and deal with their problems when they have to. That leads to another good aspect of the series, the characters, when you watch a romance anime aimed at young audiences you expect generic people with generic presence and generic personalities, girls with high pitched voices that either make you love them or get to your nerves, and guys who are complete jerks towards them.

This is not the case with this series, the characters here are pretty likeable, they are not that memorable nor they have any deep and complicating personalities, but they act in a very mature and sensible manner for their ages to the most part, which is really rare for this genre.

They have backdrops that explain their behavior and interactions with others, and they do get some development and catharsis as they get over what is affecting them. No one is an asshole, they are very friendly even with their love rivals and even help them sometimes in one way or another, they are also very honest and open with their feelings and not in an overblown way, which, again, is really rare for this genre, especially nowadays.

As for the ending, well, is somewhat satisfactory, it ends in a predictable and kind of open way, but every character got happiness in one way or another, that’s all I’m going to say, I’m not spoiling stuff, even if there is not much to spoil.

As for the sound, the voice acting is well done albeit nothing special, the songs are good yet not particularly memorable and they can get a bit repetitive, and the sound effects are serviceable. This department is good, nothing amazing, but good, it almost makes up for the awful visuals.

So down to it Ajimu: Kaigan Monogatari is nothing special or amazing, is not very famous nor is particularly memorable and it sure as hell is not rewatchable because of how generic and predictable it is. Yet, it hits the mark where it needs to, is not insulting in any particular way, it doesn’t last much to annoy you or bore you, is messy but not horribly written or presented and it has likeable characters.
It’s awful to look at and hard to get into, but if you stick with it, it somewhat rewards you for that, almost to the end, in other words, is the exact contrary to the vast majority of anime that comes out today, and that is another plus.

Very much a typical romantic story. With anticipation, one would expect great discoveries in Ajimu Kaigan Monogatari, but in all manners it doesn't live up to its potential in any possible way.

Extremely average - but romance addicts would love it.

Above all else, this story would best appeal to otakus lust for romantic stories that are difficult to make sense of. For example, at first it begins as a light comedy, with a geeky shounen discovering the beauty of a girl on the subway. Later it gathers more attention with development of the confused main characters, and soon enough towards the end of the very end of the first episode it seems as though this will become a sugoi! work.

• And then...it dies.

Bigtime. Towards the central area of the story, there is a mess with the character-story cooperation, and everything becomes dull and disinteresting. It gets worse and worse, until a somewhat improved conclusion, which saves the anime's honorable original plot. Try not to pay too much attention...there isn't too much to miss. It can hurt the brain a little trying to make out depth or drama in this story.

Ajimu Kaigan Monogatari does have some good things, though. The animation rescues quite a bit, as well as the overall atmosphere. A story like this demands a positive atmosphere, but what is unique about this one is that it feels somewhat at a "loss." For example, it seems as though characters proved to be much more like their nature than in even many great animes that I've seen.
More importantly, the animation has the exact same beauty as Kimi ga Nozomu Eien; beautiful crashing, blending colors that force my eyes to relax into the luminosity of my TV screen. The eye colors and shapes are very professional and piercing as well, but that peaks the animation. Though the colors/graphics are good, the actual movements are choppy and inconsistent. Watch Ajimu when she sings: it's the worst dub/video sync attempt I've ever seen. Because of some laziness from the producer, this anime suffered a slight loss in it's technical efforts.

Sounds, music, and Overall: Average.

Well not too much to say about sounds and music. The guitar Ajimu plays is peaceful sounding and gentle to the ears, and that's about it. The opening and endings are very cliche, reminding me quite a bit of every other opening that I would hear in a story where a guy falls in love with a girl. Thus, music isn't going to earn much for this anime from me.

As for the seiyuu, they are average, nonetheless. Some of the actors tried, and many of them, crashed and burned, but the attempt was honest, so I give them credit for that. Overall, don't look too deeply into this anime, unless you are seriously looking for time to get 2 hours into a romance.

Get to love the emoticons in the subtitles too. ^_^

Ajimu is the kind of story you'll only like when you like romance. Luckily I do, so that's why I enjoyed it.
Beautiful scenes, on the beach, looking at the sky or other still pictures with the sound of crickets on the background. Lovely.

The story isn't that much. It's about a guy who likes a girl, stumbles on top of her and makes a very bad impression. In his efforts to apologize, he even screws up some more.
Little bit of comedy, but overall the romance dominates, and does it pretty well.

The sound is exceptional. Not only are the voices nice, but also the girl Ajimu is a singer. So there are a lot of songs/singing in the 4 episodes. The song is happy, nice and very cheerful - and also translated in a nice way, although it's a bit small when sitting far away. But at least the singing makes up for it :)
You will probably realize that they didn't make any effort to synchronize the song with the lips, and that's annoying, but I could stand it since the song was pretty :)

I have to add that ChiZeto-fansubs adds some smileys to the first episodes, to indicate happiness :) Weird at first sight, but you won't be bothered too much.

Also, the ending (in the endingsong) seems to change in almost every episode.
And the final ending involves an epilogue, so that's also useful to announce here, so you won't stop the video before seeing that ;)

But the overall score for this title is a nice mark. Nothing much, but you have to enjoy the genre in order to enjoy this.