Amagami SS: Die Klischees hoch! Die Handlung fest erschlossen! SS marschiert, mit ruhig, festem-OUCH!... Point taken. I’ll quit now.
Right, now that I’ve successfully insulted and/or driven off all the Germans, Jews, Romani, Polacks, British, French, Dutch, Russians/other assorted eastern Europeans, Scandinanians (minus the finnish), Greeks, war veterans and anyone with no sense of humour away from this review (categories that would, in fact, include myself), let’s get it over with.
Amagami SS (translated as “Sweet Nibble SS” – don’t ask me what the double lightning association is in there for), which I by the way have already Godwined so don’t go sitting around waiting for me to start later, is a spring 2010 anime animated by AIC and based on a (surprise, surprise) PS2 dating sim by Enterbrain. Just like its predecessor Kimikiss, the anime is a classic dating sim romance anime, its only call to distinction being its structure. Instead of having eight girls all wanting to jump the protagonist’s bones at the same time, the show is structured around arcs that each cover one scenario from the game. This means that each arc is (in theory) focused on one love story and one love story alone, creating a show where there are no ‘winning girl’ or ‘haremettes’. Every girl gets her own chance at getting the ‘hero’s sole attention and fall in love with him without interruptions, and then the next arc kicks off from the starting point again with the universe reset.
Like they used to tell us back when we were forced into the cold autumn forest tracks for primary school P.E. terrain run competitions, freezing our yet-to-be-developed gonads off in the spirit of our parents’ enjoying a rousing session of good sportsmanship by association (what, bitter, me? Perish the thought), “everyone is a winner”. Of course in this case, it’s “winner” in the sense of “won the special Olympics”, but whatever.
Animation and Visuals: 5/10 – I see a rainbow-coloured cast of wigs and I want it painted black.
Amagami SS takes place in a high school environment, and features a graphics perfectly 'in line' with the standards of the genre. It has some decently painted and detailed backgrounds, generally low use of background events and environmental effects, some derivative character models, and in a shocking departure from the norm of these kinds of shows, a mostly sane array of hair colours (i.e. black, with one or two brown-haired ones). Overall it's fair, but it’s really not *excelling* in any meaningful way. Compared to, say, Angel Beats! or Toradora, its number of locales speak for it. However, it can’t match the former in razzle dazzle colours and visual effects, and can’t match the latter in expressive characters, clever use of background events, and body language. It’s there, that’s it, it’s not what I’m willing to spend 2000 words on here. Moving on.
Audio: 5/10 – Well, it’s not music to invade Poland to… Ah, carp. Sorry, will happen again.
The audio of Amagami SS is about as distinctive as its visuals. That is to say, nothing to really pain me, but nothing really to stand out. I remember it *had* music, but I’ll be damned if I will ever remember any of it. The openings are standard sad J-pop pieces about appropriate true love and being oneself, of the kind this type of show usually favours: It does its job as it should but leaves little in the way of a permanent impression.
The voicework is decent and has a few pieces of energy in it – even though the protagonist of the usually nasally kind – especially with some of the more energetic/dramatic members of the female cast. Oh, and Joji Nakata is the narrator of one of the arcs, delivering a voice so smarmy I swear he could melt butter with it (if you can’t tell, it’s sort of a “high point”, at least by this series’ standards). Other than that, it’s not really much to say.
Story: 6/10 – “What happens when you compress the story into four episodes each?” “Well, the progression gets ****ed, doesn’t it?” “…Proper ****ed?” “Yeah, Tommy. Before ze Germans get there.”
The much-touted multi-story feature of Amagami SS takes place over a six arcs, with each arc covering an alternate timeline/alternate dimension/whatever concerning our main character getting together with another girl. But before I get ahead of myself describing the individual stories, or rather the ways in which they’re not very individual, let’s get to the starting point: Meet Junichi Tachibana, a Normal High School Student who came down with a tragic case of Tragic Love Backstory (one of the most feared diseases faced by all Japanese high school students, apparently, given how afraid most of them are of it: Personally I see it much more seldom than Kidnapped By Mystical Girl and Brought to Brave New World, Accidentally Given Control of Giant Robot with Superpowers, but then again I guess there’s no preventive measures against that one). As a result, he’s apparently become sullen and introspective and has scorned love (but not to any degree that his personality is any memorably mismatched from any other male milquetoasts that serve as malefactors in this manner of memoir… I’ll stop now). Oh, and he spends most of his time in a closet (take that for what you will; I know I took it for a source of much malicious mockery).
From these humble origins, each arc basically throws down in this manner: Junichi starts out as his usually non-defined self, when he gets close to one of the principal girls of the cast in one manner or another – aside from the fact that most of these girls are all apparently single and all too willing to humour his advances with little justification, most of these ‘approach’ scenarios are fairly well done for their genre – queue three episodes of courtship, arc over, happy ending. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am, return to start and collect no character development, memories or two hundred dollars but with a new beau on the horizon.
The stories, while taking into account the girls’ varying personalities, interests and life situations, are also fairly standard and formulaic: Some fifteen minutes of clumsy come-ons from Junichi, girl becomes interested and opening of date, two episodes’ worth of everyday flirtation and relationship building, cut to climax at the end of third episode and girl’s issues start bubbling to the surface, ten minutes of climax fixing girl, two minutes of implied consummation, cut to happy ending. It’s all pretty much by the book. The only exception to this is the arc of Rihoko, the ‘tragically overlooked friend since childhood who secretly had a crush on hero’ type, which is entirely from her point of view and features Junichi as little more than a supporting character.
So, up in all this exposition, what’s my take on it? On the plus side the stories are varied enough to not be complete rethreads (especially with Rihoko’s arc thrown into the bargain), very little dead time or filler, almost all the characters get equal screentime, no blatant ‘Winning Girl’ overall, and you don’t easily grow tired of any one character’s overexposure (except possibly the male). On the negative sides, the stories are short, cut to the bone, have an odd progression, seem almost a bit too convenient at times, are close enough that they are utterly predictable for the most part, individually unremarkable, and, of course, the whole thing smacks of wish fulfilment for getting the man be the stud and get all the girls but without being a lecherous jerk like in School Days. It’s a net gain for the series, but a close call.
One plus point I will give it -- and this is one that I actually feel is worthy of some acclamations, is that it managed to get a little sister with little to no incestual subtext. She even got an OVA episode, which was surprisingly free of the usual clichés and actually rather nice.
Characters: 6/10 – A decent potential for the females, ruined somewhat by the lack of time given each of them.
Being that this show is essentially a series of romance stories, it’s inevitable that this is heavily character-driven: Much of the quality must stem from the main leads and from their chemistry. Anyone even remotely familiar with Japanese dating sims/harem anime will be able to recognize the characters more or less instantly. The male is a fairly standard “featureless audience stand-in harem lead”, with his mildly perverted streak (oh, the heights of originality) and his “I-Got-Dumped” backstory being his defining characteristics. The girls consist of the hot upperclassman “older sister” type, the tomboy, the “shrinking violet” underclassman type, the “silent and sensible” type, the “one-sided crush childhood friend type” (who to be fair hides it fairly well under a façade of “energetic funny clumsy girl” type), and the “two-faced bitch” type. To say this show is blessed with over-abundance of originality in the character concepts would be a bald-faced lie, but on a level beyond the conceptual, how does it at least treat these characters?
Fairly well, actually. And herein lies the main problem with the characters department: Amagami SS’ characters are fairly archetypical, but the show is able to show clearly that it can work with these archetypes to make something interesting out of at least *some* of the characters (the shrinking violet was beyond redemption, though). Junichi, for instance, is able to appear somewhat nuanced after you’ve seen him in action – across some four to five different arcs. But he’s the only one who gets this sort of screen time, because all the females only get four episodes each. This means that the characters who are actually the most interesting to study paradoxically gets less attention and time than the guy who remains essensially unchanged by the show at a whole because of the constant resets. It’s like watching someone putting together a jigsaw puzzle, but is forced to give up after half the pieces due to time constraints, done some half a dozen times over, and the picture is the same every time and is that of the male lead. In non-crazy-metaphor-speak: All the females have interesting execution but too many holes and too little time, and are defined a bit too much by their attraction to the main character -- oh, sure, not White Album levels, thankfully, but it's there.
What little time is given manages to get across decent chemistry for at least half of them, rendering some of the romances decent, but I still think they're undersold. At least the arc-based system limits the pain of certain of the females, allows each one of them their chance to shine, show their individual good sides without being overshadowed by any of their others, and give fans of the individual archetypes their due. On a negative side, it more or less ensures that the individual females will be less developed, less explored, and inevitably be less memorable on the long run than a single 26-episode-explored Winning Girl. It’s like communism, for female dating sim love interests. With less being hijacked by Stalin, invading Eastern Europe, purges, gulags, and winning World War II. So come to think of it, not really like communism at all.
Value: 5/10 – Yes, well, *this* thing’s reputation isn’t entirely going to last “one zousand years!”…
Although the show’s big selling point, the resetting timelines and exploration of several different love plots over arcs, is implemented better and more noticeably here than Kimikiss (if we ignore that the repeating ‘Groundhog Day loop’ plot has been a part of popular culture since, well, Groundhog Day), the contents of the story are more than enough to see this breath of fresh air grow stale. And, thanks to said loop, we get to see them grow stale multiple times even! Oh, all right, that’s going a bit too far. While they’re individually archetypical, having the story focus on every single one of the girls makes the story a bit more variant than most.
That doesn’t reduce the fact that this isn’t exactly a big step forward for romance anime, and I doubt this will lead to a revolution in how these things will be made in the future (especially when the only other ‘big’ anime using it to date was Yosuga no Sora, which to Amagami SS is something akin to having the big facial feature you want people to remember about you being the Toothbrush moustache). The odds of this thing going to be remembered for all time (or even a decade) is pretty slim, mainly because it’s not one big story but five small ones with the same amount of care and detail given them (i.e. not that much). It’s like getting five decent to mediocre paintings instead of only one, larger painting: They’re better as long as the one painting is crap (like with most other harem anime) but will never be able to stand up to the uniqueness of one, good, coherent painting.
If you liked this show, there’s a world of single-story romance anime out waiting for you to try them: I can point you towards, oh, Kanon, Lovely Complex, Kimi ni Todoke, possibly Toradora… There’s a lot. If you specifically want a ‘groundhog loop’ scenario, you can watch Higurashi. If you want them both… There’s this. And the aforementioned Yosuga no Sora. Which I personally would only recommend if you’ve already *tried* trepanation and would like something a bit *more* extreme towards the integrity of your head and its contents (you’d pretty much have to be trepanated to make it through the inevitable migraine anyway).
Enjoyment: 6/10 – Another fine example in how to turn the emotion of love into a form of bemused… Bemusedness. With some amusedness. At least this one *had* amusement factor.
Although the fog of ages (or months) may have scoured some of my memories of this show, the overall impression appears to have been ‘not as bad as it could have been’. The lovestories were hit-or-miss: Due to their similarities I had to basically base my entertainment entirely on the winning girl of each arc, leaving to one fairly good arc (the tomboy), two surprisingly interesting ones (the unlucky childhood friend with the POV change and the sister OVA), most of them average ones (upperclassman, serious swimming girl, two-face), one that was even more rushed and unjustified (the stalker OVA), and one saved by the narrator (Nakata arc).
Ultimately, very few true impressions of emotions are left of this show otherwise, apart perhaps from “Joji Nakata should be narrating more anime”: This speaks to me that the show, although decent for light entertainment and slice-of-life, was perhaps not the riveting love stories they should have been. I think I liked it about above average; it’s not a bad enjoyment factor, with a few not-to-shabby jokes and a few of the arcs showing some, if nothing else, decent chemistry and relationship progression, if hampered by the inevitable time constraints. It lacked the high points of Toradora, but also the low points, and is better than most harem I've seen.
Overall, Amagami SS is just not unique enough, snappy enough and just a little bit toothless. It's sort of like this review in that way (I blame the lack of lack of quality; it’s not bad enough to get really sarcastic over). Which only leads me to finish this on a similar note of originality and taste:
Total: 5.5 (rounded up to 6)/10 – Lacks the drive, energy and memorability of its original namesake. On the plus side it exterminated less Jews and conquered less of Europe, so I'd say it's a net gain.
So in case you wondered: Yes. I did, in fact, sit through this whole show just so I could make an Amagami Schutzstaffel joke here. I made several. They were quite crude, obvious, derivative and quite mediocre, and probably only partially entertaining. Much like my impression of the show. So, then, was it worth it?
…No, not entirely, no But I did it anyway, and would probably do it again if given the chance.
