We've reached another third entry of this series where I look at a quarter of short OVA productions (i.e. no more than two episodes long), so just as we did in late 2022 with the third volume of OM, OM, OVA! this sixth volume has once again been chosen by a randomized virtual prize wheel! Last time this happened the results were a quartet that had no real shared theme between them (a toned-down adaptation of female erotica, a seemingly "impossible" anime sequel to a cult classic manga, a two-episode OVA solely meant to promote a fantasy manga, & Tatsunoko's 50th Anniversary production), and that's more or less what I kind of expect out of these prize wheel-determined volumes of OM, OM, OVA! that I plan on doing every third time around; a fun little grab bag that comes with no expectations beforehand. However, sometimes even random chance can have an overall theme to it, and that's the case here as The Almighty Wheel has chosen four OVAs that actually DO share an overall theme: Romance!
Specifically, The Wheel has picked two romantic comedies & two romantic dramas, so let's see how these OVAs fare for a guy who has had absolutely ZERO personal experience with romance! Still, the dog days of summer have already passed us by, so before I believe in a sign of zeta (or hope that better days are coming) I think I should have a blast, even if it happened so fast... Well-a well-a well-a huh!
"Tell me more, tell me more; did you get very far?" "Tell me more, tell me more; like does he have a car?"
We start off with a one-off that's actually a bit of an old cult-classic in English-speaking anime fandom, and also has a slightly more complex history behind it than you'd think: Outlanders. Released in late 1986, this ~45-minute OVA is based on the 1985-1987 manga of the same name by Johji Manabe than ran in Hakusensha's Monthly ComiComi for eight volumes & was actually Manabe's first serialized manga. Out of the four titles in this volume this is the least "romantic" of them all, as the manga is primarily a space opera, but there's still a focus on romantic comedy to be found, especially due in part to Manabe's love of drawing tough-yet-beautiful women; to no surprise, Manabe has made roughly as much adult manga & doujin as he's made other manga. As for Outlanders' history in English, it was actually one of the very first manga Dark Horse ever brought over (by way of the late Toren Smith & Studio Proteus), after being unable to license Akira, and while it certainly took a while all eight volumes would eventually see release in English between 1989 & 2000. As for the OVA, U.S. Renditions first licensed & released it via the Dark Image label in 1993 solely via dubbed VHS, with it being notable for featuring the only time legendary translator Trish Ledoux ever voiced a major character in a dub. In the mid-00s, though, Central Park Media would license rescue the OVA for a dual-audio DVD release (one of the company's final releases, in general), deciding to make a brand new dub in place of including the original one & even putting the casting of the four major roles to a fan poll; the OG dub was done by Animaze, while TripWire Productions handled the CPM dub. However, I'll just be going off of the original Japanese in this case, but let's see if Outlanders is still good enough to maintain that cult-favorite status.
Earth is suddenly invaded by an alien warship, and the military is more or less helpless against it. Japanese photographer Tetsuya Wakatsuki finds himself in the middle of an utterly one-sided fight with a humanoid woman wielding a sword, and when she goes for him he manages to parry her with his camera, before holding her back against a wall. Impressed, the woman kisses Tetsuya & knocks him out during his confusion. Tetsuya awakens inside the warship & finds out that the woman, Kahm, is the princess of the Evascurazen Empire, which feels that humanity has invaded their "sacred planet" & must be destroyed. Kahm, however, has become smitten with Tetsuya & wants to marry him, partially to save Earth & partially because she doesn't want her Emperor father to decide who she will marry, since her eventual child would be the heir of the Empire itself. Upon their arrival at the Evascurazen home planet, though, the Emperor instantly declares that Tetsuya must be executed, so it's up to Kahm & two friends, catgirl Battia & her wolfman boyfriend Geobaldy, to rescue Tetsuya & escape from the Empire so that they can elope.
First & foremost, I should note that whenever I looked for info regarding the Outlanders OVA I continually saw mention that it seemingly adapts a bunch of parts of the manga, but apparently skips around a lot, which honestly didn't sound good. However, after watching this OVA & looking up some idea of what the manga's like it's really best to just say that the Outlanders OVA is its own completely separate thing from Johji Manabe's original manga... because the manga is, from what I can tell, A LOT TO TAKE IN. As mentioned, the Outlanders manga is primarily meant to be a space opera, with a lot of death & destruction alongside the political drama & fanservice; for example, all of Japan is destroyed rather early on in the story! In comparison, the most violent part of the OVA is right at the start, when Kahm is slicing & dicing up soldiers with blood & body parts aplenty, but after that the OVA is honestly more of a romantic comedy for the first half, while the second half that deals with escaping from the Empire becomes more of a (slightly) comedic action adventure story. From what I can see looking online, the OVA simply takes some elements of the manga plot (Tetsuya & Kahm's first encounter, the Emperor not agreeing with Kahm wanting to marry Tetsuya, Battia & Geobaldy helping them escape, etc.) but otherwise tells its own standalone story; Japan, for example, is left intact here. In fact, there are some aspects that are mentioned in passing, like Kahm wanting to protect humanity or her knowing of some scheme Progress (one of the Emperor's aides) has in the works, but are otherwise never fully explained.
Therefore, it's best for me to judge the Outlanders OVA as its own thing, and in that regard I can see why it became a bit of a cult classic in English. It's definitely a work inspired by Urusei Yatsura in some regard when it comes to Tetsuya & Kahm, though in this case imagine if Ataru was just straight up abducted by Lum, instead of Lum choosing to stay on Earth. However, while Tetsuya does show some elements of perversion, like wondering if he & Kahm are even "physically compatible" before he accidentally rips off her towel & sees that she's "properly equipped", there is more of a natural awkwardness between the two that's honestly kind of endearing. Yes, Kahm kidnapped Tetsuya from his home with no intention of ever bringing him back, and she's called out by Battia by simply taking the first human boy that caught her interest, but the relationship between our two leads does admittedly grow in the short time this one-off OVA has that by the end you can fully believe that these two are equally willing to give love a proper go. Also, & honestly surprising for a Tatsunoko-animated production for the time, this is a rather sex-positive little story, as we not only see Tetsuya & Kahm (at least make attempts at) sleeping together but we're also shown Battia & Geobaldy in mid-coitus, though obviously no actual sex is ever depicted; the most you get here are bare breasts. Still, combine the romance (both thematic & physical) & comedy with some admittedly solid action & an interesting plot, even if it does literally take the halfway point for Tetsuya's name to even get spoken once, and the end result is a rather good OVA that you can watch in less than an hour. It's been nearly 20 years since Outlanders was last released in English, and there's yet to be a release that includes both English dubs, so I would certainly be all for it being given another chance over here, especially if it can get some sort of HD remaster, or at least an upscale.
"Tell me more, tell me more; was it love at first sight?" "Tell me more, tell me more; did she put up a fight?"
Up next is a lesser known romance anime, though this is also based on a manga. I've covered Kaiji Kawaguchi before in 2020 when I reviewed the anime adaptation of his beefy Japan-centric manga take on The Final Countdown, Zipang, but war & political thrillers aren't the only types of stories he's told. For example, from 1987 to 1989 Kawaguchi made the manga Ai Monogatari/Love Story in the pages of Tokuma Shoten's Comic BanBan, and as the admittedly generic title would indicate this was a series of self-contained short stories dealing with love in its various forms. In 1991 Nikkatsu would produce a straight-to-home-video live-action adaptation of two of the stories found within the manga, but what we'll be focusing on is what happened the following year. On June 1, 1992 Animate-Film & Toho released Ai Monogatari: 9 Love Stories, an OVA adaptation of (what looks to be) all nine stories found in the manga, & all within ~90 minutes, at that!. Similar to productions like Robot Carnival, Memories, Halo Legends, & The Animatrix this was done as an anthology, with each story having its own director, character designer, & animation director leading it, while animation duties were split up between Ajiado, St. Need, Tokyo Kids, & Triangle Staff; Studio DEEN is also listed, but may have simply assisted the other studios. Yeah, this likely won't be the best kind of production to cover in a short-form mini-review like OM, OM, OVA!, but The Wheel has spoken... and who am I argue with The Wheel?
As mentioned, Ai Monogatari is an anthology, so here's a basic overview about all nine stories, each of which is named after a song Kaiji Kawaguchi himself apparently has a strong attachment to. I Want to Hold Your Hand (directed by Tomomi Mochizuki) is about Tatsuo, who while having a drink with a female friend who's thinking of moving away for a job thinks back to his high school days, where he had a crush on a girl named Saeko who introduced him to The Beatles through their iconic song but was too hesitant to "hold her hand" before she disappeared with a student from another school. HERO. (Koji Morimoto) stars Kei, who's attending a rugby game with the man she's been arranged to marry before coming across Jun, her high school crush when he was the star rugger on the high school team she helped manage; the sight of Jun makes Kei remember how she never built up the courage to admit her feelings to him. Let's Spend the Night Together (Mamoru Hamatsu) follows the wild night of a man who just realized that the woman he slept with, Kyoko, is marked with a giant back tattoo, i.e. she's already "taken" by a yakuza. Kyoko, though, insists that she loves our lead, so he manages to escape the room with her once the yakuza arrives. Cue a rough & wild car chase... but whose love is Kyoko actually testing with all of this? Jikan yo Tomare/Stop the Time (Hiroshi Hamasaki) sees a disheveled Shoichi meet Eiko, a waitress at a café near his hometown that reminds him of Mayumi, a girl he liked who disappeared eight years ago. This shouldn't really be possible, since Eiko looks too young to be an older Mayumi, but various things make him think it is, like a scar on her hand & the fact that she can't remember anything beyond the past year. Eiko agrees to go with Shoichi to his hometown, possibly to jog her memory... but are the things that make Shoichi sure that he's found Mayumi simply delusions brought about from his own paranoia over the fact that he's embezzled money from his workplace & is on the run?
Uragiri no Machikado/City of Betrayal (Tomomi Mochizuki) is about Kenji, who's currently in a long distance relationship with Natsuko, but is also seeing another girl. Natsuko, though, has told Kenji that if he finds someone else in Tokyo then he should give her back a photo she gave him back in high school, and that she'll understand. However, Kenji has been planning out a multi-stage way of telling Natsuko that it's over between them for the past half-year... but is Natsuko smarter than Kenji when it comes to love? I Can't Stop Loving You (Hidetoshi Oomori) is about Shinichi, a TV reporter who's about to marry into the family that owns the station he works for. However, deep down Shinichi is in love with Etsuko, his former AD who tendered her resignation after hearing about the marriage; you can instantly come to the conclusion here. Ano Hi ni Kaeriai/Those Were the Days (Takashi Anno) stars Rikio, the head of a local yakuza group who gets a phone message from Yoko, a take-no-nonsense hostess that he's fallen for, who wishes to see him at a restaurant later that night. To make this date Rikio pulls a fast one on his group, ditching them at a hostess club without them knowing... but being a yakuza head also makes Rikio a prime target for rival families. Lion & Pelican (Koji Sawai) follows Shino, who owns a Tokyo bar that's often frequented by Takiguchi, an ace pitcher who recently announced his retirement. Shino & Takiguchi had an agreement over the past four years where she'd be his lover whenever he's in Tokyo for a game, despite him already having a wife & kid of his own. Despite the emotional problems this has given her, & the bumps she's had in her relationship with him, Shino is still sad to hear of Takiguchi's retirement, as it now means that he'll have no reason to visit her again. Finally, White Christmas (Iku Suzuki) follows Kumi & Kenichi, two reporters for the local newspaper who are complete opposites: Kumi is punctual & dedicated, while Kenichi looks lazy & lackadaisical. However, deep down Kumi wishes she could be as loose as Kenichi is, & despises her own insecurities making her unable to admit her feelings for him. Kenichi manages to get Kumi to agree to a date on Christmas Eve, but only on the vow that Kenichi meets her exactly at 8 pm... but will Kenichi be willing to wait for Kumi when she's stuck in traffic that'll delay her for hours on end?
Part of the appeal of an anthology work like Ai Monogatari, where each portion is handled by a different staff & studio, is in seeing how each side of the production tackles the same overall theme of the anthology, usually resulting in wildly different visual styles & unique executions. Unfortunately, Ai Monogatari doesn't really deliver on that aspect, mainly because they're all adaptations of short stories taken from a shared series drawn by the same mangaka. Because of this, almost every story in this anthology OVA shares a similar visual style, since they all essentially had to stay accurate to Kaiji Kawaguchi's own style when it comes to character designs & the like, and he has a pretty distinctive look to his art. I do say "almost every story", though, because Lion & Pelican is the sole outlier in this regard, featuring a visual style that doesn't look much like any of the other stories, and even Kawaguchi's own style is mostly eschewed. However, at the same time this results in this one specific story feeling more like a black sheep entry than anything, and Norimoto Tokura's character designs & animation direction result in a highly fluid animation style that honestly feels a bit overdone for how little dynamism there is in that story; this team really should have been given Let's Spend the Night Together, instead. As for the other stories, there are some that feature some unique touches, like Uragiri no Machikado's heavy usage of split-screens for Kenji's inner dialogue or I Want to Hold Your Hand's usage of monochrome for the flashback footage that makes up the majority of its story, but for the most part it's admittedly kind of tough to really see that each story had its own staff behind it, let alone animation studio, outside of one of them.
As for the stories told in this OVA, it's understandable that it's a mixed bag, though on the whole I don't think there's really a "bad" one amongst them. At "worst", some stories are rather straightforward & simple, like I Can't Stop Loving You, HERO., & White Christmas, while other stories are little more complex & play with expectations, like Jikan yo Tomare & its rather open-ended finale. In all honesty, the only one that I felt let me down in the end was Lion & Pelican, but that's mainly because I found Takiguchi to be an absolute jerk & felt that Shino deserved much better than a manipulative & unfaithful sports celebrity. As for my personal favorite stories, I'll have to go with Let's Spend the Night Together (which was easily the most fun story of them all), I Want to Hold Your Hand (which used its flashback well to show Tatsuo learning from his mistakes), & White Christmas (because I'm just a sucker for a feel good love story, even if it's rather predictable), while I'll give an honorable mention to Jikan yo Tomare for being the least predictable story. The remaining stories were simply fine, but it is fair to say that Ai Monogatari won't go down as one of the finest examples of an anthology work in anime; it's by no means a waste of time, but it's also by no means a must watch. That being said, though, the voice cast here is huge & filled with many notable names, while four of the stories (I Want to Hold Your Hand, HERO., Uragiri no Machikado, & White Christmas) actually use the original songs they're named after, which means that The Beatles & Bing Crosby are technically "anime". The remaining five stories simply use covers of their namesake songs, though the original creators are all fully credited & copyrighted in the end credits. In other words, don't ever expect Ai Monogatari to get licensed for English release, or likely even re-released in Japan, as the song rights would be an absolute nightmare, especially for The Beatles & Bing Crosby.
"Tell me more, tell me more; but you don't gotta brag." "Tell me more, tell me more; 'cause he sounds like a drag."
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| "18", huh? Yeah, sure Jan... |
OK, this third pick is definitely a very different type of "romance", now isn't it? Debuting in 1993 in the pages of Hakusensha's Young Animal (i.e. this ran alongside Berserk!), Tanin no Kankei/Relationships with Others (not to be confused with the 1973 song by Katsuko Kanai) was a short-lived manga by Ichiro Arima than wound up only lasting for two volumes. There really isn't that much about Arima I can find, outside of the fact that he seemed to have made around seven manga throughout the 90s, his longest being 1994's Sayuki at eight volumes, all of which being "ecchi" to some extent. Regardless, in 1994 a company called Jam.Creation, "best known" for being the original creator of the 1992 OVA Ellcia, teamed up with regular partner J.C. Staff to produce a two-episode OVA adaptation of Tanin no Kankei, and that OVA wound up getting licensed for English release in 1996, though the name got changed to Homeroom Affairs. However, this didn't come from any of the usual names of the mid-90s, but rather was the first anime released by a small outfit named Star Anime Enterprises, which was founded by ex-CPM employee David Norell, who apparently just hounded Japanese licensors until one seemingly just gave in. Hey, that's how some other English anime companies got started (AnimEigo, ADV, Anime Midstream, etc.), so no shame. I actually already covered another SAE release back in 2022 via Demo Disc, which was the sole VHS tape it managed to release of Dragon League in 1998 (SAE would go under shortly afterwards), so I guess it's only fitting that I cover the remainder of Star Anime Enterprises' catalog here by looking at its first (of only two) anime... and it's about a high school teacher being sexually teased by one of his students; The Wheel can just be so mean, sometimes.
Tokiro Ebara is a young man who's about the start his very first day as a new teacher at Mitsuba High School, a prestigious all girls school, and though his young mind can't help but think of his hypothetical students admitting their crushes on him, he knows that such things are "forbidden", and that his students should be as innocent & pure as the cute, red-haired school girl taking the same train as him. Unfortunately, after accidentally bumping into said red-haired student upon exiting the train, and helping gather items that spilt from her bag, Tokiro discovers that this girl is actually rather promiscuous after seeing that she had a condom with her. The student, Miyako Hase, decides to mess with Tokiro by playfully teasing him in a sexual manner... which then becomes immensely awkward for both of them when they later realize that they not only go to the same school, but Tokiro is in fact Miyako's homeroom teacher! Determined to help put her on the straight & narrow, Tokiro decides to not take his eyes off of Miyako... which becomes quite impossible for him when, after a series of circumstances (including Tokiro himself getting drunk), Miyako winds up moving in with him, due to Miyako no longer being able to stay at the apartment she had previously been living alone in.
First & foremost... Screw you, Wheel. This was, quite simply, not a fun OVA for me to watch both episodes of, and it was even worse than I had imagined because I thought these were ~30-minutes long, but rather they were ~45 minutes each. In short, Homeroom Affairs is a concept that, if tackled just right & with a manner of subtlety & finesse, could actually work & tell a good piece of character drama. The idea of a young high school teacher deciding to take in one of his female students when she's left without a home, because she has no mother & her father is a deadbeat, has some merit to it, and I can even accept the idea of the student being promiscuous due to an immense feeling of loneliness in her life due to her lack of proper parental figures. However, to execute that kind of story well & hit all of the proper character & drama beats, the teacher-student relationship must be established as purely platonic, i.e. (in this scenario) father-daughter or surrogate uncle-niece, and the promiscuity of the student has to be dealt with in a respectful & responsible fashion. I'm not saying that the teacher necessarily has to teach the student to be chaste (though, depending on the age, there should at least be a sense of "you're not ready quite yet"), but at the very least the student should be taught how to be sexually responsible with their body.
To no surprise, Homeroom Affairs does NOT tackle this concept just right. It has the subtlety & finesse of a Mack truck running down a highway while going over the speed limit, honking its horn at every single car it passes by because it demands attention. Finally, it makes no qualms about the teacher-student relationship being as blatantly skeevy as possible as soon as possible, and the sexually deviant student learns next to nothing about being sexually responsible, outside of the obvious "use a condom" & "sexual assault is wrong", and I'm pretty sure she already knew both of those from the start. Ebara (SAE uses "Ehara" in the subs, but I blatantly heard a "b" whenever his name was spoken) is your standard type of lead for a sex comedy like this, so he's weak-willed, well-intentioned but easily flustered, & the literal first thing we're shown of him is him dreaming about being crushed on by his potential students, so while he's not a downright horndog he's still at least somewhat of a perv. Meanwhile, Miyako makes no hesitation in her sexual teasing of Ebara whenever they're alone, removing all of her clothes if need be to mess with him psychologically, and even doing things like rubbing her bare breasts on his back or riding his leg. Also, it's worth pointing out that SAE did the whole "No, really, she's 18 so it's legal!" thing on the title splashes of both episodes, but in Episode 2 Ebara outright states that he's 26, while it's indicated that Miyako is 10 years his junior, so she's 16; even taking age of consent in Japan into account, it's still a teacher-student relationship. The end result was just me continually sighing throughout both episodes, awkwardly laughing to myself to ease my constant annoyance, and just wishing it was all over while cursing The Wheel for giving me this OVA to watch. I think it's fair to say that this is, by no means, my kind of anime.
However... however, I will give Episode 2 some small credit by toning down the squicky comedy & focusing on telling a story involving Miyako's old squeeze Kei, and Ebara deciding to stand tall for the girl that he's made himself responsible for taking care of when he finds out that he tried to sexually assault her. It honestly showed the potential in this kind of story when it comes to being a character drama, even if the characters themselves didn't necessarily earn this kind of drama. Unfortunately, after that story finished up the remainder of the OVA then happened & I returned right back to getting pissed off at it, because it had the gall to literally go with a "Let's get married!... Or will we?... Or are we joking?... Or maybe we will!" ending. In the end, I seriously feel like the Japanese licensor that let David Norell license Homeroom Affairs for Star Anime Enterprises' first release must have been pulling a rib on him & essentially gave him this in an attempt to call his bluff, while Norell himself seemingly didn't care what the hell he would license & release, so there was no bluff to actually call.
Again, I must reiterate... this ran alongside Berserk!
"Tell me more, tell me more; how much dough did he spend?" "Tell me more, tell me more; could she get me a friend?"
Finally, we end on something a bit iconic, at least when it comes to the idea of virtual romance. Originally released on May 27, 1994 for the PC Engine Super CD-ROM², Tokimeki Memorial/Heartbeat Memorial is often considered the origin of the modern "dating sim" (though not technically the "first" one), a genre a video game where the goal is to slowly romance a group of girls over the course of the campaign, with hopes of getting an ending with the specific one of the player's choice; otome games are similar in concept, only with the genders swapped, but may differ mechanically. The series (& specifically the first game) is also known for its "bomb" mechanic, where neglecting girls will result in them getting jealous & gossiping about the player, reducing affection across the board. Most notably, though, the original game was actually written & co-programmed by Koji Igarashi, who got help & advice from his girlfriend (& future wife), and when the game performed well he was allowed to move over to the Castlevania franchise... the rest is history. Meanwhile, Hideo Kojima would produce the spin-off Tokimeki Memorial Drama Series, a trio of adventure games using the engine made for Policenauts. More recently, the game received renewed attention when "New Games Journalist" Tim Rogers produced a six-hour "review" about it in 2021; sorry, but I've never watched it, as Rogers' style just isn't my thing. Naturally, a successful franchise like Tokimeki Memorial would eventually receive anime adaptations, but surprisingly there are only three. In 2006 there was Tokimeki Memorial ~Only Love~, a two-cour TV anime based on the very short-lived MMO Tokimeki Memorial Online, while in 2009 there was a one-off OVA, subtitled Hajimari no Finder, that was based on Tokimeki Memorial 4. However, what I'll be covering is the very first anime adaptation, a two-episode OVA from 1999 simply titled Tokimeki Memorial that looks to be based on the 1994 original. So let's finish off this wheel-determined quartet of romance OVAs by seeing how an iconic dating sim got adapted into anime!
It's the start of Autumn over at Kirameki High School, and love is budding in the air. Various girls in the school are either getting through their last months of school before graduation, while others are trying to figure out if the feelings they have towards a boy are actually love. However, when all is said & done, which girl will follow the old legend of the school & confess to him on Graduation Day while under the giant tree in Kirameki High's courtyard?
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| This is literally the most we get of the lead's face. |
Similar to Kyukyoku Chojin R with the last wheel-determined round I did two years ago, the Tokimeki Memorial OVA is really meant to be watched by people who have at least played the original game to completion, in some form, because this OVA doesn't really do much to introduce the characters seen here. However, an interesting twist with this OVA is that is focuses purely on the girls that players can romance in the game, with the player character (who I'll just call "Nameless-kun" from now on) only making a handful of appearances throughout both episodes... and every time he does appear it's either in some sort of silhouette or it's from behind, and the only bit of "speaking" he does is at the very end when he's short of breath after running to the tree for the finale. That being said, though, this OVA really only has two real girls who get anything remotely resembling a "notable" story arc throughout. First there's Shiori Fujisaki, the requisite "main" girl of the game (a la Sakura Shinguji in the early Sakura Wars games) who's the childhood friend of Nameless-kun & is afraid to admit her feelings to him throughout. Shiori also has phone conversations with a "nameless female caller" who admires Nameless-kun from afar, and the two find a mutual bond in their respective hesitations; for fans of the game, this girl is Miharu Tatebayashi, who's a hidden girl you can romance. Besides Shiori there's also Nozomi Kiyokawa, a talented member of the swimming team who's hesitant to accept a scholarship, due to her worry that another injury would kill her ability to competitively swim, & in the second episode it's shown that she tries to look more "feminine" to appeal to Nameless-kun, namely by growing her hair out slightly.
Beyond them, though, the rest of the girls seen in Tokimeki Memorial are more or less just there for the occasional cameo & reference to things Nameless-kun can do with them, like the bookish Mio Kisaragi having a book of poetry from him, or "Queen of the School" Mira Kagami accepting a date with him only to "give him a memory" to cherish. Some of the other girls honestly have more to do with their classmates than Nameless-kun in this OVA, or simply have their own plots to themselves, like Ayako Katagiri becoming friends with Kiyokawa or Yuina Himoo literally building a giant robot for world domination; sadly, Himoo's robot only gets three extremely short scenes across both episodes. The end result of this is a bit of a mixed bag, as Episode 1 often comes off more like a series of scenes involving the girls that only vaguely link together into a cohesive overarching narrative as they mostly converse about love from a conceptual perspective, with Nameless-kun only being directly talked about a handful of times. Episode 2 fares a bit better, with a stronger focus on Shiori's side of things & the occasional turn for Kiyokawa's b-plot to be shown off, though because this is all from the girls' side of things I came to a single conclusion: Nameless-kun just isn't worth it, girls. Shiori has this grand plan to start a Classical Music Appreciation Club, partially to share her love of the music with others, & she gets a decently-sized group from this, including some of the various girls & even rich boy Rei Ijuin (who, after looking it up... the OVA really doesn't hint at all at his unlockable storyline), but mainly to get Nameless-kun's attention... only for Nameless-kun to never show up for a single Club meeting, and it's revealed at the end via flashback that he's the one who gave Shiori the Chopin CD that inspired her to even start the Club! What.. a... jackass!!
But, in all seriousness, the Tokimeki Memorial OVA is simply OK. Fans of the original game will no doubt get the most enjoyment from this, as it does more or less presume that viewers will be familiar with the cast of girls seen throughout & can fill in the gaps. However, for a "TokiMemo" neophyte like me, I can't help but notice the flaws, though I will say that I did have some enjoyment with Episode 2... even if I came to the conclusion that Nameless-kun just wasn't worth all of the emotional ups & downs that Shiori was putting herself through, by the end.
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But that's where this volume of Oh Me, Oh My, OVA! ends, and this is where I will tell The Almighty Wheel that, despite making me watch Homeroom Affairs, we'll still be friends. Did I really learn anything about love & romance from watching these four OVAs? Probably not, but these wheel-derived volumes of OM, OM, OVA! are purely for the sake of forcing me to watch anime that I may never get to (or even intend to) watch on my own accord, so even if at least one of these OVAs was personally a chore for me to get through I still had some fun.
See you again in another three volumes, Wheel, and maybe then you can randomly pick for me a quartet of OVAs that I at least had an "iota" of intention to watch... but then where'd be the fun in that?!
Outlanders © Johji Manabe/Hakusensha・Tatsunoko Production/Victor Entertainment (now Flying Dog)
Ai Monogatari: 9 Love Stories © 1992 Kaiji Kawaguchi・Toho
Homeroom Affairs © 1994 Ichiro Arima/Hakusensha・Jam.Creation・J.C. Staff
Tokimeki Memorial © 1994 1999 Konami © 1999 Konami Music Entertainment
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