Megane na Kanojo

I'm so upset that this is just a 4 episode ova, when each episode ends you just wish it would continue. Megane na Kanojo is about the love lives of 4 girls who happen to wear glasses. Each girl gets an episode dedicated to her. The romances potrayed are lighthearted and enjoyable to watch, the characters are quirky in their own way and they don't clown around for the sake of clowning around. In just 40 odd minutes this anime made me what love is about - If you want to watch a short heartwarming slice of life/romance anime, look no further.

Megane no Kanojo is a very short OVA consisting of 4 episodes that follows the love story of girls wearing glasses. Each episode is dedicated to a single girl and is about 14 minutes long including its OP and ED themes. Despite the lack of length, the OVA delivered in contents. Each episode is fun to watch being lighthearted and the pacing is very nice as the stories revolves around a girl, the glasses the she wear, their circumstances, and how they overcome the hurdles and discover what love is as the episode moves along. Each episode ends with a sense of completeness in it.

The ... animation is average, nothing fancy or eye candy here. The environment looks detailed enough, movements are fluid, and the character designs are interesting and stayed consistent throughout the episode.

The OVA includes an OP and ED theme songs that is nice to listen and the accompanying animation that reflects its overall theme, it has several BGMs that match the scenes it is played upon well enough.

The OVA has a very small amount of characters, each episode consist of the female and male lead and may or may not have any other characters besides the two. Voice acting is very good, I could recognize a few of the VAs and I feel that they match the characters they are portraying.

My overall impression of the OVA is that it did a very good in staying true to its title with each episode having the glasses the main focus of the stories. I enjoyed the episodes all throughout and feel satisfied with a sense of completeness in it. This OVA is recommended for individuals who likes short romance stories that is lighthearted and sweet.

Megane na Kanojo is a 2010 OVA from AIC Takarazuka. It's based off of a manga by TOBi. So, I've never heard of the studio or the mangaka before and I have no idea what to expect. But let's have a look.

Story:

Basically the OVA consists of four short stories with a romance focus that all centre around girls with glasses. Very basic, slice of life stuff but without the strong comedic elements that make so many slice of life series good.

The inherent problem with the series is that it's dull and trite. The romances are very short, not even close to well ... developed and tying all of them into the ladies wearing glasses just seems like a desperate bid to give it some kind of defining characteristic. Like someone told the author that their writing was generic and they thought making all the stories focus on girls with glasses would somehow counter that criticism. Or maybe they just have a glasses fetish. Either way, the writing is insipid.

A big part of that problem is that every episode focuses on a different relationship. So, instead of having a single romance with some decent development, we have four with zero development.

Characters:

The characters are extremely bland and one note. We have a girl who loves her glasses and a guy who likes her but hates glasses... because he had a lousy teacher who wore them. We have a famous idol who uses glasses as part of a disguise and a dim-witted guy who can't recognise her when she wears glasses. We have an awkward university couple who connect thanks to their glasses. We have a girl who wants to be more confident and her old friend who reminds her of the days when she was more socially inept. And none of their romances have any chemistry or interesting elements.

Art:

The artwork is, by far, the best part of the series and even that isn't great. It's pretty decent. The character designs are fine, albeit a bit mundane. The animation flows well. The backgrounds have some nice details even if they aren't all that interesting.

Sound:

The acting is able. It's not anything particularly good but it's not bad either. The issue comes down to the characters being less interesting than a discarded bubblegum wrapper. You can get Hanazawa Kana, Hirakawa Daisuke and some other highly talented people, but when they have absolutely nothing to work with they aren't going to give their strongest performances. The music is forgettable and uninspired. Which, in all fairness, does suit the series.

Ho-yay:

There isn't any. Not that queer representation would have saved this series. We'd just have some really boring queer characters to go with the boring straight ones.

Areas of Improvement:

1. If you only have around an hour of run time, cumulatively, don't try to squeeze in four different relationships. Just focus on a single one.

2. Just having a romance isn't all that interesting by itself. You need some kind of drama or comedy to enhance the viewing experience. With the length of this, comedy would have been the way to go.

3. You can't produce flat characters and expect talented actors to just imbue them with depth.

Final Thoughts:

This anime isn't bad. It's incredibly boring and provides nothing of value, but there's nothing about it that stands out as outright awful. My final rating is going to be a 4/10. It's a sub-par romance that only a connoisseur of the genre should bother with. For the rest of us, there are much better, more compelling romance works out there.