Yojouhan Shinwa Taikei is an ingenious show depicting an unnamed protagonist and his attempts to achieve a “rose-colored campus life” in Kyoto University he currently attends. The show follows a loop motive and shows many parallel futures of his life, all the while being humorous as well as thought provoking. While the story is very well tied-up, characters and production values don’t particularly stand out. Nonetheless, if you are interested in shows which are different from general or you have it for Japanese linguistics (as the scrip the show uses is brilliant), you should definitely check this show out. It’s likely the best of the season.

Always dreaming of the unrealistic, I never looked at what I had right around me.

Originally written as a novel by Morimi Tomihiko and later adapted to anime by Yuasa Masaaki (Mind Game, Kaiba) Yojouhan Shinwa Taikei is a an ingenious, I suppose daily life, show, depicting an unnamed protagonist and his attempts to achieve, as he himself describes, a rose colored campus life in Kyoto University he presently attends. The show follows a loop formula and pretty much in each episode you will see a different future our protagonist could have achieved. However, even though thanks to that the show starts to appear slightly episodic everything is tied-up gracefully in the end delivering a solid and thought-provoking story. Not to mention that writing is brilliant, brilliant enough to make me buy the novels.

However, though the story is memorable, interesting, and indeed funny at times, characters other than protagonist seriously lack a backbone. As even though you can figure out everyone’s personality sooner or later there are no backdrops or any scenes where they’d actually talk about their feelings. It still is okay given the plot’s nature, however, as in essence the only one you will ever care about will be the protagonist. You shouldn’t be scared away by the from the first sight horrible production values. While unstable and simplistic animation might indeed have been used to mask the anime’s low budget, the artistic style it provides successfully cancels the feeling of void you get without any eye-candies. Music is hardly memorable too, unfortunately. However, somewhat dull production values shouldn’t stop you from giving this show a shot, as its scenario might be the best anime that actually started this season had to offer.

Animation: 3

As mentioned before, animation by Madhouse is simplistic. Backgrounds are barren and the color palette is so unvaried that you’ll barely notice more than 16 colors in the whole show, white and black being the two dominated ones. Character designs lack detail considerably, not to mention that the deformation gets so bad at times you’ll be pressed hard to tell who is who. Facial expressions are nice, if freaky, though. Even before starting to talk about fluidity of animation I should mention that the bigger half of the show is told through completely still frames. Actual movements are pretty choppy too, but the unnatural feeling they give off only works as a joke to improve this anime’s humorous side. Anyway, even though a disaster from a technical side, followed by an ingenious direction the animation of this shows ends up entertaining you more than disappointing. And giving the show’s allegorical plot, this unstable, messed up animation only works to tell the story better.

Sound: 3

While OP song is a nice, if not particularly memorable song, the ED Kami-sama no Iu Toori by Yakushimaru Etsuko is simply great. It’s quite hard to describe, but the melancholic voice followed by that mysterious melody and allegorical imagery provoked my thoughts not once or twice. BGM on the other hand is barely memorable, with one or two nice tracks near the end, but without anything particularly worth mentioning most of the time. Though still I admit that the tunes of classical instruments worked relatively well.

I get the feeling that it is more attributable to the brilliant script rather than the voice-actors that the show’s sound stage is so awesome, the Japanese they use is brilliant, the anime’s already a must watch for anyone studying Japanese just for that. Anyway, as far as I can tell seiyuu did their job really well as well. Most of the lines were told through the voice of Asanuma Shintarou who did well to give the life to our talkative protagonist. Sakamoto Maaya sounds very well doing the emotionless voice of Arashi and Yoshino Hiroyuki sounded just as freaky as Oz was supposed to.

Story: 4

To tell it simply, the story is about optimistic dreams of the youth, and the walls you are bound to collide with when trying to achieve them. By showing us the multiple possible futures of our protagonist, this show also tells us the cruelty of reality and the inability of people to appreciate the things they already have. Kyoto University certainly seems like a fun place though, with our character entering a different club in each of the parallel realities and ending up falling into many funny and ultimately shitty situations there. The story is humorous and plenty thought-provoking telling you that some parts of destiny simply can’t be avoided. The ending is solid and moving to an extent, the anime ends just at the right time before becoming repetitive. I also ties-up most of the relevant plot holes so well it leaves you with that nice feeling you get after watching a full-fledged serious show which was definitely worth your time.

Characters: 3

Characters, though not as detailed as the plot, are plenty interesting. The slightly conceited protagonist is unfortunately the only character who gets a full background and gets developed. His personality is expressed very well through his linguistically high-level monologues and his obsession to achieve the ideal life is very well expressed. It’s a little bit unfortunate in one way, however, that in essence, apart from the awesome linguistic capacity he is just a completely normal guy. It works well, however, as tuning into the feelings of the protagonist is quite important for the show’s plot. As tuning into the feelings of the trickster Oz, protagonist’s best friend and also the main reason he always ends up blowing his dreams off, is hardly possible. Oz, while unfortunately having no actual backdrop or much of a background, is second best character in the show just for the sheer fun he offers. Just as the protagonist expresses, Oz is a genius at causing sorrow to other people and his ability to scheme pranks rivals that of a devil.

Other characters include the eccentric Akashi, who kind of appears emotionless outside, but has some really, almost blowing quirks inside. Like going into a complete frenzy by something as little as a moth touching her. An 8th year forever repeating student who introduces himself as a god is incomprehensible to the anime’s very end, but at least his eccentric behavior is fun to observe. Pretty much every other single character follows a similar pattern, none of them a particularly fleshed-out in detail, but their quirks are enough to express their characters and entertain you. It would be hard, however, to write an essay for any of their personalities though.

Conclusion: Recommended for 13 year olds or older, Yojouhan Shinwa Taikei is likely the best anime that has started and aired this season. Imaginative, funny plot, interesting characters and the masterful use of linguistics make this show, while not into a must-watch, at least into a good show which is a very worthwhile watch, were you following the present season or just picking up any good works of anime from any age. I can’t really think up of a show which would be exactly similar to Shinwa Taikei, but if you were interested in the fact that the show was slightly weird itself, you might also want to try Bakemonogatari and Kaiba to entertain yourself. Also, the best loop story in the anime world as far as I know is Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, so if you haven’t seen it yet, watch it.