Anime Pilgrimage RTT

Kimagure Orange Road OVA

There’s always a degree of risk involved in OVAs derived from popular TV series: after a conclusion they can seem unnecessary, or they can destroy the magic of a TV series through the law of diminishing returns.
This is not the case with Kimagure Orange Road: they do not interfere with the established continuity and, I’ll admit, I got high from inhaling the nostalgia fumes. If you can get nostalgic for a show even while watching it, it’s doing something right. I’ll admit that the production values are inconsistent, but that is true, too, of the TV series: hair colours were never really established in its entire 48 episode run.

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Kimagure Orange Road TV Ending: Spoiler Edition

I think that Kimagure Orange Road boasted a fine, fine ending, but there is little that can be said about it without resorting to wild and dangerous spoilers. Here I throw caution to the wind and say what I really feel.

Series End Spoilers

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Kimagure Orange Road – episodes 25-36

Kimagure Orange Road went out with a strangely apocalyptic bang! I like the approach to the conclusion that they took here, with no attention paid to any sort of epilogue: that’s the job of the movie, I Want to Return to that Day. Here we just get sweetness and light. There was adventure before that, too!

I therefore proclaim Kimagure Orange Road to be excellent eighties-vintage anime.

I can’t believe that was the last of the Jingoro.

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Kimagure Orange Road – episodes 25-36

Have you ever lent in to kiss a pretty girl only to realise, upon closer inspection, that she is your sister? Nor have I (I don’t have a sister). Kyosuke sure has, though!
In this set of rockin’ episodes we get: several extra powers; another holiday period; many, many sukeban; and Schwarzenneger, Superman and general Hollywood jokes!

I’ll put the quality of the series this way: I’m at episode 37 of 48 and am now feeling sad that there are only 12 episodes left. Sometimes a 26 episode series can feel epic, but if you go for a more episodic route a series that’s even longer than that can feel like an idyllic holiday. You want an epic story to conclude (conclusion is, after all, gratification), but you want an idyllic holiday to last forever.

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Kimagure Orange Road – episodes 17-24

Summer comes to Orange Road and makes the marvellous atmosphere even more marvellous. The program is at its best when it deals explicitly with the characters rather than the love problems that they endure.

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Kimagure Orange Road – episodes 8-16

Most of the psychic stuff is replaced by Kyosuke’s new penchant for prophetic dreams. Sadly, as Madoka is becoming more apparent in her fondness for Kyosuke, Kyosuke is deciding that maybe Hikaru has something going for her.

Clearly she hasn’t, but what kind of love triangle would it be if everyone got together in an expedient fashion? It would be a much more satisfactory love story. Fortunately the series does not carry itself on the strength of this relationship and has more than enough other things going for it.

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Take Me to Summer Side

AnimEigo’s Kimagure Orange Road licence expires at the end of this month. If you would like to buy it, The Right Stuf has it for $124 (with OVAs and movies on a separate discount) and AnimEigo has it for $62 without cases.

AnimEigo doesn’t ship internationally, so unless you have a mule to buy it for you you’re stuck elsewhere.

Now you can have the honour of owning one of the out of print series that I extol the virtue of! Too bad you missed out on Don’t Leave Me Alone, Daisy. Oh well, there’s always HD for that!

Kimagure Orange Road – episodes 1-8

Many, many years before he was made to hit in America with Beck, and more still before he threw gas onto the burning trainwreck that was Paradise Kiss, Kobayashi Osamu directed Kimagure Orange Road, one of the templates of proper romance comedy – spiced up by psychic powers.

A true child of the eighties, this 1987 vintage series has the special aura reserved for the well-designed veterans of that era. It belongs to the genre that features romance heroes with clear intentions and is generally fun besides.

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