Sasameki Koto

As the opening song plays, you really get a sense of what this show is about and its pacing. In the opening episode's pre-opening sequence you see two schoolgirls kissing in an empty classroom as two other girls look on, before the slow and melodic opening starts to play. From these two things alone you can tell that this anime is a slow paced slice of life school based anime. What really sets this series apart though is the subject matter involved and the way its portrayed.

When I first saw the synopsis of the series, I had been expecting something slightly different from what the show was. Though when you read the words 'Seinen', 'Girl Love' and 'Schoolgirls' as tags for a series, you expect something with fanservice all over the place and very little in the way of a plot. However it manages to have a perfect mix of comedy and angst to make it an enjoyable series to watch, and apart from some character based fanservice, there is only a small amount of visual fanservice.

 

In most romantic comedy anime, we usually see the world through the eyes of a main character who is oblivious to the fact they have admirers, with the secondary character being the lovelorn childhood friend. However this series flips the dynamic by putting us in the viewpoint of that lovelorn friend. Watching on as her friend tries to forge a relationship with someone who isn't her. As you can tell, this is where most of this shows angst comes from, and for the first time in my experience we're seeing it from this sort of characters POV instead as just a third party that is watching the other scenes when not seeing everything from the standard protagonists viewpoint.Though the first episode starts off with this kiss between two unknown girls as the two series protagonists Sumika and Ushio watch on, the rest of the first two episodes actually take place before this scene occurs. Its not until we get to episode 4 before we are introduced to the couple properly and the set up for the series is finally put into place. Its a story about four schoolgirl lesbians.

 

Now I know what most people would think, its a Girl Love series, its a pretty standard set up for multiple girls in an all girls boarding school to be lesbians, in fact its basically a cliché in itself. Yet again Sasameki Koto warps the dynamic, the school isn't a boarding school, nor is it a single sex school, its just a standard co-ed Japanese high school. At first I thought the series could have been a deconstruction of your typical Girl Love series, but as the series carried on, I realised it was more that the series was trying to portray the idea in a more realistic manner than most other series of the genre.
Now I've gone on enough about the series plot, now I think I should talk a bit more about the characters and the series as a whole. Much like any romantic comedy series, its an ensemble cast set up with your standard protagonist, the love interest, several tertiary protagonists that appear in every episode (or at least every episode after their introduction) and the several recurring characters. It also does the romantic comedy standard of fleshing out all the characters pretty well, not bad considering the series is only 13 episodes long, half the number of the of a standard romantic comedy series.
The protagonist for the show is Sumika Murasame, a tall, athletic and intelligent girl, who is madly in love with her best friend. In most yuri she is the sort of character who is seen as cool, or to quote tvtropes 'Tall, dark and bishoujo' and typically a popular object of affection to lesbian schoolgirls. In this series though her total amount of girls falling at her feet to be with her is........zero. Yup, even with the appeal of glasses and thigh high knee socks (Grade A ZR) isn't enough to have any of the girls in the show fall for her. She's also a little bit of a pervert herself.

The love interest is her best friend Ushio Kazama, who whilst she does care for Sumika, doesn't have an attraction to her cause she's not 'cute'. Whilst cool girls are generally popular in Yuri series, this girl bucks that trend and decides to go for only cute girls. A thing she actually admits early in the first episode, including a funny little scene explaining why she didn't get accepted to an all girls school.

The tertiary protagonists are Tomoe Hachisuka and Miyako Taema, the lesbian couple that are Sumika and Ushio's classmates. Yep, in a class that probably has 30 students and probably split 50/50 male to female we have four lesbians. Makes you wonder if a psychological test was applied to the entrance exam and they rounded up all the lesbians and put them in a single class. It is through these two that most of the comedy comes from. Sumika and Tomoe have a lot of parallels, both are the 'cool' type personality and are inteligent and athletically gifted, both are quite tomboy-esque, or at least to their respective loved one.

Miyako on the other hand is nothing like Ushio, in fact if it wasn't for the fact that she is already with Tomoe, Ushio would probably be after Miyako as a girlfriend. Beware though, whilst she is a loli who looks like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, her personality is in complete contrast to it, and regularly plays up to how she appears.

Now we move onto the sole male character of the series, Masaki Akemiya. He is the butt monkey of the series, if there is something unfortunate going to happen its going to happen to him. He's also stuck in one of the most unusual love triangles ever. You see he loves Sumika, Sumika loves Ushio and Ushio has a crush on Masaki. Confused yet? Well Masaki is also known as Akemi Yamasaki after his little sister sent pictures of him crossdressed to a fashion magazine and they chose him to be a model. Yup, that's right, he is the series trap. Something that Sumika catches onto early on in the series and uses that knowledge to her advantage on a few occasions to get him to do things for her. Though its partly through bitterness because Masaki actually beats her in Ushio's cute things stake, at least when he is Akemi mode.
The Many Faces of Akemi Yamasaki/Masaki Akemiya

Azusa Aoi and Kiyori Torioi round off the shows main cast, also they are the only heterosexual female characters in the series. Not that you would be able to tell that much as Azusa is a yuri fangirl. Yes, shock horror, a heterosexual female who is into yuri instead of yaoi. Though given the nature of the series it is probably understandable. Kiyori on the other hand only has one real love and that is eating, practically every scene has her scoffing down some curry bread, bento boxes, you name it, she has probably eaten it over the course of these 13 episodes.

 

The series has many of the standard clichés of seinen and shonen romantic comedies. the 'non-date' date, the beach episode, the pool episode. I'm sure that if the series had been 26 episodes that they would have thrown in a bath house and a hot spring episode into the mix too. However the fact it didn't use all the clichés within its short run shows that there is a little more plot than most.

The shows one weakness is that it suffers the old 'caught up to the manga' syndrome that a lot of series seem to suffer from now. In other shows it can be worked around by tacking on some sort of ending that can bring some sort of closure to the series like Negima?! Love Hina and Claymore, but in a slice of life series it is impossible to give the show real closure. It always leaves you feeling like there should be an OVA or second series on the horizon. But as of yet there is still no continuation.
Overall the series is quite enjoyable, it blended the comedy and the angst in just the right way to make it not seem as though neither of them are the main focus of the series. The characters are well rounded and have depth that is in my experience uncommon for series of this length. And the episodes are a great watch.