Bokura Ga Ita

Information of Anime

Nanami Takahashi is starting her new life as a high school student by making a lot of friends.  She learns of a boy named Yano Motoharu that almost every girl in the school likes.  Yuri Yamamoto however hates him.  After discovering who Yano is & being embarrassed in class by him, Nanami started to develop feelings for him.  As she approaches him, she learns from Takeuchi Masafumi that Nana Yamamoto, who is Yuri's older sister that died in a car accident last year, was Yano's girlfriend.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I've seen.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

The story focuses a lot on Nanami's point of view of how she feels for Yano.  Although she is made as a fool from him & hates him for it, she doesn't seem to give up.  Even after hearing about Nana, she still feels for him even though she is unsure why she loves him.  Also, she finds it hard to understand what Yano is thinking or doing.  He's very hard to read as it seems that he does things for his own benefit although he seems to help others instead.  Later in the show, we learn about his carefree attitude about his past relationship with Nana before her accident.  Also, we learn about Yano's past love life before he met Nanami.  Although the 2 are willing to leave the past behind them, Nanami is still interested in Yano's past as she nosy digs into Yuri's personal life as she feels that Yuri has feelings for Yano.  Thus jealous plays a fact in Nanami & Yano when they are too close to the opposite sex.  However, the wound gets deeper when Yuri interrupts the couple by telling more of Nana's reason for riding in her ex-boyfriends car at the day of the accident using betrayal as the keyword.  Hearing all this & seeing how Yano can't seem to forget about Nana, Nanami decides to break up as she can't seem to make Yano happy.

Because of the breakup Yano & Nanami are feeling down about it & Masafumi Takeuchi starts to jump in & score on Nanami.  However, Yano still feels that he hasn't broken up with Nanami yet & tries to keep Takeuchi away from her.  However, Nanami doesn't see Takeuchi that way & thinks of him as a supporter since he is Yano's friend.  Nanami starts to collect herself after Yano tells her that he'll be waiting for her.  After some rocky paths, Yano finally decides to tell Nanami about Nana.  However, he stalls many times to the point where Nana nearly gives up on him for being a fool to believe him in telling her everything.  After Yano finally tells everything, the two get back together.  However, it would be long as Yuri calls Yano on a critical date with Nanami & tells him that her mother collapsed.  Again, things go into full circle as Takeuchi goes after Nanami & finally confess to her.  In the meantime, after Yano rejects Yuri's love for him, his mother tells him that she is filing for divorce & they are moving to Tokyo as her mother manages to get a job which is hard for her to get due to her age.

Yano is faced with a decision of either staying or going with his mother to Tokyo.  Just when love is about to blossom with Nanami, Yano decides to go to Tokyo & spend his last Christmas with Nanami.  They decide to keep in contact with each other once in a while since Yano & his mother are in a tight financial position.  The story ends with Nanami & her friends as well as Yano's seeing him off at the train station.

My Personal Review

Bokura Ga Ita is a simple love drama with a little bit of light comedy in it.  It's pretty dry & it isn't suited for everyone.  It seems to be targeted towards a young teenage & mature audience.  It's got nothing perverted so far with the exceptions of references about sharing a bed at the most & it's pretty close to a high school soap opera.  If you want some love drama that's pretty realistic, this isn't a bad choice to watch.

Animation

The character designs aren't something I like.  I don't like the pug nose look on the side of the characters  & the drawings look a little rough.  Also, the bottom part of the lips look thick.  Yet, the designs are pretty simple & have that manga feel to it.  There are times where the characters turn semi SD form, but that's mainly Nanami that occurs the most.  However, the character start to look more cuter to me.  I think I'll started to become accustom to them as I watch more of the show.

The backgrounds are on the dull side as well.  They are quite blurry & have little detail in them.  However, they seem to stand out well.

For the colours, it's very dull.  It's not too bright & seems to be flat.

In terms of the animation movement, it's quite flowing & smooth.  There isn't a lot of those quick or silly movements involved in the show as most of it seems to go at a slow or normal pace.  Overall, there wasn't anything choppy that I noticed.

Sound       

There is a mixture of realistic & silly sound effects in this anime.  They all balance out in the show pretty well.  They are pretty soft & gentle, which eases the mood of the show.

The seiyuus here are not too great.  The seiyuu for Nanami is her debut role & she doesn't seem to produce much life for her character.  Don't get me wrong, I think she's actually a good choice for Nanami as it seems to match her character well.  However, she needs to put more energy.  The other seiyuus seem to be new too.  Yano's voice makes him carefree, but it feels lacking as well.  Overall, I feel the seiyuus aren't put too much life into their characters.

The music is ok as it gently sets the mood of the show.  They are mainly soft ballads, but they aren't play a lot in the show.  For some reason, this show has a lot of ending themes.  I never seen a show with 26 episodes having that many.

Story

It's basically a love story that's pretty complex like a soap opera.  Nanami has feelings for Yano, but she doesn't know if it's really love & vice versa for Yano.  Both are unsure & not honest to themselves about the situation.  Yano's background is a bit tragic & doesn't seem to let go about his past.  There seems to be some nice character development in this show.  The biggest one is probably Yano if he changes his weak carefree personality.  Although it's quite dry & slow for some people, it's pretty realistic.

As we go deeper into the show, we learn more about the characters; especially Yano's past.  The elements here are quite interesting & grabs your attention.  However, the jealously that Nanami & Yano have when 1 of them gets too close to someone of the opposite sex can cause the show to go into a circle.  The fighting between the 2 lovers doesn't seem to end & there seems to be too many hardships the couples face.  The relationship between Yano & Yuri is the biggest source of the story & it seems the show focus this area a lot.  It's quite interesting to see how this past relationship lead to a breakup, but the pace it's going at to do it is quite slow & annoying somehow until Nanami calls it quits.  Things get a bit interesting when Takeuchi goes after Nanami.  However, it ends quickly when Yano & Nanami get together again & returns to the part where the two can't communicate with each other again.  It's just a huge circle pretty much until Yano is about to move to Tokyo.  But the way it moves again is always the same.  Nanami is always not honest with her.  It gets boring too quickly like this.  The bonds between the two doesn't go really outside of being more than friends & yet just casual lovers.  None of them don't seem to take that bold move to make their relationship go farther.  Thus, the ending of the story is left with a cliffhanger or a happy one with the relationship between Nanami & Yano being a peaceful one.  The complete story actually finishes in the manga that continues on from the anime show.  Although it's only a few pages, I couldn't see why the studio didn't add them.  It was either to get people to buy the manga or the ending is more appropriate for the show.  I've read the last part of the manga & I don't want to spoil it.  However, the outcome seems to be predictable without reading it.  Plus, it makes sense as well.

Overall Conclusion

Bokura Ga Ita isn't for everyone.  It's heavily drama-based & moves at a slow pace.  It's feels soothing & gentle to watch, but can be a yawner for most people.  If you want to watch a slow, realistic, & gentle anime show with little humour, you may want to get this show a shot.

Bokura Ga Ita receives a 7/10 on its report card.  The story is slow & dry, but it offers something that a lot of anime shows these days don't offer: realism.  It looked promising at the start with some interesting characters that we see mature as Nanami & Yano try to understand themselves.  However, the number of hardships the couple faces is always going in circles where one of them don't think they are good for the other.  It goes into circles a lot & the relationship doesn't seem to advance.  Although the ending is pretty nice & somewhat open, it's strongly recommended to read the last few pages of the manga to get the whole complete picture.

Last updated on December 19, 2007