Gift ~ eternal rainbow ~

Information of Anime

Amami Haruhiko's foster sister Riko Fukumine returns home after years of travelling outside of town.  In this town, an eternal rainbow exist in the sky.  This rainbow is said to have magical powers of creating gifts.  Gifts creates a person's wish come true if the receiver accepts it.  With Riko's return, their childhood friend & neighbour, Kirino Konosaka is a bit bothered by it.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I've seen.  This section does contain some spoilers.  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 first half of the show focuses on fake Gifts being handed out by a town witch who is seen flying in the sky.  Amami, who has a strong feeling & attachment to Gift due to his mother, tries to stop the witch from giving these fake gifts as they don't grant true happiness.  During the process, he has problems with Riko in terms of being brother & sister.  Childhood friend Kirino who lost her position as a little sister to Amami when Riko left town, takes advantages of these problems at times to get close to Amami. 

Amami manages to find out that the witch is a friend of his named Chisa Fujimiya.  Although he wants her to stop & take back all the fake Gifts, she refuses & tells him how she got her powers from her mother.  Realizing this, Amami wants a fake Gift that is to remove the eternal rainbow from the sky.  He had made a Gift where he sees Riko as his deceased mother.  However, Chisa refuses & understands how fake gifts won't grant true happiness.  She removes all the fake Gifts she gave out & gives her powers back to her mother.

The second arc appears where Amami & Riko are getting very close to each other.  But Kirino's love for Amami tries to break them apart.  Hearing how Amami & Riko's class is going to have a school trip, Kirino wants Amami to get her a love charm from him to her.  However at the trip, Amami doesn't get her a charm as he finally confesses his love to Riko.  Returning from the trip, he tells Kirino that he didn't buy the charm & is in love with Riko.  Kirino however doesn't give up.  Later on, we discover that Riko made a Gift for Amami by creating the eternal rainbow without him knowing.  It was created to remember her by before she left town.  When Amami tells Kirino about this, she become enraged.  She & Riko made a promise from childhood about how they wouldn't use gifts to get Amami to fall for one of them.  Kirino tells Riko that she wasn't fair & plans to use her Gift since she still has it.  Kirino's Gift turns out to be bad.

Feeling sorry about the situation, Riko goes to Kirino's house to apologize.  She's willing to do anything for her as long as she doesn't lose Amami.  As a result, Kirino uses her Gift to take back all the memories she lost from Riko which leaves her without memories & knowing that Amami is her brother.  Amami becomes terrified with the results & tries to find a way to get Riko back to normal.

In order to fix things back, Amami does some research on how gift was created.  The mysteries leads him to the point where he was born.  Visiting his mother's grave, he sees the answer on how Gift was created by his mother Haru who is actually a magician on the day she passed away.  Realizing that her gift to him & the true purpose of it, he decides to use his Gift to erase Gift itself.  He becomes aware that his mother knew that he would erase it when he manages to stand on his two feet & find someone precious to him.

After taking out the eternal rainbow, Riko regains her memories.  However, the issue with Kirino remains even though she wanted to lose those sad memories that Riko had of Amami.  Amami decides to start over by asking Kirino play the piano for him.  He missed her recital due to the same day that Riko left home during their childhood days.  Agreeing to it, Riko is invited as well & Kirino manages to complete a piece ever since that recital.

The story ends with Amami & Riko going to the place where they promised to see the rainbow.  They promise to be together forever.

My Personal Review

Gift ~ eternal rainbow ~ was something that I decided to watch it for the heck of it.  There wasn't many fansub groups doing this, so it was hard to find the show to watch on a regular basis.  However, the show wasn't as good as I thought.

Animation

The characters have big eyes & pointy chins.  The drawings are pretty much like rough work with the lines being a bit uneven.  During comedic moments, Amami's face would change to something out of the designs.   The designs gives me the impression that I'm watching a D.C. show since they look almost exactly the same.  Since the main characters from the two series look the same & are voiced by the same seiyuu as well.

The colours are pretty dull.  Almost a 90s look.  The colours don't overlap each other between the characters & background which is a good thing.

In terms of the animation movement, the flow was quite nice & natural.  You do get to see the occasional funny silly stuff for the jokes. 

Sound       

The sound effects aren't too bad.  They are pretty clear & on cue.  It's got your mixture of real & comic sounds.

The seiyuus here are average to me.  They fit their characters well. But, I'm not too fond of them mainly because of personal opinions.

The music is on the cute side with some pop & soft rock.  They are pretty soothing, but nothing that I personally liked.

Story

Although the story is a bit weak, it's written pretty well.  The flow from one episode to the next is good as well as the flow from arc to arc.  But the story itself isn't great.  The jokes aren't too funny.  Pretty much good for a giggle most of the time.  Plus, the story is almost strikingly similar to D.C. with the brother & sister love that aren't related by blood.  Also, the magic bit of the town with the use of a rainbow to grant wishes.  This may be the reason why I didn't enjoy the show very much.

The ending of the show was ok.  It manages to complete the story nicely with the explanation of what Gift really is.  The characters manage to gain some strength from this which is a good sign of character development.  However, the answer to erasing Gift made it look so easy.  Amami should have asked his mother at the start by attending her grave like he did.  Although this is a great answer for a short show, it was like "that was it?"

Overall Conclusion

Gift ~ eternal rainbow ~ should be watch for entertainment purposes.  Plus, it doesn't really offer anything new.  It feels like it rides off from D.C.'s popularly based on how the story elements are used here.  I personally don't really recommend put this on your to watch list unless you really have nothing else to watch.

Gift ~ eternal rainbow ~ gets a six out of ten. The show isn't originally & seems to ride off from D.C.'s storyline's success.  The jokes aren't too funny as well & the characters may not really reach out to you & make you like them.  At the end of episode 12, it mentions an EX episode which is the OVA.

Last updated on April 1, 2008