To Heart 2

Information of Anime

To Heart 2 takes place two years after the original To Heart series at the same school with new characters.  Takaaki Kono is a student at that school with many female friends around him.  The anime follows the lives of these high school students.

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 show is mainly about the girls' relationship with Takaaki.  They range from him helping them solve their problems or recalling their past memories with each other.  Each episode deals with one girl.  The show goes through almost one school year.

My Personal Review

To Heart 2 is based on a dating game made by AQUAPLUS of the same name.  Originally made for Playstation 2 & was later ported to PC.  The game became an ero title after the PC port & goes under the name To Heart 2 X-Rated.

To Heart 2 is like what the original To Heart show was: calm & relaxing.  However, it has more comedy & ecchi elements than the previous.  Also unlike the original, it's more lively & doesn't give off that boring feeling.

Animation

The drawings are very different from the past To Heart anime shows.  It's drawn cute.  The big round eyes that look like it has only one colour in the pupils.  Even the guys have that.  They look simple, but it's very effective.  You can feel life out of them without hearing their voices.  However, the drawings look a bit fuzzy at times.  The black lines on the faces are sometimes fuzzy.

The backgrounds are okay & better than the previous anime shows.  It's simple with some light details.  However, it's not as eye-catching as To Heart in terms of getting a feel of the scenery.

The colour tones are quite colourful & dull.  It really gives off the To Heart feel to it in terms of the dull effect.  The colourful colours give off the personality of the characters.  The backgrounds are very dull & don't stand out too much as the characters.

The animation movements are natural & realistic.  No weird motions or flying bodies.  All down to Earth stuff.

Sound

The sound effect are ok.  All realistic sounds without those silly effects.  The volume level is good.

The voices aren't too bad.  They fit their characters well.  Personally, I don't think there are any annoying voices from the girls even though some of them are high pitched.

The music isn't too bad.  Mainly slow & soft ballads, which set the mood of the scenes well.  With the excepting of the opening & ending theme songs, they are quite lively.

Story

No real storyline at this point.  Mainly a number of small episode arcs of the girls & Takaaki.  One thing to note is that the characters are pretty much different than To Heart's in terms of personalities.  Some of the girls are quite aggressive & Takaaki isn't a very laidback person that doesn't care for things much.  He's more of a softy.  Also, it's not as realistic as the previous one.  To Heart had the robot Multi.  Here, we have Ruuko an alien.  From what I've seen, she looks like an alien.  Therefore, To Heart 2 is a little bit more on the imaginary side now.

Also, the anime seems to be more lively in terms of it's faster pace.  It's not boring as To Heart, but it still has those elements that gave the game it's personality.  Plus, there is quite a lot of ecchi stuff here that wasn't in the first series.  However, you don't see any forms of nudity here.  Just sexual references.

As for the storyline itself, it's not too good.  There isn't one really.  It goes into almost a school year based on Takaaki's events.  At the last two episodes, I thought I would see Konami confessing to Takaaki & Takaaki facing a critical decision of whether to study outside of Japan.  But, I was disappointed a bit.  I won't spoil it here, but don't expect love here really.  It's more about friendship.  The show is probably encouraging you to play the game I suppose.

Overall Conclusion

Unlike the first one, To Heart 2 seems to be an anime series that a lot of people can enjoy.  It's more lively & upbeat than the original.  Plus, it's got more comedy elements & ecchi stuff in it.  To Heart fans will definitely enjoy this show & I would recommend watching this if you want to see something that most down to Earth & can relate to in real life.  If you are looking for love however, you may be disappointed.

To Heart 2 gets a seven out of ten from me.  There isn't a main storyline as the show focuses on each girl's relationship with Takaaki.  The feeling that the show gives off is the driving factor of the scoring at the moment.  Plus, it's calm to watch & something you can relate to in life.  However, the show will leave you feel empty as it's a bit of a letdown.  It had potential at the beginning, but it fails to finish well at the end.

Last updated on January 16, 2008