I’m thinking this is probably it for me with Iroduku Sekai no Ashita kara as far as blogging is concerned, but I didn’t feel right dropping it unannounced.  It’s a close decision, not an easy one, and one over which I’m still quite conflicted even after five episodes.  Though I always prop open the door to jumping back in on dropped series I continue to watch (as I will here, for now) I find that in practice that rarely happens so this is probably my final word on the series.

Ultimately, I think this show has evolved in a predictable direction, especially since the arrival of Kohaku the younger.  This is, as I’ve noted before, a huge trip-wire for P.A. Works series.  They’re not all that way, but there’s a certain genre sensibility which just seems to suck shows in when they get too close – like an ant lion den.  They become bland, interchangeable.  Theoretically mixed cast, they see the boys become mostly props for the development (such as it is) of the girls.  And they fall in love with their own preciousness, which to my taste Iroduku certainly is.  That’s not a problem exclusive to PAW by any means but the alchemy as a whole is uniquely theirs.

It’s a shame, because there are elements of this show that I really like.  It literally feels like a different series when Hitomi and Yuito are together – alone together – on-screen.  Hitomi is mostly a cipher by design, and by-design or not that makes her a somewhat uninteresting protagonist.  But she comes to life where Yuito is concerned, and their potential relationship does have a kind of fated allure to it.  But those moments have never been common, and have become all the more rare since Kohaku arrived and sucked up most of the oxygen in the room.

Iroduku isn’t a bad show, certainly, and hardly the worst example of the P.A. Works blueprint when it doesn’t take.  It’s gorgeous even by PAW standards, and Nagasaki has long deserved an anime to highlight it’s glorious charms (and oh, to be 17 again – that “little detour” to Nabekanmuriyama Park kicked my ass till next week).  It just seems to lack the creative ambition (doubly disappointing considering the screenwriter) to break the bonds of PAW homogeneity.  I’ll always keep coming back for another go with this studio because when they get it right, it can be special.  I just wish it happened more often.