Toumei na Yoru ni Kakeru Kimi to, Me ni Mienai Koi wo Shita. – 01

Every season it seems like there are a couple of LN adaptations that sneak into the preview. That’s despite a very poor track record between me and that category, but hope springs eternal. Occasionally one does stick – I enjoyed Kami no Niwatsuki Kusunoki-tei this past season, for example. But while decent starts are fairly common, one holding my attention for its entire run is pretty rare.

We’ll see with Toumei na Yoru ni Kakeru Kimi to, Me ni Mienai Koi wo Shita., but I quite liked the premiere. I mainly included it because it’s a romance set in college, which remains pretty rare in its own right. In the main, though, the reason I liked the premiere is Irino Miyu (fresh off singing the Kusunoki OP), and I didn’t even notice in writing the preview that he was playing the male lead. It’s no news flash to say Miyu is freaking great, but he really is freaking great. Absolutely the best seiyuu of his generation in my humble opinion, and he gets an incredible amount out of some fairly generic material here.

Miyu plays Sorano Kakeru, a dour freshman who wallows in self-pity over having been raised by a single mother. His outgoing roommate Narumi Ushio drags him to a mixer where Kakeru is totally miserable. Then to the table of two girls sitting by themselves. Fuyutsuki Koharu is blind, and Hayase Yuuko is a volunteer student guide who helps her with daily life. Yuuko is the pushy type and basically drafts Kakeru to volunteer whether he wants to or not. He’s pretty ignorant about the challenges of the visually impaired – not in a mean way, just thoughtless. But he does have the decency to be ashamed at feeling sorry for himself given Koharu’s cheerfulness (and for feeling sorry for her).

This is all pretty broad, primary colors writing if I’m honest. But while Hayami Saori is perfectly fine as Koharu, it’s Miyu who sells it lock, stock and barrel. I didn’t recognize his voice at first, which is very rare with him. Turns out he was intentionally disguising his voice, in effect, which Koharu notices. No one come communicates internalized and quietly expressed emotion like Miyu – you really feel exactly what he’s feeling. Kakeru is kind of a jerk but you can see this experience slowly making him less of one, which is interesting.

Is there enough here to keep me invested? That’s always the question with LN adaptations. I did think things took on a more natural flow in the latter stages of the episode, with less stilted light novel dialogue. The overall vibe with Love Unseen Beneath the Clear Night Sky was positive, the premise has potential, and it’s a chance to hear one of the best performances of the year. That’s worth another episode, at least.

Honoo no Toukyuujo: Dodge Danko – 01

There was some mild curiosity factor with this one. Dodge Danko is apparently based on a manga that ended in 1991 (though there was a sequel some three decades later). And the director is Ikehata Hiroshi, who’s certainly done some excellent series in his career (like Tonikawa, Kaya-chan, and Witch Watch).

This premiere does have a sort of signature Ikehata manic energy, and it’s amusing in a deliberately dumb way. But it’s as substantial as a house with dandelion fluff walls. Basically it’s the titular middle-school girl who’s the daughter of a dodgeball legend (do those exist). In fact she throws the ball at his grave marker every day. She has to re-start his dodgeball club at school over the wishes of a skeptical principal, and a bunch of rival girls come out of the woodwork. It’s occasionally funny in a sort of Fist of the North Star spoof way, but not nearly often enough to hold my interest.