80%

012 summer season’s series seem to deal with light drama lovestories, among which this one seems to be worth the effort: not being too deep or too dramatic in dealing with actually gloom themes like death and lost love, it makes the perfect choice for a lazy summer evening watch, granted the fact that it has a strong lead male character and very good visuals.

While the plot/summary seemed to put you through some exhausting story about a love triangle including the ghost of a dead husband, the first episode depicted a show fresh and invigorating like the soft summer rain. From the color palette, with brushy textures, fresh spingtime greens and friendly yellows to the entire relaxed athmosphere. Too soon to place any bets yet, considering first impressions this looks like a happy ending kind of show, but one that will definitely walk around the usual boring love story routine. Because….

The male lead, Hazuki, looks like the average "loser", falling in love with the pretty short black haired widdow to whom he is too shy to confess. He is composed, he looks like he doesn’t give a damn about anything, and he looks like he’s the type to quit before really trying. Or maybe not: what makes this character particular is the fact that he proves not to be that easy to anticipate and he overcomes the "danger" of becoming that kind of annoying guy who can’t take the challenges. Hazuki is the kind of character that grows to be loved by the viewers, being bitter but realistic, bored but passionate, limited but resourceful.

It seems the creators managed to avoid the clichee of the love being confessed only in the end, and that this show will actually focus on the "war" between Hazuki and the ghost husband. Far from being a comedy tho, it does have some intelligently hilarious moments in the scenes that contain the both determined guys, one dead and one pretty much alive.

Sadly, Rokka, the female lead, didn’t make a too big impression. She’s playing the sad kind widdow, but at least without being annoying, didn’t look like anything too deep. But then again, for an 11 episode summer show I think anything else would have been too much and unnecessary.

Another strong point of this show would be the animation and the art. The character’s gestures and poses is something that hits you from the first few minutes as they emanate grace where needed and they express the character’s attitude very good - talking about body language. I can’t say if that’s something you often see in josei shows, but here in particular shows that a lot of attention has been put into these kind of details.

If this will be a good story or not - we will see. But either way, it looks promising and flowlessly executed.

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