Yo, this one is a little out of the blue for me.
After watching like 2-3 Sunrise shows, I decided to find a slice-of-life to chance the pace a little. And somehow, my mind was like “THIS ONE”, Fortune Arterial.
This show ran for 12 episodes with an OVA. Was a nice, short show. Eroge source. Didn’t play the eroge though, but I might play it someday, I don’t know.
Story
This one is actually not bad. I feel like I appreciate this story a lot more in 2020, with all the generic combat shows going on. I mean Shachibaito has a little bit of both, but so far it’s not entertaining me as much as this show.
I watched this show back in 2014 and it felt pretty underwhelming for me. It was during the harem/slice-of-life/romcom era.
The set up for the girl’s introduction were pretty nice. Despite everything being pushed into one episode, surprisingly the storytelling didn’t make the story feel extremely fast. The pacing is actually okay.
I feel like the romance is pretty sweet as well. Despite progress only finally made in like 3/4 of the series. The girls have decent amount of attention for the developments. The climax was a little weak, despite the pretty decent buildup. I need more
I personally enjoyed this show back in 2014, but I enjoyed it even more now.
Oh yeah, the OVA is basically adding the missing swimsuit episode, but it was good drama.
Animations
This is the part I feel a little bit unnecessary. 2 studios doing a slice-of-life, Zexcs and feel. Pun totally unintended
For me back then, I didn’t really appreciate the aesthetics. But now, I actually liked it.
They really maintained the artstyle that visual novels have with the weird reflective hair and that slightly 2.5D artstyle only found in visual novels. This made the character designs looked pretty nice. Even for a show that is 10 years old, yeah, time flies.
Animations looked pretty great, despite the lack of action and combat.
Music
I feel like this aspect of the show has been heavily overlooked.
The background music tracks were actually pretty nice. But most importantly, the key songs that really changed the game are the OP, ED and insert songs.
It really sucked to see that Veil project didn’t take off. It’s a really good group.
Group composed by Visual Art’s Lia, Aoi Tada, karuta, SOLASHITA YU⇒KA, REI (Junksystem.), Misuzu Togashi, hirona and sunao.
Other supporting members include: MiKA (Daisy × Daisy), JURIE, waka, Yui Yamamoto and Kaori Omura.
Most of them had no real experience in the music business, except for some trance collaboration/anisong projects before they joined Veil, and can be considered to be debut singers, with the exception of Lia, Aoi Tada and karuta.
From: MAL
There are several solo versions of the ED so you can actually listen to all the vocalists. I don’t think I have any preference, everyone sang their own solos pretty nicely.
I really recommend listening to Akai Yakusoku. It has a minute long piano intro, so just wait it out and Lia’s vocals will blow your mind away.
Voice Cast
The cast list is pretty decent here.
| Characters | Voice Actors/Actresses |
| Hasekura Kohei | Ono Daisuke Takamori Natsumi (Child) |
| Sendo Erika | Kanda Rie |
| Togi Shiro | Himekawa Airi |
| Kuze Kirika | Narumi Erika |
| Yuki Kanade | Nabatame Hitomi |
| Yuki Haruna | Taguchi Hitomi |
| Sendo Iori | Suwabe Junichi |
| Togi Seichiro | Tsuboi Tomohiro |
| Hachimandaira Tsukasa | Ito Kentaro |
| Sendo Kaya | Mizuhashi Kaori |
What surprises me is that Nabatame Hitomi’s role. I probably has never heard her voice like this before. I enjoyed it, she actually needs more cute roles like this one.
Ono Daisuke as well, even Suwabe Junichi’s slightly lighter voice felt refreshing.
Scores:
Story: 8/10
Art: 8.5/10
Music: 8/10
VAs: 9/10
Recommended? Yeah! It’s probably one of the good visual novel adaptations. I really enjoyed everything about the show. The best time to watch this when you are pretty much bored with your shows and wanted to change your pace a little bit.
Okay, I’m done with this one, officially and finally done with my backlog of posts. What’s next? I feel like writing a Your Name vs Weathering With You post again. I managed to grab some 4K HDR sources for both films and watched them both back-to-back.
Expect the post in a couple of days.
I will see you guys then!
