Well, its been a bit quiet for me the last day or two so I sat down and watched through (mistake?) Yosuga no Sora; I went in not knowing much about the series beyond it was some sort of adult drama/romance series, but I tend to like the group that released it and I've seen and enjoyed a few romance/drama series recently, so figured it might be worth a watch... and I got a little more than I expected!
Ermm, what can I say the last arc wasn't to my tastes, so a lot of that was jumped through/avoided.
Being critical on the parts I did see however, the series kinda felt like Higurashi meets Toradora! meets ....a director who's just realised 'boobs' is one of the most searched for terms on google, and had some sort of niggling freudian complex. Very strange (and not as good as either of the two previously mentioned series unfortunately).
The art wasn't bad at all, and some of the scenery was very nicely done, it was certainly quite a pretty series in that sense. I also quite liked the branching plot system; it gave a bit more depth to the arcs than just spending a few shows on each girl then dropping them completely, and it was nice, in a way, to see elements of arcs affecting the others.
That said, this was also its downfall, in that you never really spent enough time focused on each one, I'd probably have been happier had the last arc not been there and we'd had more time to get to know the others properly, as I never really cared about any of them to any extent. Some of the 'adult' material felt really tacked on for the pure sake of it as well, I'm gathering this was probably based on a game as thats certainly what it felt like.
What can I say, not an awful series by any means, but that last arc and the more adult material means I'd certainly say its not a series for everyone by any means; and I kinda find it hard to recommend in that light, in that its not the best series of its kind (rom/romcom), I'm sure there's better adult material out there; and that last arc will probably put a percentage of western viewers right off (I'd guess eastern viewers too, but then this did get made!)
I've been waiting a few months for Amigami SS as that looked interesting, hopefully that'll provide less unexpected surprises
PS. Slightly odd request, but I noticed a few of you regularly seem to use some of these japanese export sites; if you ever happen to notice any of the spice and wolf mug/yunomi's could you let me know?
It's one of the few bits of merchandise I'd actually quite like to get (I'd certainly use it), but I haven't seen any on ebay or the sites I've taken a quick look for at least six months, and the one or two 'proxy' sites I looked at were a little confusing!
I know they're still out there as another dude I know mentioned he'd seen some on Yahoo JP recently.