Kare Kano Frogtoon Music - Artist Biography For Kare Kano This is an incorrect name for a soundtrack by 鷺巣詩郎. If this non-artist appears in your charts, please fix your tags. Artist Tags For Kare Kano 1) Anime 2) Soundtrack 3) Japanese 4) JPop 5) Female Vocalist. Khuda Na Kare OST Title Song Drama ARY DIgital - Rajushah384. Kare Kano OST - Treasure Every Moment. 3 years ago 908 views. Keegan Luigi.
The romance genre is possibly the most flexible genre in the storytelling medium. Whether a story has anything to do with love or not, the audience is always gonna hope two characters get together some way or another. If you've got an anime about two bounty hunters flying around space tracking down criminals, throw in a backstory revolving a space cowboy's ex-lover for some emotional kicks. If you've got an alchemist trying to uncover a massive government conspiracy whilst attempting to recover him and his brother's bodies, give him a childhood friend to marry by the time the conflict has been resolved (spoilers btw). Even if you've got a cast of mentally disturbed and awkward characters constantly inflicting pain on one another via miscommunications in the midst of a nationwide emergency in which Lovecraftian monsters are attacking a futuristic Tokyo, make sex a prevalent theme to fully explore humanity at its lowest and most self-destructive points.
Romance can be tossed into just about any story with the added benefit of always satisfying some portion of the audience (especially those who love shipping). It's basically the perfect way to capitalize on two character's development without taking their progression past the point of no return, and no matter how forced it may be, it always seems to work when done well like in Steins;Gate. Yet with all the potential to gratify viewers, why are most rom coms so fucking boring? Just last year I walked into Saekano and Chuunibyou's second season hoping for some sort variety, but all I got was a bunch of forced mellow drama that I couldn't care about if I tried!
As someone who adores romance in his anime, this is a crime! I've sat through trite shows time and time again only to be disappointed in all the wasted ideas that authors could implore to give their work promise. And it's not just anime/manga either — think about the last time you watched a live action romantic comedy and felt so compelled that you grasped at your chest. If you can think of at least one movie, you have listed more than me.
Kare Kano (AKA His and Her Circumstances) is an anime about a group of freshman highschool students during the late 1990s. To say it follows the story of just one character would be inaccurate despite Yukino Miyazawa and Soichiro Arima having the most story and screentime. WallScrollPosters Kare Kano Anime Stylish Messenger Bag/Lap Top Bag (15 x 11) Inches [MB] Kare Kano-2. By WallScrollPosters. $38.99 $ 38 99 + $3.00 shipping. Kare Kano Anime Mousepad Playmat (24' x 14' inches) [MP] Kare Kano-2. By WallScrollPosters. $27.99 $ 27 99 + $3.00 shipping.
I know for a fact that I'm not the only person sick of a market filled with an oversaturation of cliche ridden romance shows/movies. People I know are constantly complaining about not being able to find a good romance despite the overwhelming number of romance anime/manga in circulation. So when I saw the acclaimed name of Hideaki Anno tagged next to the 1998 anime rom com Kare Kano, I approached it with speculative caution, fearful of it being just another generic high school anime that I'd brush under the rug after five minutes. Yet within the very first episode I noticed tact. I noticed potential. I noticed exquisite craftsmanship atop a quirky love story full of characters I actually gave a damn about by the time I hit episode two!
I'm writing this blog now coming off of episode four, and I can speak with absolute certainty when I say that Kare Kano (His or Her Circumstances) is one of the best anime I've ever seen! Yes, I'm stating that after having watched just four of its twenty-six episodes, so take that with a grain of salt, but the sheer amount of skill that I've observed in these few episodes is so remarkable that my phobia of rom coms has been cured, almost as if I never had the phobia to begin with.
So with Kare Kano in mind, I present you:
KARE KANO: OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE ROM COM
By TheHornswoggler
**SPOILERS FOR EPISODES 1-4**
A quick synopsis of Kare Kano — Yukino Miyazawa is a Japanese high school first-year student who is the envy of classmates for her good grades and immaculate appearance. However, her 'perfect' exterior is a façade, an egocentric charade she maintains to win praise. In the privacy of her own home, she is spoiled, stubborn, a slob, and studies relentlessly and obsessively to maintain her grades. On entering high school, she is knocked from her position at the top of the class by Soichiro Arima, a handsome young man whose very existence Yukino considers a threat to the praise on which she thrives, and she vows to destroy him. When Soichiro confesses that he has a crush on her, Yukino rejects him then boasts about it at home. Her observant little sister Kano points out that her rivalry with him comes from admiration, causing her to rethink her own feelings (taken from the Kare Kano wiki).
So what makes this anime so special you might ask, and the answer to that can be found in just about every facet of this show from the perfect comedic timing, the sometimes funny/sometimes dramatic soundtrack, the wonderful art design, all of which chorales into a sensational work of genius! While all of that is good and all, today I'm just going to focus on the directing and how it makes every moment feel like a powerful statement.
The Directing and How it Makes Every Moment Feel Like a Powerful Statement:
My first thought when turning on Kare Kano was that my cat is the most impatient little shit when it comes to wanting food. Then I shifted my focus back to my phone and was immediately blown away by all the creative techniques Anno poured into the first episode.
Right off the bat we get this interesting shot of Yukino Miyazawa turning to meet some classmates with a colorful background that matches the pink flowers that surround her. This isn't a particularly unique type of shot — in fact most Shoujo adaptations include these at the start of a show — but what I found near about this one is that it repeats two times before all the flowers slide into frame from the sides. If any of you remember my Yu Yu Hakusho tournament blog, you might recall me mentioning this exact technique being used to sell the impact of an attack, but here it serves to tell the audience 'This is the main character.'
Again, that's not necessarily a unique thing in anime, but when this same shot is mirrored a few minutes later, it helps expand upon Miyazawa's first impression. Were introduced to this beautiful, classy lady who all the other students look up to with respect, and in order to connect that same woman to a substantially different version of her home self, we're treated to the same repeating image of Miyazawa in her jumpsuit and glasses. In keeping with the show's comedic tone, the subtitles seen at the bottom of the frame are even changed to say 'same person' instead of just 'HS freshman.'
Since we're discussing Miyazawa's hidden personality, let's ask ourselves 'how did the creators go about introducing us this side of her.' Will they have her act like a pleasant individual before pulling a 180, revealing she's got a bad temper? Will we be shown her darker colors while simultaneously observing the fake character she portrays? Or will she transform into this whole new person the minute she's out of the public eye?
The answer to all of these is yes, but there's a specific way in which Gainax went about representing Miyazawa's personality while also showing us what her goals are. See, Miyazawa lives to be praised for her hard work. Her entire life revolves around people thinking she is perfect and complementing her for it. In order for her to achieve such a high level of praise, Miyazawa has to be the absolute best; she must be on above everyone in terms of sports, academics, etcetera etcetera. So how does Gainax explain all of this? Simple, they give us this image.
Kare Kano Ost 26
I love this shot. It only lasts a couple of seconds, but it says everything about Miyazawa's character in a visually stimulating way. One aspect that seems to be missing from just about every Shoujo romance story is figurative symbolism... you'd think this would be the genre in which that excels but apparently not. A lot of uninspired authors try to write every ounce of their story within the reality of their world, but Kare Kano frequently displays little moments like this where we get to see inside the head of the characters. This shot doesn't contain reality, but it communicates all the information we need to know about Miyazawa just by having her rise and tower above everyone else.
Speaking of awesome symbolism, how about those traffic lights. Those things pop up all throughout the show, possibly out of Hideaki Anno's obsession with infrastructure. They seemingly pop up at the beginning of each major scene at first glance, yet in episode two I counted at least seven times these lights are shown. They often linger on the red light whenever they're put on screen, but occasionally they sit on blue or yellow, usually serving as some sort of message about the previous scene or the following scene. For instance, the first light to appear stays on red, possibly to depict how Miyazawa is being blocked by her self-proclaimed rival, Arima Soichiro (Sōichirō). Later when they're shown for the second time, four of the lights are blue while the fifth light in the back is red, meaning... I don't know, your guess is as good as mine.
These could be written off as cheap gimmicks to make the show appear sophisticated, but their purpose is expanded upon tenfold in episode two. Before a scene in which Miyazawa realizes her feelings for Arima, we see those traffic lights softly blinking red during nighttime as if to represent a heartbeat. Then even later in the episode when Miyazawa gets upset, she tries goes to slap him, and, in an instance of profound wit, we get quick a shot of the red traffic lights dimming. Splicing in an image of those lights right as Arima gets slapped made the entire sequence writhe with emotion so dense that I actually started tearing up a little, and mind you this is only episode two.
I've heard many times throughout my life that a good director is one that directs your attention, but to me a great director can do that while also directing your emotions, and boy does Kare Kano do just that! Moments after tearing up I was chuckling at the sight of Arima chasing after Miyazawa in the hallway, all goofy-like in chibi fashion.
A large part of these emotions are conveyed solely through the camera and sound effects alone. If you thought the traffic lights being spliced into the edit for a second wasn't enough to get your feels ruffled, what about the next shot?
Kare Kano deploys a handful of these detailed sketches to heighten the intensity of the drama onscreen, and damn do they work. The creators build entire scenes up to one of these colorless sketches. All sound cuts off, the image becomes devoid of life, and the background, color, surroundings become unimportant. What's important is that we're forced to witness expression in its most base state.
Kare Kano Ost 2017
Take for example this other moment from episode one. Miyazawa and Arima are walking home from school late one day. The sun is setting, leaving a harsh orange sky to linger above the characters. Arima, walking alongside Miyazawa, rests his gaze on her and holds it there until....
Can you guess what Arima is thinking? What he feels when he sees Miyazawa? No words, no sound, yet just from this we can infer that he has fallen in love with this spoiled yet diligent woman. This sequence takes place before Arima confesses to Miyazawa, so this moment makes us empathize with him a little bit. For the duration of the episode Miyazawa has been trying to screw Arima over, and so to the audience this romance almost seems doomed. I'm sure most of you, including myself, can put yourself in Arima's shoes right now and remember the depressing feelings of liking someone who probably doesn't give a crap about you. So by the time the confession comes around, we know exactly how it'll end. Pretty sad huh?
Of course that isn't the only technique Gainax uses to convey emotions, in fact it's only one of many others. To name a few of my favorites, there's the three labeled still frames that immediately proceed that goofy chase I mentioned earlier, every instance where the frame either rips or cracks, lots of onscreen text in synch with the characters' actions, the Edgar Wright-esque sound effects that serve as punchlines, and even stark colors along with some dramatic lighting cues.
My favorite would have to be the various ways in which the frame is altered. Seriously, these fucking frame alterations are some of the coolest things I've ever seen in the medium of animation. They were used to convey the idea of a montage in episode one, in episode two it mimicked a door peep hole when Miyazawa's sister was trying to pry into her personal life, and as a way to make a goofy-ass run stupidly epic looking or make the final shot of episode four extremely romantic.
I also really appreciate how a lot of scenes have a clear beginning and a clear ending. Most scenes are transitioned through the inclusion of a bunch of urban infrastructure and traffic lights, but a handful of scenes have two different signs that mark the beginning and the end. One of the coolest examples I found of this was a scene in which Miyazawa is in cooking class. The scene is started when a stove eye is turned on, releasing fire below a steel pot. After a few minutes of Miyazawa contemplating her feelings for Arima, the scene concludes with her turning off the stove and the fire retreating.
These visual cues makes every scene transition smoothly from one to the other. This may not appear to be as impressive when you examine just one of these, but when you look at the project as a whole, all of these tiny scene transitions allow the events of each episode to flow like water.
Kare Kano Ost 2 English Sub
I remember earlier this year when a shit ton of people were going crazy over the anime Erased for its 'superb' directing. I also remember watching the first few episodes before dropping it of boredom, asking myself 'where the hell was all that good directing everyone was talking about?' There were a couple of cool shot compositions, and every once in a fortnight I saw a decent scene transition like that one where the main character gets shoved out of frame in a classroom and reappears outside in the snow, but besides that, nothing.
That, ladies and gents, is not great directing; not even close actually. When you place something like Erased next to an animated marvel such as Kare Kano, you get to see what makes a show like this stand above just about every other show, both new and old. It's not that Kare Kano has some exceptional cuts or shots occasionally, rather it is made entirely of exceptional cuts and shots. The difference between this show and something like Erased is that all the amazing directing/editing techniques in Kare Kano are hidden in plain sight because they're mixed in with a whole bunch of other amazing techniques. You get so used to Kare Kano's ingenuity being outstanding in each second that you can't tell what parts are particularly great, because, well, it's all fantastic!
The point Im getting at is this: Kare Kano is top tier directing. I like how it includes intense sound effects that I heard in Yu Yu Hakusho to make things comedically overdramatic. I like how I got to see the manga panel sequence from Fooly Cooly two years before Fooly Cooly existed. I like how the main character is a spoiled yet lovable brat, and how in only four episodes the guy and girl hooked up and became boyfriend and girlfriend. I like how this show is like a mix between Fruits Basket and Charlie Brown. I like how there's this one shot in episode one where Arima's face is censored so his smiling is a punchline, or this other shot at the end of episode three where Miyazawa's blush is the last thing to fade to whit and how in episode four there was nothing but the outline of Miyazawa's eye with a bunch of whited out live action shots placed behind it. I like how the ending theme is nothing but a camera being dollied around random Japanese buildings with a super pleasant song playing over rolling credits, and how the next episode previews are of the sister's voice actresses are speaking to the viewer with their microphones next to them. I like how the last three minutes of episode four were the most romantic things I've ever seen despite there being zero dialogue and very little animation. Most importantly, I like how this show reminded me of all the reasons Evangelion was my favorite anime by episode four. This is the only other show that's made me feel this passionate before I even scratched the fifth episode, and I honestly never thought I'd experience such joy again, and especially with a rom com.
Kare Kano Ost
So with all that said, go watch 1998's Kare Kano. There are an overwhelming number of stunning false camera effects that frankly if I tried writing about I'd end up with at least five more blogs. If you love Kare Kano as much as I do, tell me about it in the comments. If you enjoyed this rundown of everything spectacular about episodes one through four of Kare Kano, then hit that like and follow button for more future content like this. Toodles.