Sono Hanabira ni Kuchizuke wo: Reo x Mai Diaries

I’m not entirely sure why this show is registered here on MAL, since it’s not really an anime or even animation to begin with. This is more of a fully voice-acted visual novel without anything interactive that you watch someone else play, if that makes any sense. The story is a sequel to the visual novel “Sono Hanabira ni Kuchizuke wo: Anata to Koibito Tsunagi”, better known for the highly recommended hentai adaptation of the same name. I recommend playing the novel or at least watching the OVA first before starting this, so that you understand how the relationship of the main characters work. The story followsthe characters Reo Kawamura, a very tsundere, second year high school student, and Mai Sawaguchi, a classmate of Reo and a teaser. Yeah, that isn’t a whole lot, but that is really all I can say about them, based on this show. We follow them during their daily life as a couple with a plot that consists mostly of the two girls talking about mobile phones and them going out to buy one for Reo, since she hasn’t had one since she was three and therefore barely knows anything about them. Conversations are mostly about the wondrous things a phone can do, followed by an oblivious response from Reo, a teasing response from Mai, followed by Reo becoming embarrassed or angry, ending in Mai hugging Reo because she finds Reo so incredibly cute, making Reo even more embarrassed and angry. Seriously, the girls bicker so much that I started wondering why exactly they love each other. This is never really explained in the OVA either, but the difference is that they just started a relationship there and were still new and inexperienced with lesbianism. The focus of that show was more showing off THAT they were in love instead of why and it does an excellent job at that. This ONA would have been the perfect opportunity to expand on their relationship and go into more detail about what they like about each other, but alas, conversations about mobile phones and a cute, embarrassed Reo it is. So, yeah, don't expect a deep and complicated story with lots of character development. This is really nothing more than a pretty bland, though cute, continuation of a story about two girls in love. Animation is literally non-existent. Like I said, this is more of a visual novel than an animated show and really only consists of a background with the characters in the foreground, who occasionally switch poses and facial expressions. Luckily, the backgrounds and character models are quite detailed and colorful and overall very nice to look at. Voice-acting is pretty good too, at least for what I can tell as a non-Japanese person, though the facial expressions don’t always seem to match up. This is rather common for a visual novel, since they only have a limited amount of expressions, but still, on more than one occasion I just thought they could have used a more fitting picture. Music is really nothing special, it serves its purpose and fits the tone, but it’s not really memorable and most of the time it just plays unnoticeable in the background. The music for the 10 second opening and closing got on my nerve at some point since you hear it twice per episode and I found myself skipping it more often than not. Overall this show is cute and made me smile every now and then, but it’s fairly skippable. The repetition in dialogue, the tsundere aspects of Reo (becoming angry and embarrassed) and her obliviousness to mobile phones gets rather tedious at some point, but since the episodes are so short (5-10 minutes), you won’t waste much of your time. Look it up on YouTube if you’re bored and have nothing better to do.