Candy Boy: Nonchalant Talk of the Certain Twin Sisters in Daily Life

Kana-chan, Kana-chan~ Candy Boy is the sweet little story of two sisters living together in a dormitory and their usual lifestyle. But this slice of life anime comes with a twist: the two are romantically affected to each other. Although yuri incest is wincest, the fact stands that there are some that may be offended from the shoujo-ai and/or incest. If this combination works for you, then you'll have no problems enjoying this anime as much as I did. As with many other anime in the slice of life genre, the story is given to us at the beginning of the anime, but not much of achange happens. Surely our yuri twins get closer and closer to each other in every single episode, and the romance aspect IS developed throughout the anime. We have a sweet relationship to begin with, and only a few possible characters that can affect the story one way or other. The whole imouto-san business, the twins' college entrance and dorm changing may be of interest to some, but keeping your expectations high in the story and expecting anything ground-breaking wouldn't be wise. That said, from the occasional change of moods and places, this straightforward story successfully gives what it promises. As you go along the series, you will most probably find out that it contains many "still-pictures" that tend to be overly long and drawn out, but not that annoying; not since the art was never meant to be over the top. The character designs are cute enough to make the viewer like them instantenously. The clothes worn in the anime, which tend to bring up the "cute" aspect of the characters, may sometimes be fanservicey, but are presented as no big deal without much emphasis on them. Zettai Ryouiki fans will be delighted to see Yuki's knee-high socks completed with her mandatory skirt, much to our enjoyment. Yet another area that a slice of life anime usually fails in is the BGM. Pretty much non-existant, or rather, unimportant is the BGM in slice of life anime, yet we would all be able to understand that something is wrong if BGM simply wasn't in the show or if it did not fit the mood at any given time. This can be compensated by the seiyuu, who play a big role in any speech-based anime, Candy Boy being one of those. None of the voices of any character is annoying or leaves us with a bored face for any reason whatsoever. A new sense of realizm was reached in the last episode as everybody started talking together about totally different things at the same time; a situation any viewer should be able to relate to. Let me get this one thing straight; there are no boys in Candy Boy. None. If you can ever find one, please tell it to me so that I can start worshipping you. That said, do we even need boys in this anime? The two main characters, Kanade and Yukino, and the two supporting characters, Sakuya and Shizuku are interesting enough to fill out the whole anime. Although they are twins, Yuki fills in as the little sister with childish attitude role, and Kana acts more like a mature, older sister. Sakuya is there for the occasional comic relief that we all need sometimes, offered with her yuri tendancies for Kana. The imouto Shi-chan allows more of a story to develop, and is a blend between Yuki's cuteness and Kana's looks and personality. None of them being dull or plain annoying is yet another blessing. The caution from before still holds true at this point; if you don't like yuri/shoujo-ai, then this series is not for you. I, as an avid fan of female relationships, knew fully well that I was going to enjoy this anime as much as I expected. The interactions between the twins are cute, and usually funny; those two adjectives are enough for me to be sold to an anime. The fact that Candy Boy isn't a straightforward ecchi/yuri but rather a cute love story only makes things better. As long as you have that bittersweet feeling of having completed the series after you're done with Candy Boy, then all is fine. Candy Boy did (damn, where is my italics?) leave me with that bittersweet feeling of both accomplishment and sadness. There is not a single thing in the world that is perfect. As a rose comes with its thorns, Candy Boy may be coming with less-than-stellar story and easily-forgettable BGM, but that does not change the fact that we still like both of them.

Why do people like the anime? It baffles me. I picked up this anime because it was on the recommendations page for an anime I liked, so I had high hopes. Those high hopes were destroyed pretty swiftly. ---Character--- I am talking about character first because it is the biggest thing that bugged me about this series. Right away, I felt something wrong with this anime. At first I couldn't put my finger on it, but then I realized it was because the characters are flat as paper. Sure, they were animated pretty decently, but that doesn't matter when there is nothing memorable about anyof them. They all seemed fairly genetic. Not to mention that their sister (Shi-chan) was kind of annoying. ---Story--- I know that this was a fairly short series, so it didn't have time to develop a whole lot, but there was no trace of an actual story. Now, this normally wouldn't bug me, since I love pointless animes (Azumanga Daioh, etc), but the happenings of this anime were just awful. It says that the twins are in love, but are they? It seems like a fairly normal sister relationship, except for a few aspects. Their so called relationship doesn't go anywhere. I'm pretty sure normal sisters tell each other they love one another, so that's not anything special. Don't misunderstand me, though. It's not like I was in it just for yuri action and am upset because I didn't get to see any; I generally wanted their relationship to advance. ---Art--- This was the only thing about this anime that I enjoyed. The animation was done well. As I mentioned before, the characters were designed well, plus the scenery and background images were decent too. Not much else to comment on. ---Sound--- Same as art, not much to comment about. It wasn't awful though, that is for sure. ---Enjoyment--- This anime left a bad taste in my mouth. I'm not sure if I don't appreciate it because I've never watched a shoujo-ai anime before, but either way I didn't like it. Maybe if I rewatched this anime at a later date I would appreciate it for what it is, but as of right now I stand by my overall score. I really wanted to like this anime too, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get myself to enjoy it. ---Overall--- Overall I give this anime a 4/10. I'm probably just being a prude, so the majority of you reading this will probably enjoy this anime.

I've only ever watched two Yuri animes - Strawberry Panic and this being the second. However, I've also watched quite a lot of romance animes and I can say with confidence that this one blows everything else out of the water when it comes to realism. It is exactly as the synopsis says, twin sisters are in love with each other - it is an incestual relationship... but hang on is it? This is the real kicker. Their relationship is more like platonic love on steroids. If you're hoping for some Yuri action, passionate kissing etc. then you can forget all about that because thesesisters are so sweet and innocent that they could possibly melt boulders and cause volcanic eruptions. They hold hands all the time, stare into each other, talk about their feet and stuff like that. After a few episodes, rainbows will randomly start to appear in your room, you will begin to fart out leprechauns and have visions of a galloping unicorn. Seriously though, this series is very innocent and the sisters never do anything sexual. The only way we can tell for sure that they're in love is through their dialogue, which is so sweet that I nearly came down with a bad case of diabetes. However, all of that made the series more believable and if there ever were twin sisters in love somewhere out there in the real world... they'd probably behave like this. As for the characters in this show, there are only four. Kanade & Yukino (twin sisters), Shizuku and Sakuya. Shizuku is the younger sister of Kanade & Yukino while Sakuya is there to provide comic relief and nonchalantly hit on Kanade. These four characters will interact with each other on a regular basis and further reinforce the already impregnable relationship between Kanade and Yukino. All other characters in this series are only there to fill in empty spaces; they don't posses names and are mostly mute. However that is a brilliant move on the part of the makers as this is a very short anime and focusing on the main cast provides the viewer with a consistent experience. The art here is truly amazing. I don't like using the word 'amazing' because it is quite possibly the most overused word in the English language. However, when it comes to this series I can use it with honesty. The animation is staggering. The twins are flawless in their design and whenever they hold hands you can see that it's the work of professional and talented artists. If you're reading this guys, well done. I nearly had a stroke the first time I saw them holding hands. The sound is also very good. The soundtrack fits in with the series, the ending is heartwarming and the voice acting... oh boy. I'm a rookie when it comes to Japanese. I can count and only say a few words without sounding like an idiot but even I can tell that the voice actresses did a good job here. It is authentic to the core. In all the animes I've watched I'd say this anime here has got the best voice actresses. All in all, a very good anime. Relaxing, stress relieving. An innocent tale of two girls in love. I've never imagined that Yuri could be this entertaining. I admit I must have had the wrong impression of it. Or perhaps it's just this particular anime that's so soothing and enjoyable. Well either way, I'd recommend this to anyone who likes romance. A must-watch.

TLDR at the bottom. "I like you all the time since I was born. For a long time... and we stay together, forever..." Candy Boy is something of a pleasant surprise. Intoxicated by exterior titles, I came into this series thinking none other than typical yuri. How wrong was I indeed, for Candy Boy doesn't follow such blasphemy, as instead, it is of an innocent bloom in this bizarre bouquet dubbed romance (specifically girls' love/yuri). The premise of Candy Boy is simple, it follows two sisters and life. Really, that is all the anime spares. I suppose I could touch on the lifestyle these characters take as well, there isa lot of referring to family relationships and concreting the ties that behold the two parties. Candy Boy also makes use of "generic" s.o.l moments to hold together a sense of reality, instead of a singularity on solely the main point of the narrative. I've said time and time again how much I love simple anime, I have to say Candy Boy really takes the cake here. Sure, the entire anime is probably nothing new in the medium, but with writing that endeavours in its ecstasy without notice. I find it that Candy Boy is not only lucid but a fully elaborate story on its own euphoria. I'm not one to find the most pleasure out of stories like such, with its themes of sister love, there wasn't really much to submerge myself into with this. However, the execution came in and absolutely hammered everything that an anime as such should have, I don't really have experience with the genre either, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was entirely believable too. It's strange but not surprising, just another impulse of irrationally that, yet again, has proven misleading in analysis. Efficient thinking has its disbenefits, I'd tell all. As for the characters, I liked each and every one of them. Both lead characters, Kanade and Yukino have really good chemistry and a sense of humanity to them, they felt like normal humans and behaved accordingly, I suppose with lack of episodes, there was no room for major development, however, that is completely fine, as the characters remained intact to their fixed settings. It may sound boring, but it is a perfect fit for such an anime. Sakuya acted as the clown of the show, diverting moments into comedic relief so that the anime wasn't entirely monochromatic. I do believe she did a fine job at such, conveying such a personality throughout the show as one would expect without any hinders. The same goes for Shizuku and her gimmick, which was bringing drama around more often than not. The drama here is a hit or miss, but overall it didn't crash the quality of the show despite it being of "generic" order, which I will stress once more, is totally fine in an anime as such. So overall, they are relatively great characters. The audiovisuals for its time is incredible, the background was seriously well made, the designs were fresh and polished, all the other words reviewers will use to say something is great. I suppose with this being an OVA, AIC (whoever they are) had the benefits in the market, if I am not wrong, they probably could have gone wild with aesthetics and made it even more beautiful, but seriously, for the late 00s, this is amazing stuff. The same is true with the OST and voicing, more so OST in the form of OPs and EDs, sometimes this stuff sounds like something out of KEY or something. Whilst I would like to praise the in episode OST, I simply could not remember everything that played, however, if I tried, I do believe such quality could also be found throughout. I wouldn't have guessed such amazing production values would be brought into some original OVA no one really speaks of, which goes to show that expecting the unexpected brings pleasant surprises. When all is said and done, I really did enjoy Candy Boy a lot more than I thought I would have originally. All the lucidity, the bliss, the other big words I need to find via googling synonyms, is nothing short of impeccable. So, as said for about the 111th now, the simple stuff is good stuff, and that happened to be Candy Boy, which I enjoyed a lot. I would imagine if you are looking for a deep and intrinsic story, you won't find one here, if you are looking for something not "s.o.l boring", you won't find it here. Full enjoyment usually comes around to those with low expectations in an anime like this, with satisfaction levels disproportionally magnified whenever said artistic piece achieves the basics of whatever it tries to accomplish. TLDR: Candy Boy achieves apex status in its elegant writing of a simple tale of two sisters and the life events that arise around them. Great characters that fit together live hand and gloves. Amazing production values for its time, also check out the full OP/EDs Overall - 8.8 (9) ---------- I planned to watch this specifically in a time where I'd binge multiple romance anime, for some odd reason, I just didn't with this anime, same with School Days, same with Citrus… anyway, I wholeheartedly recommend this OVA to anyone interested in some niche title or is a hardcore fan of romance, you just don't want to miss this presentation if you are like me who is satisfied by anything wholesome. On that note, I'd also recommend reading "Tamen De Gushi" if you can, it's more of a feeling that vibe recommendation rather than it bonds well on an internal level, both have girls' love though. Otherwise, I have nothing to leave off with, I will say, however, don't look at this anime's cover and jump to vapid conclusions; a treat lies ahead, maybe it will taste like candy. You tell me.

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