One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e

I will put this plain and simple. This is an OVA intended for those who have played the game(One Kagayagku Kisetsu e). For those who don't know the game was a pivitol piece which started the whole so-called Nakige genre and lead to the creation of Key. Putting aside introduction, overall the OVA is average, nothing stands out about it, but it does what an OVA is suppose to do, animate a bits of the game for the fans of the game. In this case, the OVA covers essentially the ends of the different scenarios, which is probably why everyone findsit soooo confusing. Overall, if you played the game, it's not a bad way to kill 90 or so minutes, it is kinda nice to see the game you've played come to life with an upgrade in art(the game came out in 1998. Otherwise, I highly doubt that you'll find it all that enjoyable unless you wanna experience a small part of the piece that made Key Key without going through the hassle of playing the game.

One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e is probably the most baffling anime I have ever seen. It's a total waste of time, regardless of whether you have read the visual novel or not. The central problem of this OVA is that it doesn't know who it wants to appeal to. If you watch a lot of OVAs, you might be aware that there are a lot of older ones out there (and the occasional newer one too) that do not attempt to properly tell the story; rather, their intent is to be sold to fans of the source material as a way to see their favorite scenes andcharacters in animated form. Because of that, their storytelling and pacing are usually pretty bad, but that's okay, because they're not intended as standalones to begin with; and as far as I can tell, that was supposed to be the case with this OVA too. The story is left almost entirely unexplained, the characters aren't really given proper introductions, etc. But that's all more or less to be expected when watching an OVA of this kind. As much as it's not necessarily a GOOD thing, I can't really fault it for this, because it has a different purpose. And that's where the real trouble presents itself. When you're trying to make something to sell to existing fans of a visual novel, normally you would want to condense the story very thoroughly, making sure to show the most iconic scenes in more detail, and keeping it very true to the source material. Unfortunately, One doesn't do that. Not only do we get to see almost none of the iconic scenes of any of the character routes--not the ice cream scene with Misaki, or the stage scene with Mio, or even the controversial Mizuka scene--we get a completely different story than the original plot that only keeps the general lore the same, but alters all the events in between. To make matters worse, some of the events that happen across these 4 episodes even directly contradict the canon of the visual novel! The issues don't end there, either; the characters are different too. Luckily, the differences with the characters aren't quite as drastic, but they're still noticeably changed. So then that begs the question: what was this OVA trying to accomplish? If they were hoping to target new viewers and boost the popularity of the source material, they failed at that by not explaining the plot whatsoever and making it completely confusing to anyone who isn't in the know. If they were hoping to gain the appreciation of existing fans, then they ruined any chance of that by changing the story and characters until they felt completely different. If there's anything good to say about this sad attempt, it's that the music and the backgrounds were actually really nice, but that's just a cherry on top of a steaming heap of cow dung. So to conclude, I can't recommend this to anyone at all, unless you really want to watch all Key-related anime, or just have a morbid curiosity and want to see how bad it is.

Story It was pretty confusing all the way through though. There wasn't much of a plot that was easy to discern, it was like watching a muddled dream. It kind of told separate stories for the characters (much like in other Key animes), but it skipped around a lot, and the tales for each character were very rushed and confusing. It did pretty much show how the main character Kouhei was trying to make up his promises to each other girls though. (Even if it was kind of vague, like the rest of the story.) Art Anyone can see from watching just the opening that it doesn't havethe greatest character designs, but personally I thought that some of the background art was pretty nice for an older anime. Hence why I gave it a 7. Sound The sounds were pretty clear, and the music really added to the "mood" of the story. The music is pretty nice and relaxing, but it does get a little bit overwhelming from time-to-time because the music is pretty much always playing. And in the parts whenever Kouhei was playing an instrument, it was hard to tell whether or not it was the music or him playing. I don't know, that was a bit confusing to me. o_o So, basically the music is nice, it adds to the mood, but can be overwhelming. Character I thought the characters were pretty interesting, and kind of unique. Some of their personalities were slightly similar, but there were a couple of unique characters. I thought that the blind girl, and the mute girl were pretty unique, you don't often see characters with those kinds of disabilities in animes (well... at least I haven't seen many ^^;), and I just thought that was kind of interesting. Enjoyment There are some enjoyable parts, (I really thought the ending was cute), but with the confusion and the vagueness of the story it can get a little tedious. But I though it was worth watching out to the end. Overall Overall, I thought it was an OK show, definitely not one of Key's best but pretty unique anyways. If Key decided to remake it to longer and more detailed, I would definitely watch it.

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