Shin Dousei Jidai: Hawaiian Breeze

(SPOILER FREE) Hawaiian Breeze offers one of the more realistic depictions of a relationship I've seen in anime. It follows the long-term relationship of a couple living together in Japan. Although their love is genuine, their life goals are totally different. Peter is an illustrator who works from home with aspirations of getting married and having children. Eri has a corporate job and takes her work seriously. She aspires to climb the company ladder and become successful. Because of this, she's not interested in getting married or having children, despite living with Peter for two years. While most scenes depict a wholesome loving relationship, this differencein perspective occasionally causes some pretty heated arguments. While I disapprove of some of the main characters actions, I appreciated how realistically they depicted the irrational side of love because both of these characters tend to lose control of their emotions from time to time. Furthermore, it's later revealed that both of these characters are only acting this way as a response to past trauma they've repressed. While I won't spoil their intimate details regarding the nature of these traumas, I will say that I am impressed with the amount of story they could pack into 40 minutes while still managing to create an emotional experience with a complete ending. I'm even more impressed that someone added this particular image of profanity in graffiti into the end credits right after such a solid emotional scene. I'm guessing whoever did this couldn't read English. My overall score for Hawaiian Breeze is an 8/10. However, I think Hawaiian Breeze might have been the right anime for me at the right time of my life because I felt what these characters were going through. Its MAL rating is only 6.2, which I imagine has much to do with its presentation, so I wanted to review it in hopes that I could shine a new light on an emotional anime that's been lost in history.