Trying to Fall In Love – Bloom Into You First Impressions

While everyone else is watching out for the new season of anime, I’m still searching for the best anime from 2018! I was planning to already have more stuff out by now, but my commitment to finishing what I started has kind of eaten into my time for reflection.
So, Bloom Into You– What’s it about?

Well, the most accurate way I can describe it is that it’s the story of a girl in love with the idea of falling in love. She pines for the moment when she can fall head over heels for another person. But in spite of, or perhaps because of that idealization of love, Yuu Koito has never fallen in love. It’s an interesting enough starting point, but the main romantic interest of the series has the most potential to me.
Touko Nanami is a senior classmate to Koito, who also claims that she has never fallen in love. When the first episode ended with the confession of Nanami to Koito, I was admittedly confused at where the story would go. However, despite Koito’s admiration of Nanami, she does not feel the same as her senpai. She doesn’t sprout wings and fly on the wind of passionate teenage love.
It’s an interesting dynamic with some potential. However, I only watched three episodes for the sake of this review. I have no idea how it will turn out, and from what I’ve seen, the side cast needs to step up a bit more. I like watching Koito play out her conflicting emotions of jealousy, guilt and admiration, and I like watching Nanami open up- but I don’t think that’s enough to carry a 13 episode anime.
Bloom Into You feels one-note so far, and while it’s a pleasant note, it needs a little bit more oomph! There are some nice directorial moments, but I’m not sure I’m sold on the artstyle.

The character designs have shiny hair that I kind of end up staring at. They are also kind of simple looking, which looks really weird when they are right next to a heavily textured wall or some attempt at photo-realism.
Like…

I can normally ignore the background stuff, but when they try to be impressive with their tracking shots, I can’t help but stare at the texturing on the stones and stuff. I can’t help but be put off by the patterns of wear on the backgrounds! It just really puts me off from investing in the characters, because the characters don’t make instinctive sense in the fictional world.
In a story about subtle emotions, such a disconnect can be fatal.
With all that said, I don’t predict this to break my top 3 anime of 2018, but it has the potential to be one of the better anime that I’ve seen over the past year. I’m going to keep watching it and see if it can survive my strict standards!
I’m planning on tomorrow being my sixth Silver Link anime review out of seven! It’s a classic in my eyes and almost every anime fan I’ve met in real life has loved it… but there are some seriously mixed opinions about it! Maybe too mixed for me to even write about in the short time I have! There’s also the option of trying to write about it with my brother again…
Or I could talk about my changing impression of it over time…
Or I could just stick with the formula of talking about the message of the anime, appeal, and my opinion of the visuals and et cetera.
Not too sure at the moment, but I’m keeping my options open for that. It’s not a serious anime, but for some people the topics might be serious to them. That’s the kind of stuff that interests me. The stuff I don’t intuitively understand.