Suzuka Review (Anime)

Suzuka is a teenage love drama and the closest thing I have ever seen to a cartoon being a soap opera.  That is what it is - A soap opera.  But it still manages to be entertaining and interesting enough that even if you wouldn't watch a real soap opera, it is still worth a look.  It handles love and relationships better and more realistically than any anime I have ever seen and part of the fun of watching it is being able to guess ahead of time how and why the characters are going to react.  Oh, did I mention that it is not only a soap opera but a lot of the episodes focus on a school track and field team?  A track & field soap opera.  How do those crazy Japanese come up with these things!  The artwork is nice.  The characters are generally well done.  And the story overall is quite good.  I like Suzuka even if it is a cartoon soap opera.  Read the rest of the review after the jump.



Suzuka follows the relationships of a handful of characters.  Yamato Akitsuki moves to Tokyo to attend high school, and on his first day there he sees a girl high jumping at the school.  The girl is Suzuka Asahina, standout high jumper who also happens to be Yamato's next door neighbor.  Another girl, Honoka Sakurai, is a childhood friend of Yamato who loves Yamato even though his interests are clearly focused on Suzuka.  These are other characters, but these are the only really important ones.  Everyone else is just there to give bad advice and wait in the background while the three main characters' love triangle unfolds.

I like the story and I like how realistic everything is, but there are quite a few things that pretty much suck.  First off, Suzuka is a crazy bi-polar bitch.  She is a bitch, there is no other way to really describe her.  Honoka, on the other hand, is much better looking, is actually super nice and sweet, and truly loves Yamato.  Heck, even side character Miki Hashiba is better looking and treats Yamato much better than Suzuka does, but dumbass Yamato is oblivious to any other girls besides Suzuka.  Love is complicated, though.  Especially teenager retardo love where they'll grow out of it and find someone better in a few years.  It makes for good cartoon soap opera drama, though.

Another complaint I have about the show is that the same handful of music is used over and over and over throughout the show.  I know this is common in anime, but it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb in other series as bad as it does in Suxuka.  The mopey, sad piano piece that plays every time there is an "emotional" scene will grate on you after the first couple of episodes of this 26 episode series.  Something else that bothers me is that Suzuka is a crazy bitch.  I happen to like semi-bitchy girls, but Suzuka is so over the top bitchy that she is hard to like.  You find yourself rooting for Yamato and Suzuka's relationship to fail miserably just so Yamato can go find someone better.

One final complaint.  What is the deal with anime where the characters always want to wait for a perfect time to tell the person they like how they feel?  "Oh, I'll wait until I'm a track star", "I'll wait until my comic is published", "I'll wait until I get into Tokyo U".  Just tell them already.  Idiots.

There is lots of stuff I do like, though.  The series is generally pretty funny but always stays realistic, which is a nice change from other anime where things are always crazy and ridiculous.  There is some light fan-service (the very first episode has a naked girl in it) but there really isn't very much else to speak of all in all.  The series does have cliched anime moments like Yamato getting pushed into a girls chest or falling and landing on top of someone, but unlike other anime "cough"Love Hina"cough" there is no stupidity like another character appearing to punch him over the mountain and call him a pervert.  Things are handled more realistically.

In the end, Suzuka is a fun series overall.  Some people will surely be turned off by the soap opera nature of it all, but if you can get into it you'll find a good story with great relatable characters who you really care about.  The art style is appealing and the girls are decent to look at, so no complaints there.  Also, while the music is generally poor, the intro song is pretty awesome (embedded below), which is a plus. It has to be noted that while I generally enjoyed my first watch of the series, trying to watch it again has proven difficult.  There is just too much awkward, weird, stupid stuff that Yamato does that I remember from the first time and don't want to bother with again.  Some episodes hold up to multiple viewings better than others, but the series overall probably isn't worth watching more than once.

Overall, I give Suzuka a 6/10.  Or one monkey thumbs up -

The first Suzuka complete series set has been discontinued and is ridiculously expensive now.  Funimation is releasing a S.A.V.E. version on June 22nd for $14.99, though, which is obviously the one to wait for and cheap enough it doesn't really matter if you only watch it once..  Buy it at Amazon here - Suzuka: The Complete Series S.A.V.E.