Reviews for Ef - a Tale of Memories. (7.38)

I will admit it, this anime has a very strange aura to it.
I will not cover the typical things such as animation, sound, etc since it's been said enough. *SPOILERS AHEAD*

Beginning:
To start off, the beginning was quite confusing at first due to the switching of character focusing and the state that Chihiro was in. But all of that is cleared up by episode 2. First off you could tell who was going to end up with who right off the bat, guy chases strange girl and they end up meeting, guy films girl and desperately tries to continue filming her, and guy meets mysterious girl @ an abandoned train station dozing off into the sky. Predictable? Yes. Give up hope? NO.

Midway:
I will admit that after the beginning the angst and pain and suffering begins to show in incredible ways. You knew practically that things were gonna get F'd up such as the sex scene with Hiro and Kei walking in, Chihiro constantly being pressured by Renji about the novel and diary. The angst built into this series particularly midway had me in distress and despair. It was one of those huge plot twists that totally screwed up the show made the show more interesting, amirite? Words alone cannot describe how stressful it was watching the main plot unfold, yet I continued on.

Ending:
So in the ending everybody practically knows who they like and whatnot and knows who they're going to be with for the rest of their lives so it seems. The only thing that got me was the sex scene with Chihiro (a 12yr old) and the fact that Kei practically unfolded her whole goddamn life's plan in front of Hiro and I thought they were gonna be the ones, well it didn't turn out that way, Hiro still went with Miyako. The phone call at the end was probably one of the most disturbing/epic scenes in anime (same goes for the phone call that Miyako made for the date), that's when i knew that Hiro really had chosen Miyako. It was also obvious that Renji had chosen Chihiro when he went to go collect all of those journal entries. As for the career choice sheets, that was pure epic for what they put as their choices. The ending scene on the rooftop was pure win but still I felt something was missing.

Overall:
The lead characters have some serious/major psychological problems going on with them and I can only hope that they will get help. As for the plot setup, It started off good >>> despair>>>despair >>> Incredible. to me the story seemed to skyrocket literally at the very last moments of the anime as it gave a new hope you could say for the characters. The only thing that still bugs me is that why Hiro didn't go with Kei in the end since I think (if i recall correctly) that Hiro decided to become a manga artist and he did so by concluding that it was all because of Kei's support, but then again they did say that they want to go back to being called "onii/onee- chan"...