ef - a tale of memories.

[Ryllharu]

I knew she was going to toss away the notebook, but I did expect her to burn it like the girl in the story did the painting, and then jump too.

It's tragic that Chihiro believes she doesn't deserves happiness. She always thinks she's hurting everyone. She apparently drove Kei off too long ago. Or at least forceably separated herself from her. She doesn't see that Renji has already seen the worst of it (one of her total collapses), has already felt terrible about it, and already been tortured by her when he flipped out at the sand castle. The difference is that Renji is hurt by how unfair life has been to Chihiro. He wants to bring her happiness, and he already came back for her. He's willing to endure the pain and suffering in order to make her happy, and be happy with her. In the light of her happiness, the pain means nothing to him.

I suppose if there is to be a happy ending, Renji will have to spend the next episode making her realize that.

[shinta|hikari]

or they can start again, and this time make her not want to forget about him.

[Buffalobiian]

I'm wondering how they'll manage to wrap this all up in one final episode. We have Renji and Chihiro to fix up, they've at least got to spend some time on Hiro, Miyako, Kei and Kyosuke, and this ep they furthered the story about who Himura is waiting for, something they haven't touched on since like episode 1 or 2. Is that gurl a phantom or something though, she seems to appear and go out of nowhere. Seems human enough though.

[Xrlderek]

Episode 12 - Conclave-Mendoi

[Buffalobiian]

So err, what does everyone think?

I thought: great episode, great ending, great series. I can imagine for some the whole page gathering, memory unlocking and miracle thing could be a bit far fetched, but I thought it was well done. Everybody's recovery/progress slotted in nicely without feeling cramped. They didn't develop a lot on Yuko/Himura, but they were always a mystery. I don't quite remember the details of ep 1-6, but from memory, they provided the necessary background stuff for the things to come. This series started off with it's own theme, music and art style, continued to develop them throughout the 12 episodes and brings it all together in the finale. Probably not your typical action/mecha fan's cup ot tea, but for those wanting some drama, unique yet beautiful art and emotionally gripping music, ef is a must.

[Ryllharu]

Well, it's not like we didn't expect this kind of resolution on the Chihiro x Renji story, but that doesn't make it any less wonderful.

Two really heartwrenching scenes in this episode for me. One being the slightly cheesy scene where Chihiro admits she couldn't stop thinking about him at least once every thirteen hours (a much better plot device then pulling, say, a 50 First Dates on the audience). As Kuze said, if you give it enough effort to overcome those accidents and make your dream into an inevitability, it's not so tough. Renji running around the city in a fury was moving, but so was Chihiro breaking down and admitting she couldn't help it. She even tried to fake it, and pretend she didn't quite recognize him. No miracles here, just effort.

The second, far more powerful scene was showing Chihiro's final words to herself, and ripping the pages out. We don't even need to call it allegorical, since the diaries represent her real memory. I love the way they animated Chihiro grabbing it, hesitating just a second, then grab in real deep and quite literally rip her own heart out. Beautifully done.

----------------
Even though the series pretty much laid out how the happy outcomes were going to be from the start, the writers, creators, director and animators did a fantastic job of providing some really moving content. From the music to the pretty visuals, the oddly drawn scenes to increase emotional impact, the amazing phone scene with Miyako back in episode 7, the highly detailed sky in every scene usually uncharacteristic for anime, and the superb performances by all the cast. I wouldn't hesitate to call this a masterpiece, but if the story had been crafted to keep us guessing it might possibly have been better. Even then, they wouldn't have been able to create as artistic a series.

The lesson to be learned was that miracles don't exist. You can say effort can create miracles, but even that is far fetched for what they did here. Pretty strange for an anime, especially of this genre. Not one character's problem was solved by mysterious influences. Hirono had to tell Kei to her face that he loved her only as a sister, and she had to learn to accept that. Miyako had to stop running away. Hirono then had to drive to every payphone in the city to find her. Renji had to run around collecting the papers, and then still turn around and face her, knowing how painful the relationship can be at times. Chihiro had to stop hating herself, stop shoving pain on to others under the guise of trying not to hurt them, and solved her memory issue not with a miracle, but with the accident of thinking about him every few hours.

[shinta|hikari]

I wont hesitate to call it a masterpiece at all. It would be extremely unfair to not do so simply because it follows a school romance stereotype or that it ends happily, (probably the only reasons for anyone to hesitate)

It was well done in all aspects. It did numerous new things while keeping the anime romance feel. It managed to move the viewers not only with the story but with its art and music. Unlike many good anime series out there, ef could not have been done in any other mode of presentation (ie novel, manga, live-action) without it losing its beauty and uniqueness.

[Board of Command]

This series IS a masterpiece.

[oyabun]

It truly is.. Just a little annoyed with Kei and her rebound guy.

[Church]

Well, just finished it, and even though the game spoiled most of it for me :/ it was still amazing. Quite frankly, I'm speechless.
Did anyone else thought of Kingdom Hearts when Renji was collecting the missing pages? or any other RPG that has you going around collecting random stuff from all over the place.
And lastly, I was hoping the anime would develop Himura and Yuuko a bit more, as they are quite interesting characters, even when compared to the rest of the cast.
Well, now all that's left is wait for Minori to release ef - the latter tale. Which is scheduled for May 30th, 2008, not cool <_<

Oh yeah, almost forgot, WHERE'S MY EF OST?!?!?!? >:O

[Buffalobiian]

Oh yeah, almost forgot, WHERE'S MY EF OST?!?!?!? >:O

unfortunately, not till Feb, according to Nipponsei. Are you playing the game in english?

[Kraco]

They didn't develop a lot on Yuko/Himura, but they were always a mystery.

What was Yuko anyway? Her appearances during the show made her seem like a ghost. Like someone Himura lost and thus he is so troubled and spending time at the church. The other option I could think of is that she's a woman he was interested in, but he intended to let her go because he decided he must take care of Chihiro, who can't remember anyone else, aside from the sister Kei, and thus he can't get involved with anybody else and leave Chihiro alone.

[Buffalobiian]

I don't know if she's human or ghost, but when they met, Himura said sorry to make you wait, and Yuko said earlier in the series about wishing that either Chihiro or Miyako could fulfil her dream or something. I'm guessing that HiImura didn't believe in miracles, while Yuko did, and she set out to either prove that to him, or just to simply make it come true. It may be coincidence, but Himura may have changed his way of thinking after seeing Chihiro's recovery, and hence saw Yuko. In the first episode, we've seen them both before at the church, and they both say they're waiting for someone. If Himura was waiting for Yuko to come back realizing his belief was correct, and vice versa, then it makes sense that Himura comes back saying "sorry I've kept you waiting."

A total guess though. Maybe Church can enlighten us a little without spoiling the game too much?

[Buffalobiian]

It's finally here!!! I don't know if I ever epected a better soundtrack.

[Nipponsei] ef - a tale of memories Original Soundtrack ~espressivo~.zip.torrent

edit: well, it's definitely a beautiful soundtrack. I guess I was looking for all the really dramatic music, whereas this one was more the light hearted mix. OST II is coming in April, so I'll be on the lookout for that.

[David75]

I enjoyed this series quite a lot.

And Ep7 phone scene was deeply related to similar events I lived.
I know how it is to think that way. Although I never was to make a lot of phone calls like that, brain running while and imagining every possible worst case scenario... blended with a touch of paranoia is totally possible. It"s very hard to cool down when it happens, reason being weakened quite a lot. Reason kicks in now and then, but can't cope with an explosion of thoughts all coming from the fear of losing affection and love, it causes so much pain at that stage.

They are all a tad young, but I like it it wasn"t like other shows where sex is totally cut from the story. And I also liked it wasn't ecchi or funny around sex. Sex was just part of the relationships beetween lovers. No more, no less.

Regarding Chihiro, the scene when she wakes-up totally clueless about what happened is clearly a deep schock from Renji-'s lover perspective.
Chihiro's schock is totaly plausible too from an individual perspective.
It may happen sometimes when you just woke-up, still sleeping a little bit, then your image in the mirror is different from the you in the dream you're leaving.

Then there's the "sheets thrown in the wind" scene.
No one really pointed out that it's in fact a "lovers suicide"
When she throws the sheets, she anihilates who she was when living those things and aimes at anihilating Renji the one loving Chihiro. It's that violent when you think about it.

Hopefully, this act can be repaired as we've seen. But at the time she does this, it's as if she had jumped, The Chihiro that is still able to say "I love you" to Renji.

Then there's the OP, I like the 10 first seconds. There's something about the music and voice that goes deep inside. Then it looses a bit of punch, and then the melody catches up.
I've listened to the original song and I know this op is a different cut, since this first phrase is at the end of the original song. Yet it is nice.

Thanks for letting me know so much about this show and give me the will to try it.

[Buffalobiian]

Second OST for ef is finally released. Titled ~fortissimo~, I'll be expecting some of the rich and heavy music that was missing in the first installment ~expressivo~

Enjoy.

[Nipponsei] ef - a tale of memories Original Soundtrack 2 ~fortissimo~.zip

[Board of Command]

Froth-Bite released an SD version of this a long time ago. I stumbled across the HD version tonight and decided to crop out only the good stuff (ie. the incredible animation). For those who don't know, this sequence was done by the great Makoto Shinkai, and the style is very reminiscent of his other works.

[LOLWUT] ef - The First Tale Game OP

Video source from NNL. Cropped, trimmed and re-encoded by me. I can put up a smaller filesize version if you guys want. This one is encoded in an extremely (and excessively) high bitrate. It would probably look just as good at half the size.

[Buffalobiian]

How long is this OP? It's big enough for a good 7 mins of anime.

[Board of Command]

Original is a bit over 3 minutes, but the actual song portion is 2:11. That's why I said it's excessively large. I guess I'll put up a smaller one. Maybe around 40 MB.

---------------------------------

Here's the new version at roughly half the size. I did a frame by frame comparison and the quality is near identical.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/mqjz6v

[Buffalobiian]

I can't say I've seen HD look so good in ages.

The animation...
The detail.....
The music.....

Now I want ef in HD. Thanks for sharing that Boc, it was a treat.