We’ve had a lot of craziness in this Back to School month, haven’t we? Insane clubs, ninjas, time travel, and giant warships aside, it’s time for something relatable in the school experience, curses! I’m sure everyone either cast or endured a curse or two back in… um… just me then?
Anyway, True Tears. Technically, this is another School Love Polygon Visual Novel based anime, except if literally any source on the matter is correct, True Tears the anime has absolutely nothing to do with True Tears the VN beyond licensing the name, so there are no excuses. Does it manage to soar with the freedom of being an original property masquerading as a tie-in, or does it fall into one of those two pits you’re supposed to dig when messing with black magic? Let’s find out!
We open up with Shinichirou Nakagami. He seems to be a pretty average high school student, who like most kids that age dreams of more and different things than what his family would incline him to do with his life. Lucky him, he’s got a live-in childhood friend: Hiromi Yuasa. Well, maybe not lucky – she might be sweet and demure (even apologizing for not locking the door when we get the obligatory “walk in on the girl” moment), but she also seems to be deeply sad. Maybe it has something to do with the dead parents that are why she lives with the Nakagami family now.
He also runs into Noe Isurugi. Noe comes off as something of a grade-A cloudcookoolander: she may have her heart in the right place, but she gets stuck up trees picking berries for a chicken that “wants to fly” and otherwise talks about things in a very odd way. When Shinichirou teases her a little for this (after being roped in to helping out with the chickens, including getting clobbered trying to catch her jumping from that tree), she intones a curse of misfortune against him, which his classmates are quick to tell him is bad news since she has something of a reputation for doing deeds of the sort, and for her curses working.
Overnight, Shinichirou has something of a change of heart and makes Noe a present to apologize, both clearly wanting any bad luck gone and maybe being honestly sorry for upsetting a girl who was genuinely just sharing her interest. She’s quite pleased with the chicken effigy and wants to show it off to her little flock, only to find that the coop has been plundered in the night and her favorite is gone, surely dead – a fact she attributes to blowback for trying to curse someone else with bad luck. Despite losing pets she clearly held very dear, though, Noe doesn’t cry. When Shinichirou notes this, she explains that as sad as she is, she “lost her tears”.
After this, Noe ropes Shinichirou into her scheme to restore her tears, for which she needs the tears of “someone special”, into which she seems to be grooming him. Continuing to be weird she does things like waving to him from the athletic field in front of the whole school or bringing chicken treats as a gift.
All this catches the attention of Hiromi, whose own friend seems to be a shipper for her and Shinichirou. She tries to make nice with Noe, but Noe seems to notice that Hiromi’s intentions aren’t pure and declines to play ball.
Naturally, this is just the start of building the complex and soap-opera-like web of relationships that these kind of stories thrive on. Noe’s behavior towards Shinichirou causes several misunderstandings, which aren’t helped by Hiromi’s seemingly very split feelings. Shinichirou’s mother, who has her relationship with her son strained at the start of the show, also clearly dislikes Hiromi in a very bitter way and treats her badly. Shinichirou’s best friend, Miyokichi Nobuse, at least mimes having feelings for a girl, Aiko Andou, who manages a restaurant and is close friends with both Nobuse and Shinichirou, and who may herself have feelings for Shinichirou. At the very least, she’s all over the intro like she’s a route. And that’s just the half of it.
We get into an arc where it seems that Hiromi actually has eyes for somebody else, Noe’s elder brother in fact. While Shinichirou is moping a bit over having not understood Hiromi properly, Ai decides to swipe some screen time trying to help him cheer up, taking him out on something of an undeclared date while being unable to get through the thick wall where in Shinichirou’s mind he set her up with Nobuse and that’s that.
To Shinichirou’s credit, when he does interact with Hiromi in this phase, he tries to keep his inner strife bottled up and speak suppportively to her, but nothing he says seems to do anything but hurt, possibly because he’s not totally successful in said aim. At least he does try.
All this leads to Shinichirou having another run with crazy chicken girl. Fitting with her being about as nice as she is strange she actually tells the story of how she lost her tears, with her late grandmother taking them with her when she went. To cry again she needs someone else’s tears, but both the person and the tears need to be special, not just Shinichirou moping over being out the girl he would really prefer. This is between baptizing his face in a park fountain, lending her coat, and actually trying the dang chicken berries and realizing they’re horrible to human palettes, by the way. She also talks all about Shinichirou to her brother, and he comes over with a request for the young man: go out with Noe.
Shinichirou doesn’t resolve this right away, He chats with Noe a little, but initially blows her off to hang out with Hiromi, who is busily acting very sweet towards him. The next day, however, Noe gets an in by coming to where Shinichirou is practicing traditional dance at his family’s behest, and actually seeing good in it. After that, her brother comes over and repeats his request. Shinichirou, feeling awkward about being asked to date as a favor, rhetorically requests he date Hiromi in return (since, recall, she claims that’s who she likes, and he thinks that being on the other end of the request would give the guy pause)… which the brother accepts.
Shinichirou, being not an idiot, decides to tell Hiromi what’s been going on. Or he tries, but he doesn’t get very far before Hiromi catches the drift and clearly doesn’t like the attempt to play matchmaker even without any weird deals being made clear. We even see the scene a second time, from her point of view, and it’s clear that she’s hoping for something else.
Rather than getting right back to Noe first, we hang out with Ai a little. Previously, she agreed to make a sweater for Nobuse, but on getting a shred of alone time with Shinichirou, she seems inclined to use a paper thin excuse to show him her favor instead.
All things considered, by the halfway point in this show, Noe comes off pretty well. She may be of extremely dubious sanity but at least she’s honest, unlike Hiromi shooting herself in the foot or Ai more or less two-timing Nobuse here.
In any case, this all progresses, with Nobuse getting an errant hint about what Ai may really be up to (since she lied and told Shinichirou that he had bailed on the shopping date that she never told him about, which Shinichirou leaks to Nobuse), Ai kind of realizing that she’s being an idiot treating someone who genuinely cares for her so badly, and Noe’s brother doing his part to immediately invite Hiromi. Shinichirou, in a funk, has to face up to Noe
Thanks… um… I think?
He doesn’t do so well. Really, nobody does. Nobuse tries to patch things up with Ai, taking her shopping and telling her that having gone to the mall of all places is no big deal, but she pretty much spills the beans and breaks his heart because she feels guilty. Hiromi gets hammered by Noe’s brother saying Shinichirou and Noe are dating, right before she reveals the big secret to Shinichirou of why his mom is so horribly mean to her: she and Shinichirou might (might, mind you) have the same father, which is why she feels so conflicted towards him as both her clear crush and possible brother.
Shinichirou rejects the idea, feeling that even if his father and her mother were unfaithful the idea that the two of them are blood siblings would be a fiction his mom invented. Still, there are so many spanners in the romantic works of this little group that I think there are more spanners than works.
Shinichirou’s actions finally get across to Noe, through her thick wall of lunacy, that what she’s feeling for him is human love and not special chicken emotions, which throws her out of sorts. Out of sorts himself, Shinichirou decides to actually go for it and go out with Noe, while Nobuse’s relationship with Ai takes an extra hint to really crumble despite his kindness and attempts to maintain things. You really have to feel bad for the guy.
Ai, for her part, takes the news that Shinichirou has started dating very badly, reacting by forcing a kiss on him followed with her own teary confession. Because no way she’s letting this resolve with everybody paired with an acceptable but not-quite-ideal partner. We’ve got six more episodes at this point, it’s far too early to mark this an ode to settling.
Though, Shinichirou doesn’t really feel like he’s “settling” here – even though he can’t help but think about Ai and Hiromi, he turns down Ai pretty hard after she goes for the kiss and the continued pileup of Hiromi’s problems seem to be gnawing at him (though not so much as they do at her). Noe may have a few screws loose but she proves even after being asked out that she’s thoughtful, attentive, and kind. She even takes an interest in the fact that Shinichirou wants to write a picture book, something he’s been trying to do all show and in which nobody has supported him (though his mom was flagrantly the worst offender of being truly unsupportive). It might help that the latest draft is inspired by Noe’s chicken stories rather than teen romantic angst, but she’s genuine enough that I don’t think that’s the only reason.
But, again, the Shinichirou-Noe confession comes at pretty much the exact halfway point of the show, and there’s a problem shaped like Hiromi having a wee bit of a mental meltdown incoming.
She even learns about the pact between Shinichirou and Noe’s brother. She gets catty with Noe, and as she realizes she’s acting like Shinichirou’s emotionally abusive mother, finally cracks. She calls in an “I’ll do whatever you ask” favor with the brother to go for a motorcycle ride in the snow, and of course they crash… but not before passing Shinichirou and Noe on their way out of town. The lovebirds followed in a cab, and while the bike catches fire for some reason and burns merrily, neither Hiromi nor the brother are injured. What might be hurt is the brief romantic peace, as Hiromi being in real danger hits Shinichirou hard and he immediately comforts her, disregarding what his girlfriend might think.
To be fair, it’s clear that even aside from any romantic feelings, Hiromi is and always will be an extremely important person to Shinichirou. She fills the childhood friend role (along with Ai, technically. But Hiromi feels it), lives with him as family, and might actually be family by blood as well. Even if you leave out the “also at least his first crush, with some feelings likely unresolved”, there’s plenty of reason to go and hug her when you see she’s survived a burning wreck somehow unharmed. But still, not a good look.
This only worsens when, at school, it seems Hiromi is being considered at fault and rumors are spreading about her… over which Shinichirou is willing to fist-fight. Noe, being incredibly perceptive about feelings other than her own, seems to notice what this incident might mean for Shinichirou’s lingering attachments, and even seems to start on her own “I want my beloved to be happy” cycle.
At least a little good comes from this, with Shinichirou’s mom having a scare about both her son and the girl she’s supposed to be responsible for going missing on a snowy night, causing her to warm somewhat to Hiromi and admit that the story regarding Hiromi’s parentage seems to have been a lie.
Which, in all honesty, makes said mom look even more crazy and unpleasant when there was apparently not actually an affair to get so horribly mad over, but that’s neither here nor there as we’re clearly supposed to accept the two of them starting over with mom turning over a new leaf.
Shinichirou tries to keep up with Noe, but it’s easy to see them drifting apart and he and Hiromi drifting together. On the lower deck, Nobuse and Ai finally break up when Nobuse requests Noe curse him so he can’t feel love any more (well, so he claims. She claims later that there are no such things as curses, which seems a weird line out of Noe). Ai, for her part, also seems to be joining the new leaf club, as she tries to move on from both sources of heartbreak.
The tangle in Shinichriou’s proper love triangle intensifies as Hiromi decides to move out, feeling lost and hurting. She’s not going far, but this still gets to a passionate scene where Shinichirou chases after the moving truck on his bike. He wipes out, she eats pavement running for him having seen his approach out the window, and in an unintentional embrace he promises to wipe away her tears properly.
We are well past “She’d be an important person no matter what” territory now.
By one thing and another, a week passes. During that time, Noe avoids Shinichirou entirely, while Hiromi cozies up, even finding an opportunity to give him a kiss.
Awkward, given that he still believes she’s dating Noe’s brother. We spend most of the episode on her, a brief aside that Ai and Nobuse kind of start over, from square one with honesty, because curses don’t actually work. Shinichirou’s picture book work reflects his strained state, with the chicken story getting, at least for now, a rather tragic ending.
But, late one night, after Hiromi tries to break up with her boyfriend of convenience for about the third time, it turns out Noe is missing, and Shinichirou is dispatched via the grapevine to find her. He manages, discovering her and the remaining chicken from the coop out by the sea. He doesn’t confront her, but feels she’ll go home after seeing her introspect about her own failings, which in turn causes Shinichirou to consider his own fear and lack of agency in a way where he does the Kubrick stare for a bit, trashes the bad ending to the chicken story, and decides to take the folk dance he’s been practicing the whole show for seriously.
At the festival, Noe shows up despite her moping that she wouldn’t and Hiromi confronts her. This leads to Hiromi crying in front of Noe (which shakes the girl with no tears), asking that she leave Shinichirou alone. Noe next runs into her brother, who reveals formally what Hiromi seemed to pick up on many episodes earlier: he is, in fact, a siscon. He also breaks down in tears, saying it’s painful to have to be around Noe, and this shakes and disturbs her even more. Feeling that she hasn’t seen anyone properly, she laments how she’s been off in her own little world.
Both Noe and Hiromi watch the big dance number, which is really good for something keep down to earth and traditional. At its conclusion, though, Noe is missing, and despite Hiromi’s insistence, Shinichirou goes to find her, only to witness her fail to fly from a tree.
Noe gets out of it with a broken bone, Brother decides to be honest with himself and Hiromi, and Hiromi blames herself due to how mean she was to Noe.
Impelled to make his own choice, Shinichirou settles things with Noe. After a bit of a spat over it, he shows her the picture book with its true ending, and confesses that while he loves Hiromi (as Noe already realized), Noe does a number on him too. She seems… oddly uplifted by this, resolved that she can fly because Shinichirou’s belief in her will be her wings.
Thus, Shinichirou is able to respond to Hiromi properly, and pretty much skip right to proposing to her. Noe, alone and thinking back on all this, seems to regain her tears, and the show plays us out with a montage of happily ever after for the cast, the two pairs in romance and Noe able to make friends like a normal girl now that she’s free. The final shots are of Shinichirou and Hiromi together and Noe, out by the sea, joyful and seemingly ready to fly.
Thus ends True Tears.
So, let’s talk about the main girls. Because, when you get down to it, that’s what shows like this are all about. Whether or not True Tears actually resembles the visual novel it takes its name from, the genre of VN it’s at least imitating usually boils down to “pick a girl to date”. I don’t mean to sell these stories short – they’re often powerfully emotional, and many even have strong plots – but a lot of the appeal is bound up in how resonant and deep the characters you (or the leading guy) interact with can be. Before I do, I feel like I need to present a chart for this show, just to help the folks at home keep everybody straight.
This will be on the test.
First up is Noe. Noe has a lot of heavy lifting to do, as when you think about it, the entire show hinges on her to be the inciting action and main mover of the plot. I’ve described her persona throughout the review, but since we’re in the summary now, let me recap.
Noe is kind. Contrary to what the pitch would have you believe, with her throwing out horrible curses, she’s consistently depicted as a sweetheart who, at least in her own way, really cares for others and can be genial and caring. Though, at the end, she blames herself for not paying more attention to the people around her, she does seem on mundane topics to be consistently a good listener and attentive friend.
Noe is earnest. While, again, the last episode or two tries to turn this around somewhat, Noe is the only character in this show, pretty much, who doesn’t spend the entire time lying to the people around her. Well, Nobuse is pretty honest as well, but he’s the other guy in a dating-sim-inspired sort of affair so there’s only so much he matters, at least when Shinichirou’s not actually in competition with him from Shinichirou’s point of view. The fact that Noe doesn’t lie, when so many others do, makes her feel like a brighter and more innocent character.
Noe is strange. It’s common to write female characters in a certain role who are… allegedly weird, and perhaps can be silly and entertaining on command now and then. Noe is legitimately bizarre, to the point where it does come off as being her most major character flaw. This is why her last turns before reaching the resolution with Shinichirou don’t fall entirely flat. She might be an attentive person, good listener, and overall kind soul… but she did kind of live in her own little world, hence why she was so isolated from other humans and the core concepts of human emotions. This is also part of why the ending, with her the romantic loser but reclaiming her tears, still has a positive spin to it. Because she’s able to cry again, she’s also able to live in the real world, and that brings her friendships and connections she never could have had otherwise.
It’s also very possible, in light of the ending, to read her relationship with Shinichirou as something that wasn’t healthy for her. True, Noe was very happy, and she also supported Shinichirou and brought him happiness, but at the same time the young love experience was, to an extent, feeding her fantasy. She wasn’t growing or moving forward while she was having the good times, she was just dragging someone else into her isolated bubble. Which, if you’re looking for it, you can see in how Shinichirou’s other important relationships are all kind of interrupted by Noe’s mere existence.
As for Hiromi… I’ve mentioned before my utter weakness for the childhood friend archetype, and so there’s a degree to which I can’t help but be glowing with happiness at the fact that the childhood friend wins one here, even given that Noe is extremely stiff competition and probably the better person of the two. She’s very well executed as the childhood friend as well. There’s a legitimate sense of the bond between her and Shinichirou, with both incidents from their past shaping them and these feelings that run very deep and yet can’t help but be complicated. A lot of this work is done from Shinichirou’s side. Often the typical “Childhood friend romance”, the kind that always loses out, has the guy depicted as indifferent or unaware. But, from the very first episode, Shinichirou thinks of Hiromi about as much as she thinks about him. But the fact that she’s also this sad, tragic figure makes her seem less approachable, especially since thanks to his mom’s gaslighting bull, Hiromi is at war with herself over Shinichirou.
Her biggest problem is, without a doubt, her dishonesty. Hiromi lies almost pathologically, even if it is clearly as a defense mechanism. And you know what? She’s not rewarded for that. It’s only after she decides to start being a little more honest with herself and those around her that things can start going right for her. I also like that while she has her sad tragic heroine face that Shinichirou sees and her chipper popular sports girl persona at school, she also clearly has a dark side as well, as she’s without a doubt the quickest character in this show to get jealous, become catty, or pick fights with others over unspoken offenses.
I don’t want to be too hard on her, because I did really like her and wanted to see her and Shinichirou happy for the end (though, those feelings were rather conflicted thanks to what it would mean for Noe). She’s a well-crafted character, you empathize with the pain she’s going through, understand why she’s in such a bind, and can certainly come to like her. I did. Honestly after the bike crash when she was at her lowest, I started rooting for her in earnest. Which is good.
And, when it comes to chemistry, as good as the scenes between Shinichirou and Noe were in the middle, Hiromi really does have her beat. A lot of it is in subtle interactions between the two of them, how they regard each other and even seem to read each other on a deeper than normal level. That doesn’t mean they’re psychic or can’t have misunderstandings – they have plenty of misunderstandings – but you feel a trust and affection between Hiromi and Shinichirou that’s strong enough and enduring enough to weather bad times, as opposed to the fragility of Noe and Shinichirou’s relationship that starts going south as soon as Shinichirou responds to someone who, I will repeat, was never going to be not important to him.
Hiromi is a deeply flawed person, but she and Shinichirou can love each other in spite of that.
In a sense, she reminds me of Megumi Katou, who we’re supposed to believe is this sweet-seeming girl who actually has a very greedy or selfish side once she knows what she wants, except Hiromi is a good deal better studied and more likable. It’s funny how the character meant to be kind of from a Gal Game is deeper and better rounded than the character who is explicitly supposed to be deeper and better rounded than “2D characters”. Apologies, but some dead horses need to be beaten.
And it’s weird, but I actually do like Ai in this. She’s terrible, but she knows she’s terrible, and she’s terrible for all the most understandable reasons. She starts the show basically pity-dating Nobuse because Shinichirou won’t look her way and ships the two of them, but despite what was probably an earnest attempt on her part to settle for someone who comes on her dear crush’s recommendation and who is by all accounts an extremely kind and attentive boyfriend, she finds she just can’t stomach it. I think some of her best scenes are the ones where she’s pushing Nobuse away, not because she dislikes him, but because she feels unworthy of his care and affection, legitimately due to her own emotions and deeds marking her as guilty. She can’t help but want what she wants, and the fact that that’s true even as she recognizes herself how bad it is comes off as very human. I’ve little more to say about her, since she really is a satellite character despite being all over the intro with nearly equal weight to Hiromi and Noe, but she serves her role fine.
I suppose she does shape up in the tail end of the show, after the reset button for her and Nobuse is pressed and they start over as friends to see what will happen, but we don’t really indulge in that.
As for the story, I waxed long, but you can boil it down to a pretty simple teen romantic drama if you want to. People like each other in a way that’s not compatible for the group’s mutual happiness, hijinx ensue. It’s a tried and true formula. You see it in Anime, you see it in Western romances, you see it in Shakespeare, and I’m pretty sure you see it in antiquity and mythology. True Tears doesn’t lose any points for not really having a plot outside the relationship drama, that’s just what the genre is.
So, where do I rate True Tears?
Well, the childhood friend wins. Bust out the sparkling cider set aside for such a rare circumstance, it has finally happened. But that can’t really influence the letter grade.
The letter grade I have for True Tears is B+. I think it’s a pretty good example of its kind of story. It’s more focused and better constructed than, say, H2O, but it doesn’t have the drive to excel or show us something new and wonderful that, say, the Science Adventure series entries like Steins;Gate would. Of the two, it’s far closer to H2O.
In terms of recommendations, True Tears is also very much a piece that I can see being divisive. The ending works as bittersweet because you can see points for both Noe and Hiromi, and something beautiful and precious is going to be lost no matter what. On reflection, I think the route they went was the correct one for the themes of the story and the arcs of the characters, even trying to set aside my biases, but if you resonate with Noe and not Hiromi it probably feels like a slap in the face, while if you resonate with Hiromi and not Noe the getting there might be teeth-grinding. You have to be prepared to like them both rather than slotting automatically into “Camp Best Girl” in order for the show to work. Chances are you know what kind of shipper you are, so take that grain of salt with the B+ rating.