Anime Review: Orange

Orange （オレンジ)

Episodes: 13

Languages: Japanese

Genre: Shojo, Drama, Slice of Life

Where to watch: Crunchy Roll, Funimation

Summary:

Naho Takiyama is a sophomore in high school. On the first day of school, she wakes to find a letter addressed to her. Already late, she rushes to school without a second thought. Later, when she reads the letter, it’s from herself ten years in the future! While the letter seemed like an elaborate prank at first, she begins to believe the letter came from her future self.

The letter holds the future full of regrets and hopes that Naho holds for her younger self, hoping to correct her mistakes and have a happier life. The letter also mentions a new transfer student Kakeru. Noting that he is not around in the future, Naho urges her younger self to protect and watch over Kakeru to avoid carrying around that regret once again.

Since I always make it a habit to go into shows without reading the summary, I didn’t know what to expect. Don’t judge me for being contradictory since I provided an overview for you.

Being a Shojo, the love story is a given—the lack of suspense ever-present. With the genre, you expect the drama, feelings, and characters to act unrealistic for the sake of allowing the show/manga to continue going. By the end, you either think it was all worth it or given an epic eye roll. In most cases, shows like these can continue for 12-24 episodes because it boils down to miscommunication.

The best part that sets Orange apart from other Shojo’s is the Sci-fi aspect. I’m currently in my 20’s and would’ve loved to receive a letter from my future self when I was 16.

Naho’s initial reaction of skepticism at the letter was realistic and relatable. After all, notes from the future don’t appear regularly for everyone. However, her willingness to figure out how to save her friend despite her skepticism is honorable. As she accepts the idea that following the letter’s directions will help her friends in the future, she’s quick to jump on board.

Now that I moved past the simple things, the spoilers are ahead.

I am a fan of Sci-fi and time travel. However, depending on how it’s written, it can either get messy or pulled off perfectly. With Orange, while the letters appearing from the future were a crucial part of the story, the process wasn’t stuffed down the audience’s throats.

Throughout the series, scenes are shown of the character ten years in the future. We see the friends live in the absence of Kakeru, which left a heavy burden on their hearts. When they got together for the anniversary of his death, they thought of the idea of if they could send letters back in time.

While the story doesn’t touch on how they sent the letters or how they actually made it into the past, I would’ve liked to see it. The tricky part of introducing time travel would explain all the events that occur throughout the story.

I do watch a lot of content with time travel themes. However, I found it odd that every time they changed an event outlined in one of the letters, it barely changed the events leading after. Or at least, we aren’t clued into if the content of the letters changes at all.

Strategically, the writers cleverly got around the explanation by having none of the other friends mention they read ahead of the immediate future. As viewers, we’re led to believe that even if some events are changed, the path to Kakeru’s death is fixed, and they don’t save him. The inner sci-fi fan in me

While the show was about saving Kakeru and Naho falling in love with him, Hiroto was impressive. We knew Hiroto was in love with Naho from the first episode, married her, and started a family. However, he knew all these events through his future self’s letters and was selfless enough to give that up.

If Hiroto ain’t a real man... I don’t know who else would be.

Overall thoughts: B(Might be worth a rewatch in the future)

The story wrapped up rather nicely. From the beginning, I had the hope that the group would band together and save Kakeru. Although it is usually inevitable that the story would have a happy ending, I was doubtful until the last episode.

There were many emotional moments throughout the show, and the character development was more or less present with 3 of the five mains.

In the end, the story had a happy ending for most characters, and while the journey to get there didn’t always make sense, it wasn’t a bad watch.

I’ll give it a B, mainly because they didn’t show a scene with their future selves throwing the letters into the Bermuda Triangle. But, of course, given the history of what happens there, they likely died anyway, so I’m not sure If the show needed more depressing moments than we were already shown.