Suzuka

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Title:	Suzuka 涼風
Overall:	Buy
Keywords:	2005, Drama, High School, Modern, Romance, Shounen, Sports, TV
Notables:	AKESAKA Satomi HOSOKAWA Seika HOSONO Yumiko KAIDA Yuki MAEDA Takeshi MITSUHASHI Kanako MIURA Hatsumi NAKAMURA Daisuke OOYAMA Takanori SUZUKI Masami TOMINAGA Miina
Moving from the Hiroshima area to Tokyo as to attend high school there, Akizuki Yamato finds himself having to live in a house run by his aunt Fujikawa Ayano and her daughter Miho. He doesn't have to pay a rent but in exchange he has to help the residence. Besides having a public bath it's also occupied by three young and pretty female tenants - Saotome Yuka, Matsumoto Megumi and Asahina Suzuka. Yamato falls quickly for the charm of the beautiful and sporty Suzuka (a talented track&field high jumper going to attend the same class as Yamato) but alas for him everything separates them - and don't forget Yamato's pal Hattori Yasunobu (the ladies' guy), Hashiba Miki (the sprinter girl), and Sakurai Honoka (another female classmate and childhood friend of Yamato). Well, life isn't easy when you're young and inexperienced... [TV series, 2005, 26 episodes, 23 min; left to right: Matsumoto Megumi (fellow lodger), Fujikawa Miho (Yamato's cousin), Saotome Yuka (fellow lodger); Hattori Yasunobu (classmate), Asahina Suzuka (lead), Akizuki Yamato (lead), Sakurai Honoka (classmate); Miyamoto Soichi (senpai), Fujikawa Ayano (Yamato's aunt and landlady), Hashiba Miki (classmate)] 1:29min Series Opening - YouTube Video

Episode Details
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26

Overall	Art	Animation	Character Design	Music	Series Story	Episode Story	Reviewer

Unevaluated 4							Forbin	#
Suzuka Drama : Low Comedy : Med Action : None SciFi : None Ecchi : Med 3 Episodes Watched I will call this Love Hina Light. It's in a hotel with many rooms (And only 3 tenants) who are all girls. There is the blond who is like Kitsune, the Mega Nekko who is like an Old Shinobu, and of course Suzuka who is like Naru on Ritlin. While I liked Shuffle more, this was good. More after I see more. Edit : Reading another blog on this I realized something. This is Maison Ikkoku lite. Owells , I hope it keeps up the animation and plot. Boy is Suzuka a BITCH! This is Maison Ikkoku with Naru as the Manager. Last updated Tuesday, July 26 2005. Created Friday, July 22 2005.

Unevaluated 4							Jan-Chan	#
Suzuka Episode 2 has been released as a fansub, in this very fun high school romance story. I am looking forward to the next episode. Last updated Monday, July 18 2005. Created Monday, July 18 2005.

Buy 4	8	4	10	7	9	10	Devil Doll	#
Suzuka [Score: 84% = Buy-. Other recommended non-Fantasy Romance Drama animes: Koi Kaze, Lamune, Hanbun no Tsuki ga Noboru Sora, Rumbling Hearts, Hachimitsu to Kuroba II] Drama: Med/High (romantic triangle with some dark secret involved) Comedy: Low (occasional funny blunders by Yamato, but mostly a serious teenage romance) Action: Low (no fighting, but sport competition plays a role) SciFi: None (plain old world, normal people - just a lot of track & field) Ecchi: Low (the nudity in episode 1 is an exception) I always try to compare stories to each other, abstracting what I consider significant. But I really have a problem with this series in this aspect: It doesn't have the fantasy elements of Love Hina or the SF elements of Kimagure Orange Road (TV), and it's more focussed on the leads and less episodic than Boys Be. And despite featuring a major baka as male lead this isn't a "lite" version of any other series, as it apparently has less comedy, less ecchi, more drama and more realistic characters than the average teenage romance story... so maybe the first half of Kareshi Kanojo no Jijoo might actually be the best comparison. Especially the realism is what's so much better than most other romance series: These 16-year-old youths make horrible mistakes now and then but that's just how they're doing at this age. The staff indicates the typical light-hearted high-school romance, full of elements we know already: AKIZUKI Yamato - the irresponsible nice guy, bigmouth, prone to embarrassingly loud soliloquies, unable to look at things from any other perspective than his own, thus inadvertently annoying and even hurting people; but he does have his heroic moments in this series every now and then, and grows a spine towards the end of the series, showing quite some determination. ASAHINA Suzuka (a.k.a. "The Ice Queen" or "Miss Perfect") - the popular high-jumper girl living next door whom Yamato falls for at first sight; she can be a bitch at times but a real sweetie as well, with the load of a dark secret on her shoulders, permanently denying her own feelings (to others as well as to herself). HASHIBA Miki - Suzuka's best friend and fellow track&field athlete, an attractive level-headed girl and a care bear, supporting the leads wherever she can; she may be considered the silent star of this series. HATTORI Yasunobu - Yamato's childhood pal and classmate, now a ladies' guy and the personal adviser for Yamato's love life, experienced and knowledgeable but sometimes asking too much of Yamato, and the source of many interesting fundamental statements, mostly about the nature of love. SAKURAI Honoka - a shy classmate and shrine maiden living nearby, secretly in love with Yamato since their childhood; she'll be the character to surprise the audience the most. FUJIKAWA Ayano - Yamato's aunt and landlady, reliable and discreet. FUJIKAWA Miho - Ayano's daughter (age 13 or so), admiring her o-nii-chan but helplessly watching his many blunders (which make her show her "bossy side" at times). SAOTOME Yuka - a fellow lodger girl and student, the perfect kogal, annoying to no end and meddling with Yamato's problems without being asked. If you want to hate a character in this show, she's the one. MATSUMOTO Megumi - a fellow lodger girl and student, the laughing stock of this series, not too bright and extremely susceptible to the effects of alcohol (as we get to see in several episodes). SHIRAKAWA Nana - an teenage idol with her own record contract already, and to everyone's surprise best friends with Honoka. The ecchi episode 1 is just a blooper (whereas the manga shows more hard facts than the anime), and the silliness of the start will soon be gone. All relevant characters (except for Nana) had their appearance by episode 5 already. No weak episode from no.8 to 21 - the drama rules and Hattori & Miki contribute a lot to the show during their short scenes (especially Miki's performance is exceptional during the last third of the series). I am not really happy about the final episodes with that many scene reruns, it feels more like a war of attrition besieging the Ice Queen's castle, and the inevitable is being delayed for quite a while. Then again, everything makes sense in the end, and that's fine. As for the Art you can see the nice faces of all characters - but the Animation quality is extremely unstable from episode to episode (they show nice high jump movements but during episode 3 and 7 the faces looked really awkward, and in episodes 17 & 19 it gets really annoying), almost as if they used two animation teams of very different skill levels! Never before have I given that low a rating for Animation for a show I like so much... they should really have been given a larger production budget. Not much spectacular Music either, rather few patterns repeated frequently - but strangely I cannot ever get enough of listening to the OP and the first ED song at the start resp. end of each episode (while I consider the second ED song with the Asahina highlights just boring), albeit they're probably average J-Pop material. Somehow they're exactly what the series needs at these places: A cheerful tune for the beginning of each episode, a fast & powerful song for the sequence of the episode's highlight scenes at the end for the first half of the series, and a soft ending song for the second half when the ice is slowly beginning to melt. If you remove the upper layer of the Story and focus on character analysis this series has a lot in common with Love Hina (just without most of the overhead): Yamato (Keitaro, with a little more spine) has immediately fallen for capricious Asahina (Naru, with a verbal "Naru punch" this time) who will have a hard time to understand that she likes this irresponsible guy as well. With a ladies' guy and the fellow athlete trying to help them becoming a couple, and a lovely, shy, caring Honoka (an older version of Shinobu) as Suzuka's potential rival, the stage is set - let the drama begin! Despite the story being focussed on the lead couple (both of which undergo drastic changes of popularity level in the eyes of the audience, rest assured) some of the Side Characters are shining more brightly. Hattori and Miki set the standard for the leads who have to develop significantly as to reach their level. Megumi and Saotome are horribly irritating but used sparingly (thank god...), Miho-chan has nice appearances now and then. And Honoka-chan... rooting for her makes this series an emotional roller coaster as so many of her efforts go to waste. But her time will come... she's so much more than just another Shinobu-chan! The miko is my favourite character of this show, and she'll be at her top performance when you least expect her to. But actually the best aspect of this show is that the audience will automatically lead heated debates about which girl is the best and who deserves whom... which means the author designer did a perfect job making the fans get involved in the story! You'll be longing for every forthcoming episode, and many of these episodes end with a sensational bang, earning Episode Story the highest possible rating. Last updated Friday, June 06 2008. Created Friday, July 15 2005.

Other Sites

Name	URL
Official Japanese Series Web Site (Funimation)	http://funimation.com/suzuka/
offers watching certain episodes online for free
Lunar Subforum for Suzuka	http://www.lunarforums.org/viewforum.php?f=54
Series Forum of the Lunar Fansubbing Group
AnimeSuki Subforum for Suzuka	http://forums.animesuki.com/showthread.php?t=36029
Series Forum at AnimeSuki, with lots of discussions about the characters' development
Memento: Suzuka Archives	http://www.designchronicle.com/memento/archives/suzuka/
Mentar's insightful episode reviews and comparisons between anime and manga
Lunar Heights	http://lunar-heights.blogspot.com/
Personal Blog by random_ray, the Suzuka translator for Lunar, with comments on his episode translations
Random Curiosity: Suzuka	http://randomc.animeblogger.net/category/suzuka/
Episode reviews with TONS of screen captures.
DEL REY manga series (English language)	http://www.randomhouse.com/delrey/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780345486318

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