This week for Anime Sunday I’m covering one of my bigger disappointments from Winter 2016. It’s my Aokana Final Impressions!

Plot: I had really high hopes for the series, as this was an adaptation of a pretty great Visual Novel, although it did have Adult Content (read: Sex Scenes). I’m not disappointed about the lack of that, because honestly I wasn’t expecting that, though I’d have been fine with implied scenes happening. The story had four different routes for each of the four different heroines and love interests and most Visual Novel Adaptations decide to do one of the routes, some of the worse mix in other routes, but for the most part they take one of the various paths. But instead of doing any of the routes, or even going the harem route which would’ve been disappointing but barely acceptable at least, they chose to do no route changing the entire storyline into that of a sports series instead of the romance it was in the original material.

Characters: Due to this change we don’t really get a good look at any of the characters all that well, sure there are some various character development episodes, but they are superficial at best. In addition the protagonist, the Player Character from the Visual Novel, doesn’t really ever change from the beginning. The reason he stopped using his flight shoes and stopped participating in FC, Flying Circus, aren’t really explored or dealt with satisfactorily. The reason being that in the Visual Novel, the four romantic interests help him overcome the trauma he had. In this he just ends up sticking around helping them out as a coach instead of really solving his issues. As for the actual heroines, Asuka is annoying at best and she’s pretty much the main character. Misaki, Mashiro and Rika are sort of just there, and aren’t really part of the story all that much, except for Misaki at one point. But even then it’s mostly all about Asuka and she’s irritating.

Art: The art is generally the only good thing about this, but the usage of 3DCG was distracting at best and outright an eyesore most of the time.

Music: The music of the Visual Novel is actually pretty awesome, I’ve listened to it, but the Anime doesn’t really live to the standard that it set. It’s not bad, but it’s not amazing.

Overall: Steer clear of this disappointment and play the Visual Novel instead.