This anime takes place in Japan during the aftermath of World War II, and is about a group of seven teenagers that end up as cell mates at Shounan Special Reform School. The anime has two phases, each composing approximately half of the season. The first phase focuses on what occurs at the prison school. The guard and doctor in charge are both incredibly abusive, which makes it a hellish situation in and of itself. However, things get worse when one of the inmates is approaching their release date, and the guard and doctor begin earnestly trying to kill him and make it look like an accident. The core of this phase is how the seven form tight knit bonds that eventually allow them to work together and push through incredibly difficult situations.
The second phase takes place after a time skip and focuses on what happens to the boys after they’ve obtained their freedom. They each go about their own lives pursuing different dreams and goals. However, their lives are far from perfect. The shadow of Shounan and everything related to it continues to haunt them and results in lives that are full of hardship. Furthermore, the circumstances of the seven before they ended up at Shounan were far from ideal, and simply returning to that brings about it’s own set of hardships. However, once again with the bonds they’ve formed they are able to help each other out such that they’re able to continue moving forward.
The writing is good at fleshing out the main cast and establishing the bonds that form between them. It also does a decent job at getting the viewer invested in some of the cast, mainly Sakuragi, Mario, and Noboru. Though it also drops the ball pretty hard on a few of the cast making them really hard to get invested in. I also can’t say I’m much of a fan of the monotone narrator just explaining a lot of things. It makes things feel much more dull than they should be. The pacing is also felt pretty uneven, and how episode transitions are handled also felt bizarre at times. For example, the way the time skip flowed was pretty awful.
But the biggest issue I have with the story is that it’s overtly unfortunate. For the vast majority of the anime, it just doesn’t let the cast get any straight up victories. There is always a major element of loss associated with any wins they get. I certainly don’t expect their lives to be great and free of drama, but I feel that there should be a balance of ups and downs. Some arcs should just get happy ending and let the viewer be happy alongside the characters. For the vast majority of the anime this doesn’t happen. There’s always something or other that drags things down and makes things somewhat depressing or at the minimum bittersweet. It doesn’t help that logically it feels that there is no reason for most of this. The writing has to bend over backward to make things worse for the cast.
A core part of this is the way things are framed. Even if there are issues, depending on things play out and what’s focused on, the overall final note that an arc has can be happy. But here it felt like it was trying to do the opposite and try to make things as dreary as possible. It got really grating as things went on. There are certainly people that like stories like this, and from that point of view this is probably great as can be seen from the high rating. However, I really am not a fan at all. Things do start turning around in the final stretch of the anime and there’s a pretty positive atmosphere to the ending, so overall I would say I was satisfied with the ending to the anime and may read the manga if it continues with the same vibe. I still can’t say I enjoyed the anime overall however.
The art and animation are solid enough. It doesn’t look good, but the style and designs work pretty well for the story it’s trying to tell and the atmosphere it’s going for. The soundtrack also worked really well in the setting. The OP is great in terms of the song and visuals, but there’s only a single OP for the entire anime, so it did feel like it was overused. Especially as it also plays the song sometimes during key moments, such as the final episode which also plays the OP normally earlier in the episode. The ED is decent in terms of song and visuals, but also suffers from there only being a single one for all twenty six episodes.
A story about a group of juvenile cell mates suffering through life that’s full of lows and not enough highs.
6/10
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