Kimi no Iru Machi OVA 1 – notes and the like This entry was posted by Vale.
Is this Katawa Shoujo?
No one told me most characters in this OVA are speaking in a very thick Hiroshima dialect. I had to listen to the first few sentences a bunch of times to realize what felt so off about them. It’s most apparent by how they use ja to end their sentences (in the rest of the country this sounds very old-fashioned) and how they use bucchi for “extremely” (in the rest of the country it would be meccha). By the way, the Carp is the Hiroshima baseball team.
“Green car” is what JR labels their first class cars.
The red book is an university guidebook. It’s titled Touto University Guide (東都大学 touto daigaku). “Touto University” might refer to all universities in the Tokyo area in general, but in anime it’s often the fictional name of the prestigious Tokyo University.
The JR Sobu line is one of the most important train lines in Tokyo, connecting Chiba with western Tokyo. Okubo (大久保) station is in west Shinjuku, at the border of the Korean district and the red light district of Kabuki-cho (歌舞伎町). One thing I can tell you for sure: it’s not in running distance from the Tokyo Dome.
I don’t know what books they read in Japanese high schools, but if they’re all like the one quoted in the anime, then that explains a lot about the Japanese views on gender equality. Before anyone would complain about how these sentences are not phrased like normal conversation, realize that she’s reading a textbook aloud.
This scene is only there to show how the Hiroshima kids are not used to the city. Haruto apologizes to the guy who bumped into him – in Tokyo no one would bother. He’s a true countryside boy.
“It’s just a game.” “Just act like it.” “Just hypothetically, what would you answer if I said I…” This is so cliche it hurts. But I can’t say it’s not realistic – high school kids really do this.
Haruno is a real city chick. She’s straightforward to the point of being rude, she looks like a city person and she doesn’t let go of her phone for a second. This is in a really sharp contrast with the countryside innocence of Haruto and Kanzaki.
She says her family runs a “Shoubara-yaki” (庄原焼き) restaurant. It’s pretty much like the typical okonomiyaki, it’s just the Hiroshima variant.
Kimi no Iru Machi is a cliched high-school romance anime OVA. The only thing interesting about it is the Hiroshima spicing – the dialect and the local references make it a bit original.