Shelf Life

The Amagami SS Collection

Before we dive into the world of Amagami SS (and its sequel series, Amagami SS+), here's a fair warning: Don't let the summary on the back of the box fool you. The new Blu-Ray release from Sentai Filmworks sums up the story of the Complete Collection of Amagami SS as this: “…the classic story of boy meets girl, girl, girl, girl, girl, and girl again as one guy's luck with the ladies goes from bad to multi-verse…” Initially, the vague wording and use of the word “multi-verse” (along with other mentions of fate giving the series' protagonist Junichi “the romantic equivalent of a multiple choice quiz”) had me believing that this dating-sim adaptation was going to take a more science-fiction/fantasy route, with the hero of the story repeating his life over-and-over a la Groundhog Day, making different decisions and meeting different girls over the course of a single extended personal journey.

As it turns out, that isn't what Amagami SS is at all. Instead of telling one story over the course of its almost 40 episodes, this franchise is really more a collection of short stories. In season one of the series, Junichi gets a 4-episode arc with each of his potential romantic interests, with each set of episodes acting as a completely separate and disconnected “What If?” scenario. The OVAs and the second season simply offer more of the same: a couple more episodes each of Junichi bonding with the ladies in his life, plus a couple of one-off adventures featuring the series' side characters. There's nothing supernatural or science-fictional at work here; just a normal high-school boy going out with a half-dozen equally normal high-school girls.

With just the summary alone, it's possible to guess both Amagami SS's greatest strength and its greatest weakness: its formula. To be fair, seeing the protagonist of a romance show get to fully commit to each of the potential love interests does offer a certain amount of satisfaction; the waffling and waiting to confess only lasts for an episode or two, and most every story features, if not an entirely happy ending, a conclusion at least. It also means that, if you aren't a fan of any one love interest, the next will come along within the span of only an hour or so.

On the opposite side of that coin, that same commitment to brevity and diversity means that Amagami SS and Amagami SS+ are perfect examples of shows that are a mile wide and inch deep, thematically speaking. Given the series' limited ambitions of animation and writing, four-episode arcs simply don't provide enough time to set up and flesh out a compelling love story, especially when you're dealing with teenagers. Amagami SS+ helps out a little bit, offering a couple more episodes each to spend on each of Junichi's six separate stories, but it still makes each of the narratives feel less satisfying than they might have been if they were given more time to breathe.

Given the shows' modest aesthetic merits, not to mention their inherently stunted story threads, Amagami SS and SS+ are the kinds of stories that live and die on the appeal of their cast. Junichi is about as generic a leading man as he can be, which isn't surprising given that the game is an adaptation of a dating-sim, so each of the franchise's female leads have to pick up all of the slack in terms of charisma and character development. Thankfully, most of Junichi's romantic partners are likable and interesting, which makes the sting of abandoning one romantic thread for another every few episodes hurt much less. Haruka is the first of the girls that the series focuses on, easily my favorite of the bunch, but the other five girls hold their own as well. Kaoru is the spunky “best friend” type, Ai is the quiet and reserved one, Rihoko is the klutz who likes food, and so on. I could honestly do without the episodes focusing on Miya, Junichi's sister, since I really have no need for Amagami SS to play up a young girl's possible romantic connection with her older brother. For anyone seeking that kind of story though, Amagami SS has you covered as well.

Personally, I'm not the type to get super-invested into the “self-insert, multiple choice” kind of romance; I tend to prefer main characters with a more distinct personality, and I'd rather root for a single pair of lovers over the course of a long story, rather than Amagami SS's commitment to non-commitment. I honestly feels like the series cheapens its own relationships once you realize that Junichi is more-or-less equally compatible with every single woman in his life. It's not that I buy into the idea of soulmates or anything, but Amagami's formula only highlights how much of a non-character Junichi is, which in turn makes his various romantic adventures feel all the more disposable.

“Disposable” doesn't automatically imply “worthless” though, and even if I can't quite jive with Amagami SS's particular take on young love, I recognize that you could easily take its formula as a celebration of finding love in many different forms. Even if that might be a stretch, Amagami SS isn't trying to be some kind of deep treatise on the nature and limitations of youthful romance. Watching Amagami SS's two seasons is the anime equivalent of tearing through a box of sugary confections in a single afternoon. It isn't much more than saccharine self-indulgence, and it all begins to taste the same after a while, but it's a perfectly fine way to treat yourself every once in a while.

This blu-ray set contains all 24 episodes of Amagami SS and all 12 episodes of Amagami SS+, along with two OVA episodes. This collection retails for about $50 USD online, which makes it a steal for fans of the show, despite the lack of any meaningful extras. The audio and visual quality are sharp, but they don't do much to elevate the show's aesthetic merits. Studio AIC does perfectly serviceable work on these Amagami seasons, but the animation and visuals are never much more than competently bland, save for a few nicely emotive scenes scattered about. The same goes for the show's audio quality; the set comes with just the subtitled Japanese audio, and both those performances and the series' musical soundtrack are perfectly okay.

In fact, “perfectly okay” might just be all you need to describe The Amagami SS Complete Collection. It tells perfectly okay micro-stories that feature a perfectly okay cast, and that's about all there is to it. If you really love dating-sim style stories, you might get a lot more out of these two seasons, and your appreciation of the series' cast will also affect how much you enjoy Amagami SS in the long run. I can't say I outright disliked much of it, but none of it is going to stick with me for long, either. If you're in the mood for a breezy, disposable collection of fairly average love stories, it might be worth a rental. Otherwise, there are much meatier, more substantial love stories worth spending your cold, hard cash on.
-James[TOP]