凉風

Suzuka is an anime that's recently made it to the States (I guess - or it's coming out soon). I'm watching it with fansubs. The story is a pretty typical high school romance, which is common here in Japan. Suzuka is a girl from Yokohama who moves to Tokyo to go to a school with a noted track and field team. (Yokohama is about an hour or two outside of Tokyo, depending.) She's a high jumper with a lot of potential. She lives in an apartment building that also has a 銭湯 (sento - a public bath).

But the main character of the story is Yamato Akitsuki. He's from Hiroshima (which is a long way from Tokyo, being completely past Osaka and most of the Kansai region - probably around a 3-4 hour bullet-train ride, depending). His aunt runs the apartment building and sento. Akitsuki is sort of rough around the edges. He falls for Suzuka and joins the track team to try to impress her.

The show is engaging. It's 26 episodes, so new characters are added gradually. We meet Akitsuki's aunt and cousin, a childhood friend who goes to the same school, another classmate whose family has a shrine that Akitsuki spent time at as a child, and the neighbor college girls who drink too much. In episodes 7 and 8 we start to meet the other members of the track team, too.

It's the kind of show that completely grabs a sucker like me. And it's infuriating that the thing that grabs me is also the aspect I find most annoying - the source of the drama is a love/hate relationship between two immature people who grow closer as they grow up and become more mature. It's the same motif as Ranma 1/2, Love Hina, Kare Kano, Escaflowne, etc.

So I'm hooked. I'll probably finish it by the weekend... and I'm only on episode 9.