Futakoi Alternative

Overall, I thought the series was worse than the original Futakoi. And I KNOW the original Futakoi wasn't that great in the first place, but it was still at least fun to watch... Futakoi Alternative was... agonizing.

The plot of the story proceeds EVER. SO. SLOWLY. Basically, the entire series is based on an event that happens at the very end of the series, and for 8 episodes they mope around emoing over the coming of that event. It had the reminiscence of Azumanga Daioh where they'd just play a pointless scene for 5 FREAKIN MINUTES without doing anything... The series would have been much better off if they spent maybe 1 or 2 episodes on the whole "emo over our future" scenario and the rest on the supposedly crazy detective adventures they had (which, from the few scenes that had them, seemed highly more interesting than the emoing).
As for characters, although Sara and Souju (sp?) and the main detective character were flushed out pretty well (how could you NOT develop a character that emos for the entire series...) the other characters were very minor, which bothered me. In the introduction they introduce all the futakoi pairs in all their fighting glory, yet they only get one episode for each of them then never appear again. While their appearance was not meaningless (they do reveal some history about the starring twins of the show), it's quite disappointing how none of them make any new appearances after that, save for the loligothika twins which I must admit are a pretty cool pair of twins... but otherwise, the city townspeople seemed more important than the other twins that made appearances. Disappointing.
The two reasons why I continued with the series is because of its artwork and music; if it had lacked that, I wouldn't have even bothered. I actually did almost give up on the show, but I heard from someone that it got faster during the last half, which was a complete lie. It only got faster during the last two episodes, and the last two episodes were done so "recklessly" (for lack of a better word) that it didn't seem very entertaining at all. In any case I digressed; the artwork indeed was appealing. If anything, this entire series was a slow moving CG with voices, though I'm sure it would have been just as pretty without the voices... well, no, Souju's (sp?) voice is cute :p.
Second thing this show had going for it was eufonius. I can now conclude that eufonius is my second favorite J-pop celebrity (or group?), following KOTOKO. Whereas Kotoko's voice is usually a type of cheery, upbeat and energetic sorts, eufonius is quite appealing in the soft-spokenness and comfort of her music; her voice sounds very soothing and the music accompanying is usually one that reminds me of lullabys or melodies. eufonius seems pretty popular in Japan right now, though I don't think they'll be playing in America anytime soon. Then again, I never thought KOTOKO would make an appearance in America...

EUFONIUS FOR AX2007/AX2008/AX2009 :(