Art is funny, in that you look at something and have absolutely no idea what it means or is supposed to say. Sure, it may look cute or beautiful or intriguing, but, eventually, it does nothing for you and you walk away from the whole thing. “Glasslip” is an anime like that for me. It purported to be something else, but dissolved into a rather convoluted mess and I gave up on the story.

Let us go back to the beginning, as you start at the start. Although, for this show, you could start at the end and it would make the same caliber of sense.

Tōko Fukami‘s family runs a glass-working business in a small seaside town named Hinodehama (that’s in the Fukui Prefecture, if you are keeping notes). She (that’s her in the seven o’clock position) hangs out with her four best friends:

Yukinari Imi (one o’clock)
Yanagi Takayama (two o’clock)
Sachi Nagamiya (five o’clock)
Hiro Shirosaki (six o’clock)

Their favorite spot is a cafe called Kazemichi. During the summer break of their senior year in high school, they meet a transfer student named Kakeru Okikura (eleven o’clock), who claims that a voice from the future talks to him, and that it has led him to Tōko.

OK, so we have an element of supernaturalism afoot here, as Toko appears to be getting visions of future events, but she is unable to determine where they are or when they are. I felt the show was going to explore this phenomenon and Kakeru was going to help Toku refine this ability. Well, that didn’t happen for me. Instead, it got bogged down into a miasma of who likes whom and who has confessed to a certain someone and why I don’t like you at all and you’re a boy who’s a friend but not a boyfriend. I came across a chart that explains it all, with the circles and the arrows, but it might as well be talking about hockey blue line rules for all that it is worth to me.

It also moved…so…….very………..slow………ly……..for………………………………me. Sometimes you watch a show that just rips though its 24 minutes and you are astounded where the time went. Others have you looking at your watch every five minutes to see that only another five minutes have passed for me. I think I would have liked it more if we played up the ‘future eyes’ portion of it, rather than these teens being all angsty about how their love life is going south.

I can’t give this high marks. I have seen other romance shows than this that are far better (“Waiting for the Summer” comes to mind immediately) and certainly with a lot less turgidness and mindless perambulation. To give me credence, one of my anime mates saw this to the end before me and asked “Am I supposed to be confused?” No, you shouldn’t be, but that’s how it played out.

On a scale of 1 to 10:

Artwork 7 (How big are those eyes?)
Plot 5 (Initial idea lost)
Pacing 5 (So…..very…..slow)
Effectiveness 6 (Took too long to get to things)
Conclusion 5 (It reaches a ‘coupler point’, but hasn’t ended)

Fan Service 0 (A similar show would be “Honey and Clover”)

Overall 5 (Two ships passing in the night)

And remember, it’s first run until you’ve seen it. Welcome to my shop.