Kimagure Orange Road

Ok, I shall stick to the norm and not put spoilers here anymore.

Kimagure Orange Road is a shounen story about Kasuga Kyousuke who came from a family who has the power of ESP. They like to keep this a secret but when someone finds out about their gift, they have to move. One day as Kyousuke was walking around his new town he encounted some steps and he decided to count it. He counted 100. Suddenly by some gust of wind a red hat came swooping down and he jumped up and caught it. Then a girl came chasing after that hat. She told him that he was wrong about those steps being 100. She counted it herself and it was 99. And so they argued for awhile and Kyousuke decided that there were 99 1/2 steps.

This girl is named Ayukawa Madoka. A very beautiful girl with long black hair and green eyes, that Kyousuke fell in love with right away. How can you not? But Madoka has a very bad reputation at school. Since her parents are musicians and are always away, she learned to take care of herself. She is known as "Madoka the Pick" because she uses a guitar pick as her weapon of choice when fighting. She is very tough and independent. Even gangs stay away from her. Since childhood, Madoka only really has just one friend and that is Hikaru who is two years younger. Soon... soon though, because of Kyousuke, she begins to change and her tough exterior begins to crumble little by little and you can see this in the simple things like the clothes she wears.

However, her best friend Hikaru also falls in love with Kyousuke (although she hated him in the beginning). So much so, that she even has pictures of him taped in her room and she calls him "Darling". Kyousuke is very undecisive about his feelings for Madoka and for Hikaru. And this goes on for the entire series. Although Madoka is very in love with Kyousuke too, she tries to hide her feelings because she knows Hikaru's feelings for Kyousuke and she doesn't want to hurt her best friend. She'll rather give up. I really like Madoka's personality because behind her touch exterior she's very caring and loving.

So who, in the end, who will Kyousuke choose? Madoka or Hikaru? There are several times in the series and the OAVs that Kyousuke does choose "the one" but it just never fully comes through. And sometimes it's frustrating to see it. You almost want to say, "Just say 'I love you' already!" but unlike most shounen/shoujo dramas, where this same concept is explored, KOR is really touching and bittersweet and not to mention funny too. Although, Hikaru is an irritation to me, the characters are believable and their feelings are real. Just like any of our high school romances that are/were filled with many different kinds of emotions. Happy, sad, exciting, heart breaking...

KOR is an anime from the 80's. So it's really cool in my opinion, to see the fashions of way back when. Hikaru and Madoka are so 80's. Their hair, their clothes, everything! I really like this series. It's not one of my faves or anything but it's cool. I really like Madoka's character as I mentioned before. And she's just so pretty ^^. I also LOVE the songs. It's so 80's too. All you have to do is listen to just one of them and you'll see what I mean.

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