@Sorrow-kun: good points. You’ve basically summed up my thoughts of a worst-case scenario. If the characters turn dull and unlikable, all the effort that’s gone into the art and direction will all be for naught. Myself;Yourself grated on me after only one episode, but in both seasons of ef it took a while for me to warm to the characters; from that point on it was fine but it was frustrating initially.

@Hanners: if Touya turns out to be a decent lad with awkward decisions to make like Shinichirou was, we’re safe and sound. Alternatively (it’s too early for me to say one way or the other, honestly) he could be a complete scumbag, and all sympathy (and in turn my interest in the show as a whole) will be gone. Rina is certainly an interesting character though – I didn’t know why she was so popular with the viewers, but I must confess trying to figure out her motives is entertaining.

Despite that, I have found myself liking this series – The retro feel has been put to good use when it comes to communication between characters, and personally I’ve loved the use of text to convey Touya’s inner thoughts. Yes, Yuki isn’t a particularly strong character, but again that’s kind of the point I think.

To be honest, it’s Rina that makes the series for me at the moment, both on the scale of cuteness and in terms of what her real motives are – Perhaps I’m just not trusting enough, but my money is still on her coming between Touya and Yuki at some point.

I guess I just can’t share your optimism. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about White Album’s subdued approach to storytelling, and I can’t seem to escape the suspicion that it’s a gimmick, a cheap way to separate it from other titles in the anime soap opera genre like Kimi ga Nozomu Eien and Myself; Yourself. All the signs are pointing to a melodramatic climax, with lots of broken hearts and characters acting like jerks and crumbling relationships, etc, etc, you know, the trainwreck, which just isn’t my cup of tea, since it almost always strikes me as cheap drama. If the result is cheap drama, then I can’t really see why this approach to storytelling is justified, since the reward at the end is the same, whether they were subdued and subtle, or whether they spelt out everything. So far, they’ve been very implicit with everything, and the story has almost been driven by details that you have to unravel, which means it’s asking for quite an effort from the audience. I don’t mind putting in effort and paying attention to the little details to try to understand the underlying meaning of things when I watch anime, provided I feel rewarded for doing so, but the details haven’t really said anything that’s made the characters seem more multifaceted or sympathetic. Like you say, the whole thing hinges on how much you like the characters and so far I’ve found the two leads, Touya and Yuki, really flat and the side characters only marginally better. I don’t need to be spoon fed, but I would like some reasons to sympathize with these characters.