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Ef A Fairy Tale Of The Two
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redirected from Main.EfATaleOfMemories
Do you have memories you don't want to forget?
While going to a Christmas party, Hiro Hirono meets Miyako Miyamura, who steals his bike to chase a purse thief. They decide to hang out together and soon grow fond of each other. Renji Aso meets Chihiro Shindo at the abandoned train station where he likes to hang out after school. He is intrigued by the girl with the eye patch but finds out that she harbors a sad secret. Meanwhile Kyosuke Tsutsumi, an aspiring young film maker, is taken by the appearance of Hiro's childhood friend, Kei—Chihiro's twin sister who herself is in love with Hiro.
The stories are lightly interwoven, with Kei and Chihiro functioning as a linking pin between the various groups in the cast (Hiro, Miyako, Kyosuke and Kei on one side; Chihiro, Renji and their acquaintances on the other). It is similar to series such as Kanon, AIR and Da Capo, but is much more surreal in its execution, often resorting to very abstract imagery coupled with copious amounts of scenery porn.
ef: A Tale Of Memories was released in 2007 and is the an adaptation of the two part visual novel ef: A Fairy Tale of the Two by developer Minori. It was produced by Shaft and directed by Shin Ounuma, who volunteered for the job. Of special note are the illustrations at the end of each episode, which are made by various anime and manga artists.
There's an English patch available for the first chapter of the game, Miyako's story, released by the group NNL. They also plan to release the other chapters.
Tropes:
- Anime Of The Game: The original game, ef: A Fairy Tale of the Two, devotes an entire chapter to each of the five love stories, and the game's setup is considerably different, with the first half devoted to Miyako and Kei. Chihiro wasn't a main heroine until the second half. The adaptation also has...
- Bleached Underpants: No sex shown, although ef was originally an eroge.
- Book Ends: The show starts and ends with Renji describing his first encounter with Chihiro.
- Boy Meets Girl
- Cannot Spit It Out
- Cat Smile: Mizuki.
- Christianity Is Catholic: Averted. The Church and Yuuko's uniform have more of an Orthodox vibe to them.
- Dating Sim
- Discretion Shot: When Chihiro takes her eye patch off.
- Dramatic Shattering
- Easy Amnesia: Of the recurring, timed variety.
- Evolving Credits: Once the pairings are made rather obvious, the ED of the 3rd episode becomes the regular opening, and has several scenes changed in the final episode.
- Fake Memories: Averted, since Chihiro's diary is used for the opposite purpose.
- Played straight in that she does lie to herself in her diary at times, making events up.
- Fetish Fuel: Chihiro's eye patch tends to have that effect.
- First Girl Wins
- First Name Basis: Chihiro makes a big deal out of it, but she has her reasons.
- Greek Chorus: Yuuko.
- Hero Stole My Bike: Miyako grabs Hirono's bike to chase a purse thief.
- Hot Shounen Mom: Asou Sumire, Renji's mother
- Idiot Hair: Miyako.
- Joshikousei
- Lethal Chef: Kei. Chihiro also admits to Renji that women in her family shouldn't be allowed to cook.
- Love Triangle: Played totally straight between Hirono, Miyako and Kei.
- Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Very definitely Miyako, who violently hauls Hiro out of his shuttered life and into new experiences.
- Mind Screw
- Moe: The amnesia-fueled, eye-patchy kind.
- Mundane Fantastic
- Parental Abandonment: Miyako's parents left her to her own devices after they split up. Aside from Renji's mom there are also no other parents in sight.
- Real Men Wear Pink: Hiro has always loved shoujo manga, and now draws it for a living.
- Scenery Porn: To at times surreal levels.
- Shout Out: Several, but most notably to Da Capo, AIR and CLANNAD.
- One of the character designers for the original Da Capo game, Naru Nanao, did the character designs for the female characters in this series. Mikage, a screenwriter, works with both CIRCUS and minori.
- Sitting On The Roof: Of a Church, no less
- Snow Means Love
- Sparkling Stream Of Tears: The series tends to be...rather sad.
- Star Crossed Lovers: Renji and Chihiro, due to Chihiro's memory problem.
- Surprisingly Good English- The excerpts from Chihiro's book are all grammatically correct English. Odd, considering the book itself was written in Japanese. Also, the opening theme is grammatical, with just a few slightly mispronounced words.
- Tear Jerker
- Tsundere: Kei.
- The Danza: Hiro Hirono is voiced by Hiro Shimono.
- Twelve Episode Anime
- Unlucky Childhood Friend: Kei.
- Utsuge: Although the ending is fairly positive.
- Weird Moon
- Winged Humanoid: Chihiro sports some wings at the climax of her story, but it's likely just symbolic.
- Yaoi: Mizuki accuses Kyosuke and Hirono to be lovers.
 "Can you hear it? The true melody?"
The sequel, ef: A Tale of Melodies, shifts focus to the love problems of Yu's past and Kuze's present.
Ten years ago, Yuu, Kuze, and their friend Nagi Hirono (yes, Hiro's sister) are all in high school. Yuu meets a girl who he remembers from his orphanage, Yuuko Amamiya, who turns out to be the adopted younger sister of the art club president, who is trying to get Yuu to join.
In the present, a year or so after the first season, Mizuki meets Kuze and they fall in love, but unfortunately Kuze is dying from a rare heart condition. We see the characters from the first season and their continuing relationships as they offer the pair their help.
Mizuki's cheerfulness aside, this part of the story is significantly darker than the straight-up romance of the first season. It deals with different psychological issues, such as loss, death, facing one's own mortality, familial relationships among non-family members, and several others.
Tropes: The second season contains many tropes from the first; only those that differ should be listed.
- Always Save The Girl: Heart-rendingly averted—twice. Yuu can't seem to catch a break.
- Best Served Cold: Yuuko, upon encountering Yuu after ten years, follows him around and allows him to discover that she's being picked on and abused at school and at home, all as an attempt to get him to care about her and pursue her. Once she has him emotionally invested, she shows him all of her scars, describes several of them, and lists the ways she's been hurt, and then reveals that, had he not pushed her away unnecessarily ten years before, none of it would have happened, essentially making it all his fault. She describes this as her revenge on him for abandoning her, but it was also a cry to get him to help her. Maybe.
- Bright Slap: Mizuki surprise-kicks Kuze to the ground after he answers her letter of challenge. "With that, you've already died once!" Perhaps not the best way to handle someone in his condition... (Complete with THIS! IS! SPARTA! eyecatch.
 )
- Christmas Miracle: Subverted big time. Kuze is back from Germany for Christmas Day, so Yuu is getting off work early and Yuuko is waiting outside the church rather than inside like usual. A young Mizuki meets Kuze for the first time and all seems well. Then Yuuko gets hit by a car. God Dammit.
- Played straighter at the end, where Yuu and Yuuko finally meet in the church, despite Yuuko's death. This makes it a Chrismas Miracle ten years long to the day.
- Cosmic Plaything: Several. Yuu's little sister died in the fire that made him an orphan, Yuuko grew up an orphan and, after being adopted by as a sister by someone who lost his own sister in the same earthquake, was raped by him one Christmas and hit by a car in another. Last but not least, Kuze has a fatal Soap Opera Disease though he seems to be defying this trope, as he decides to have a risky surgery to try and live on.
- Dead Little Sister: Two of 'em, no less.
- Death Seeker (Villainous example: Amamiya. After giving Yuuko a knife to kill him if she wanted, and trying to taunt Yuu into doing it, he finally dies after setting his house on fire.)
- Domestic Abuse: Amamiya regularly beats Yuuko. By the time this is revealed, she's become used to it to the point where she can list all the scars and bruises she's received as well as all the ways he's abused her. It's a long, long list.
- Drama Bomb: This is a case where an already-dramatic series is made even more dramatic by Yuuko's revelation of her scarred body and the aforementioned long, long list.
- Dramatic Shattering: At one point Kuze is suddenly stricken by his disease, causing him to drop his jar of medicine on the ground. He collapses on the floor and licks up two pills with his tongue, picking broken glass off his face afterwards. In another case, Yuuko is bullied off-screen and some window glass breaks, but don't find out what actually broke it.
- Dreaming Of A White Christmas: Played with. Some of the characters are in Australia at christmastime with little reason given, and Yuuko muses about what it must be like to have Christmas in the summertime.
- Engrish: "I wish I could see your insides..." Very, VERY jarring considering the the rest of the opening's English grammar was quite good.
- Everybody Lives: Averted somewhat. Yuuko dies, and was in fact always dead, but somehow stuck around in the church until Yuu could say goodbye. Everyone else lives.
- Evolving Credits: There are a lot of varied color schemes used in the opening for various episodes, one is completely instrumental and lacks the characters in the scenes. Just as it was in Memories, the final version of the opening has several scenes that change, and is the final ending to the series.
- Genki Girl: Mizuki.
- Hollywood Atheist: Yuu and Yuuko are a mild version. "If there ever was such a person as God, he died a long time ago. Otherwise the world wouldn't be so full of such pain and loneliness."
- Look Both Ways: Yuuko fails to follow this basic rule of crossing streets, with predictable result.
- Melodrama: The good kind.
- Memento Mac Guffin: Yuu keeps the wristwatch his sister wore until the earthquake.
- One Degree Of Separation: Best emphasized by episode 10, where nearly the entire cast is revealed to have a very tight connection to each other.
- Promotion To Parent: Yuu and Yuuko are almost like this to a young Mizuki, at least until Yuuko gets hit by a car. On christmas.
- Rape As Drama: Surprisingly minor plot point; it's no less horrible, but in this case it's just another horrible thing Amamiya has done to Yuuko. On Christmas, no less.
- Replacement Goldfish: Amamiya adopted Yuuko as a sister because his own sister died in the earthquake. Deconstructed to an extent, as he harbors deep feelings of hatred both towards Yuuko for not being the same person as his sister and toward himself for being unable to save her. Beatings and rape ensue.
- Romantic Plot Tumor: A lot of viewers don't find the affair between Kuze and Mizuki that convincing, which isn't only caused by their age difference.
- Single Minded Twins: When Kei and Chihiro finally meet in Australia, they start talking in unison to Mizuki.
- Soap Opera Disease: Kuze has a ill-defined heart condition that is causing him to die, but has few symptoms other than heart attacks, isolationism, and existential angst.
- Yandere: Definitely played with. Yuuko's adopted brother gave her a knife specifically so she could do this at any time. She doesn't
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