Himari Kino is a cheerful and outgoing girl who is able to make friends with anyone she wants. When she enrolls in high school and attends the freshman opening ceremony, Himari falls in love with Yori Asanagi, a reserved upperclassman, during Yori's band performance. After the show, Himari blurts out her love, but Yori is inexperienced when it comes to romance.
Yori, who did not expect this outcome at all, looks for answers from her friends and music. She decides to respond to Himari's confession, and to her surprise, Yori discovers that Himari fell in love with her music and performance rather than Yori as a person.
Despite the shock, Yori desires to make Himari truly fall in love with her. The duo spend time together after school on the rooftop, where Yori usually plays her guitar with hopes to change Himari's feelings for her.
[Written by MAL Rewrite]
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Comentários
KANLen09
Whisper Me a Love Song - What was supposed to be a wonderful adaptation, got absolutely ripped to shreds by haphazard production. You know the drill: hyped series tend to get the adaptations that were supposed to be expected from, and if there's anything to learn from the AniManga industry in the post-COVID era, is that the industry itself will NEVER learn from their mistakes trying to pump more quantity than quality just to satisate their audiences, on top of having to spend and lose revenue over what is commonly sighted as "production delays". Case in point, one of the highly revered Yuri a.k.a Girls' Loveseries of all time, mangaka Eku Takeshima's Sasayaku You ni Koi wo Utau a.k.a Whisper Me a Love Song, whose reputation in Japan, is said to be comparable towards mangaka Nio Nakatani's Yagate Kimi ni Naru a.k.a Bloom into You, it's just that popular.
The anime, however, is a well-known case of production hell that is worthy of a case study on its own.
I know this is rather old, but picture this with me: imagine series like Winter 2017's Fuuka and Spring 2017's Fukumenkei Noise a.k.a Anonymous Noise, the stereotypical love polygon that's the staple of all rom-coms in the music theme, but make it Yuri instead. This is what you get with this series, which births your typical romantic love out of music from characters that just admire each other, to then only be seen as a one-sided "misunderstanding" that led to romance being an objective to be achieved from both sides so that their love for each other remains ethereal, pure, and lovely. The 1st Year high school student of Himari Kino having "fallen" in love with her Senpai of 3rd Year Yori Asanagi being the lead vocalist and guitarist for their SSGIRLS band, it's all based on her singing abilities that she admires, but having never actually fallen in love before, she misinterprets Yori's singing from a form of admiration, to one of being romantic. Likewise, Yori also being in the same shoes as Himari, also misunderstands her approach as one of love and not admiration, but this vowed her heart more than ever to want to one day have Himari wholly as her partner for life and get her to reciprocate her true feelings in time. This is honestly a romantic love so grounded in both maturity and reality that both girls give each other space to explore their options and tap into the romance if ever required, asking each other's opinions and embracing both their strengths and weaknesses, no questions asked (or rather, the appropriate ones), and so on.
Every romance should desire to be like Himari and Yori's, and so will the heavy drama be accompanying it, which is a story of lies, betrayal, and the love polygon drama that comes along for the ride, making this the rather complicated mess between all relevant characters. The SSGIRLS band, consisting of Yori herself, bassist Aki Mizuguchi, drummer Mari Tsutsui, and keyboardist Kaori Tachibana, the 4 girls are especially outgoing and love to hang out with one another, for playing music is their passion, and nothing else (besides the obvious of Yori wanting to embrace Himari as much as she can). As with any 1st Year joining a club (which is mandatory), Himari is accompanied by the Culinary Research Club that hosts its president of 2nd Year Momoka Satomiya, and the ghost member of Shiho Izumi, though things within the club are as typical as its name applies. But the drama that affects everyone, and most especially that will rock both Himari's and Yori's romantic bubble, is yet another band that is the result of a feud gone wrong: Laureley, consisting of the two girls in Himari's club, the 3rd Year drummer Hajime Amasawa (whom also has a tragic drama of her own), whom they want to best against SSGIRLS from the long-standing rivalry of its lead person of Yori or Shiho. If you're the type to love endless soap operas, this show has it all — from hatred and jealousy to pure romance as sidelined third parties. The drama in this series absolutely does NOT relent on emotions that are just for show but true emotions that test the vulnerabilities of the heart matter.
Sadly, its production is just one of the saddest stories of tragic misfires leading to animation so broken that slips and cracks begin to start showing at the very beginning of the series. Despite both studios being of one parent company, both the main studio of Yokohama Animation Lab and sister studio Cloud Hearts, for some reason, can't quite maintain consistent production values for the show. The endless and egregious complaints being summed that up of a PowerPoint slide show, it's very damning for a studio (let alone 2 of the same company) to have such deviances early on, leading to the delay until now (that is still not an acceptable late Xmas present or anything). To have a director step down due to health issues and let another one take over, the situation has already gone from bad to worse, horrible even. The finality of Cloud Hearts apparently "closing" its doors just after this high-profile fiasco, the AniManga industry once again takes a massive L for instances like these.
The music is front and center for a series like this, and the anime delivered to an extent. I'm actually OK with SSGIRLS's OP, it's not the best for indie projects like this, but it's serviceable at best. What gets me more is the diversity of the ED songs, which actually plays a more pivotal role defining the drama stages of the series' nature according to where it is.
All in all, it's sad that such a famed series like Sasayaku You ni Koi wo Utau a.k.a Whisper Me a Love Song get the anime adaptation that is the very literate definition of "go read the manga". What a shame that the anime was literally in shambles even before it was a "go" at the green light, much less butchering a revered series that has Eku Takeshima's art drawn so beautifully, reduced to mere drab art by anime standards, so much so that you can't really call this "anime" to begin with.
Just go read the manga, for real. The anime is NOT worth your time, unless you can dare to stomach horrible animation with a compelling story to tell.
ninakln
The show has a slow start, and you might think it is full of yuri tropes and cookie-cutter characters. It seems many people watched 3-4 episodes and dropped the show because this is exactly how it feels. BUT! But it gets better. It gets significantly better. The plot thickens, the characters start showing deeper emotions, and finally characters' backgrounds begin to matter. The episodes 7 and onward are full of raw emotion, and the episode 10 left me in tears. Admittedly, the characters are still a bit 2D, but the story development is remarkable. The animation quality for the last episodes dips a bit, butnot enough to spoil the ending.
Now, if this was a cis-het show, I'd give it a 7. In terms of production quality, it's a bit below Makeine, so sounds about right? But it is yuri, and thus was much more precious and relatable to me.
k_kindawatchAnim
ok so my final thoughts on sasakoi , it's no secret that the production quality of this anime is really low , although they might have slightly put some more effort into the last 2 episodes , but more than that, I want to talk about the content , what sasakoi is as a story and what it shows and how , it's everything an average yuri is like, and it's what I expect a yuri to be at its status quo, in fact, sasakoi is so much of a vanilla yuri that it could be used as a ground 0 to compare with otheryuri , and this is in no way a bad thing , it's good... but ... it's also a double edged sword, it's kinda basic , and it lacks unexpectedness imo , if I look at what reaction it got out of me , there wasn't that much that made me go "oh yeah THAT I'll remember it" , except maybe for the 2 last episodes that felt like they themselves united were more enticing than the rest of the show, but even past that I knew this was the goal as soon as I understood shio left because she was in love with aki , so much of it is predicting the next scene and waiting for it to happen, it's an average yuri ship chart getting resolved (shaped like a locomotive in fact) , ig shio was interesting but not much else going on for other characters , it's pretty normal , it's okay , I just wished it had a something more going on
the music was pretty alright for the last 2 ep
anime production : 4/10
general contents : a rather generous 7/10 because of ideology points , it would have been closer to 6.5 without it but now that I reconsidered it a bit maybe the manga has a better delivery of that same content in the way it's paced or other factors I can't know about because I didn't read it , in which case that would be only the anime's fault, but I'm not certain, maybe unlikely but I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt
the final result is 10/10 because it's yuri and yuri is life
Justykanna
Whisper Me a Love Song. THIS is the anime that I was probably most excited about at the beginning of 2024 aside from Solo Leveling. And I made that known in my MAL Blog Post. Bloom Into You was the closest comparable and that series is extremely near and dear to my heart - it's even on the same streaming platform - HiDive. But man, as everyone else has mentioned, the production issues this series had created so many issues for what probably should have been an easy 8 or 9/10. Words cannot even begin to express how I feel about howthis series was handled. Yokohama Animation Laboratory and Cloud Hearts couldn't have handled this project worse, outside of not finishing it at all (I've actually heard that they're essentially the same studio). People were worried about this series in the very early stages when the air date had to be pushed back two seasons later than originally planned - apparently the studio had a bad rep from prior. When a few episodes were delayed, there were leaks coming out that production was being halted and delayed because of EXRTREMELY poor working conditions. There's always going to be that grind in the anime industry because of the demand to get seasonal anime out on time, but it got really bad to the point that some of the work had to be outsourced. As of June 10th, when the eighth episode aired, production on the eleventh and twelfth episode hadn't reportedly gotten started yet. It sounds like a massive fumble for a series that really could have been something bigger.
Story & Characters: Himari Kino has her first year of high school and has possibly the most carefree attitude that I've ever seen in a school anime. She has zero worries in life and proclaims to everyone that she loves them. This is obviously a bit of a steep slope to go off of because of what you and I know as 'love', she defines as more as being friendly, or happy with said person. When she goes to the school's opening ceremonies, she is immediately amazed by the band that plays, mainly, the main singer, Yori Asanagi. Himari eventually catches up to Yori and tells her that she loves her. This completely takes the introverted Yori by shock, but what starts out as an innocent interaction between two different characters, ends with a decent-feeling story.
Himari is a decent character - she's happy to help anyone in need of assistance and still puts her best foot forward when she sees something that needs to be addressed. She backs up her beliefs with her actions and develops quite nicely as the series goes on. I was actually kind of worried where they'd take her because some series take the light and bubbly character and does nothing of developmental value with them. She's certainly not the best of example of this, but she's still decent written. Yori probably doesn't have as much depth though. She feels very withdrawn to a point where I could see her inability to speak her mind - as shallow as it may be - very often. Her strengths lie in her ability to create music and follow through in that medium. Whether that feels like a strong secondary character to you, I'll leave up for debate because I can see both sides.
As the series progresses, many other characters' stories start to unwind and I have some mixed feelings on how well they turned out. Shiho's was likely my favourite because it really attempts to tug at some serious feelings. This is not a past that is easy to read and not shed a tear or two and her attempt at getting by life is extremely admirable. My problem with her was how they executed her arc. I'm not familiar with the source material to say for sure, but it feels like her story jumps around a little too much. It doesn't feel cohesive until it's pieced together, rather than building up her story until the conclusion. It pays off, but it was a little awkward to get to. Aki is another strong character whose trope may feel all too familiar to Bloom Into You fans, but even if it feels familiar, I like what she does with what she's given. It's not to build drama, but instead, to make sure those around her aren't dragged down by what she is. Momoka is the final character worth mentioning because of her connection to Shiho. She kind of brings a lot of storylines together and, outside of the bumps along the way as I described in Shiho's arc, it is decently written.
Similar to how putting our characters together and piecing their arcs into one story had minor issues, I'd say the overarching story also had minor issues. The first and most obvious is that I don't believe enough attention was given to Himari and Yori. One of the issues that seasonal anime has when you're only adapting a piece of the whole series is that you have to stop eventually. A lot of the material that introduces new characters with a story that keeps you interested in them comes very early this time around, leaving limited runtime for our main couple. Sakura Trick had a similar issue, though I wouldn't say to this extent. There are still some wonderful moments being shown and developed, but a big part of me wonders if our main duo's relationship gets challenged much later in the source material, especially because of the position that Himari is put in. (Story: 7/10, Characters: 8/10)
Art: With all the production issues that Whisper Me a Love Song had, it should come as no surprise that the place that they suffered the most was the animation. The first couple of episodes looked half decent, but as you go on, the quality seriously begins to dip. In music anime, the performances are always the most important part - think Sound! Euphonium or Fuuka. The first big performance they had was such a mess. Heavy CG and choppy-looking animations were only the start. They also really overuse stand-still backgrounds while our characters are moving in the foreground. The Himari-Yori moments were still decent, but I would have loved to know how this would have been handled by another studio. (5/10)
Sound: Music and the OST were fine, but a lot of it ends up sounding too similar to each other. Follow Your Arrows might have been my favourite, but the rest was kind of just okay. Voice work was fine for the most part, but Himari's personality leads to some high-pitched stuff. (7/10)
Overall: I wanted to not just like, but love Whisper Me a Love Song, because of how much I've seen of other Girls Love anime. Even with a non-perfect story, I was ready to give this series high praise, but sadly, it's kind of just good. Fans of the genre will probably still be fine with it at the end of the day, but this series is not a good way to introduce a new fan to it. I might go back and rewatch it, especially if HiDive ever dubs it - though I can't see that ever happening now. But this series was not nearly what I hoped it would be. (7/10)
KremlinRussia
?Contrary to the title and all the descriptions, this story is not about the love of two girls, not about a school group and not even about her conflict with her rivals. In fact, almost the entire plot consists of the problems of minor characters and incredible efforts of the main character to solve them to the detriment of the theme, which was still stated as the main one. So there's no love here? If Himari fell in love not with Yori but with her songs, and the last episode ended very stupidly, then the answer is obvious. It's all very naive, ridiculous and more likesome fanfic from an equally naive schoolgirl. As a result, there is only one full-fledged couple (and the authors nailed it to such an extent that not every viewer will notice these relationships at all, and the names are unlikely to remember), and all the others are either playing in the kindergarten, or busy with some bullshit and conflicts.
What else isn't there? That's right, music! A few songs at a couple concerts don't count, because the girls have other things to do. So if you want to see the formation of a band, the agony of creativity and the squabbles for leadership, then this is not the place for you, but any really musical anime, even if it's about aidols.
Is the manga better? Not a masterpiece, personally I was bored, but the anime is worse in any case, because some of the events in it were swapped, and a lot of important material about Himari and Yori was thrown out in order to save on complicated scenes and have time to finish all the minor lines. Of course, someone will say that your expectations are your problems, but what if the problem is not a bad adaptation or even a cliched title, but simply that such a story is not interesting in itself? Moreover, in the genres it is absolutely honestly written that this is a drama, not music and romance, so don't fall for cute girls, you won't see any cute things.
Aside from the plot, there are some really big problems with the graphics here. I honestly hoped that in the past six months since the release of the last series the authors would have enough time to at least draw the ending properly. The miracle was enough for half of the eleventh episode, when the visuals were not much to complain about. Now I'll write about the finale, but fundamentally everything is the same in the rest of the episodes.
So, then there was a slideshow about the school festival, close-up of faces (in order to draw less backgrounds and everything else) and static pictures that move on the screen, so that it didn't look shitty at all. In general, everything is just like in the previous episodes. And judging by the credits, it was drawn not even by Koreans, but by Chinese and Vietnamese for a bowl of grasshoppers, so the graphics in most scenes is very cheap. Yes, outright shoddiness was not always, but to match the budget here and directing — with primitive staging of scenes in shabby interiors of ordinary Japanese school. Considering all the plot problems of the manga, there's no joy in watching all this in the anime as well.
I've already written in the comments what would have been the best way to end it — a summer festival (which we were not shown at all, so as not to draw new locations, girls in yukatas and fireworks) with the consolidation of a full-fledged relationship between Himari and Yori. Then close the questions about the other girls, and that's it, happy ending, everyone is happy. But the result was a mess: these two episodes were spent on the completion of minor controversies, and Himari and Yori, in fact, only held hands — they (as a couple) were practically not on the screen.
Oh, and I remembered the kindergarten thing for a reason. What was that laughter at the very end of the last episode for? Do something serious and mature! No one will even draw hentai art for you. Neither by hand nor by neural net.
5/10.
GrumbleDango
So this ended up getting a lot of hate because of the struggles with the production quality. And that's fair. Good animation is important to me when I consume anime, so it hurts my soul when something that could be so beautiful becomes offensive to look at. But I think a lot of peoples' attitude towards Sasakoi is frustration with it not living up to the highest standards of quality compounded with the 6 month delay to finish up the broadcast. After re-watching the whole show in 2 sittings before finishing the final 2 episodes, I felt a lot better about it than I didwatching it weekly. The character designs and art are gorgeous, the voice acting is great, the story and drama are compelling, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't tearing up at the end.
I'd say the animation only starts to get a little lazy after episode 6, with episode 8 being the worst offender. But it simply just isn't that bad. Not bad enough for me to punish it in the ratings with a crazy low score. I'm quite comfortable giving it an 8 for its emotional impact alone.
PandaRoomster
Being a big fan of the manga, I was really excited for the anime debut of Whisper Me a Love Song. Unfortunately, my experience with it was pretty mixed. Production: Let’s get the obvious out of the way—yes, like most people, I was disappointed by the production quality. I’m not usually someone who needs top-tier animation to enjoy a show, but the issues here were hard to ignore. The art often felt raw and unfinished, like I was watching some kind of fan edit. It’s a shame, because the manga is one of the prettiest series I’ve ever read. The long delays in production didn’t help either—understandable,sure, but still frustrating.
On the bright side, the voice acting was great. It all felt natural and fit the characters well, which is especially impressive considering some of the cast were newbie voice actresses.
Characters:
The cast is small but very colorful and varied. Unfortunately, with only 12 episodes, there wasn’t enough time to really develop most of them. Even so, they managed to leave an impression, and I enjoyed seeing them come to life.
Story:
Since I already knew the story from the manga, I wasn’t expecting to be blown away, but it was still nice to see it in animated form. That said, 12 episodes just weren’t enough to do it justice. Some parts felt rushed, and a lot of the details were skipped over. Still, I’m glad they managed to cover as much as they did, because let’s be real—after the production issues, I’m not holding my breath for a second season. And hey, at least they didn’t leave us with a cliffhanger!
Soundtrack:
One thing the anime has over the manga is the ability to hear the music. Since this is a music-focused series, that’s a pretty big deal. SS’s songs, though, felt kind of generic to me—nothing special. Laureley, on the other hand, was fantastic. I listen to "Meritocracy" regularly, and hearing the intro to "Wolfish" was the final push I needed to pick up bass guitar myself.
Final Thoughts:
I love this series, and it will always hold a special place in my heart. But the production issues in the anime were just too big to ignore. While I’d recommend the manga in a heartbeat, the anime is probably safe to skip.
5/10 – Average (but only because I’m biased).
maoginko
Whisper Me a Love Song: great music, not baiting, and half decent characters ruined a bit by production issues. It's a common issue nowadays to see decent anime be run into the ground a bit by production, but this show definitely got the short end of the stick. I like the characters although they are a bit one dimensional. The music the bands play is great and I personally would add it to my playlist. I genuinely do like the romance of the main characters and like that we get to see them be together in the show as well. I think as far as yurigoes, this is more overt and better in story than a lot of others but it does tend to just stick with being cute and rely on that rather than achieve more character and story depth. The problems start in production.
From what I can tell, the working conditions were not good and it shows especially in the 3D modeled areas and transitions. There are so many scenes that fade into a white screen almost like a powerpoint slideshow transition. The 3D modeling and rendering wasn't done well and it shows a lot during the performance scenes.
Overall, I think this is a good show mainly harmed by the production issues and lack of character depth. As far as yuri go, this isn't bad and I would recommend for anyone looking for a cute show :)
zstalnaker
If I'm writing a review it's because I just watched one of the best or one of the worst anime I've ever seen and 'Whisper Me a Love Song' meets that criteria: Pure dogshit. My God-given calling in life is to sift through the wastelands of tasteless yuri anime so that YOU don't have to, and I truly cannot believe that I had the psychological capacity to slog through this entire series. These were some of the longest 12 episodes of my life. The first half of this series is a mirror-image knockoff of Bloom Into You (a yuri series that's actually worth your time) and the secondhalf is an anticlimactic romance arc about background characters that no one could possible bring themselves to care about.
There were some pretty cute moments in this show but they were far outweighed by over-the-top cringe moments.
I am very compassionate with my ratings and gave this a six; for context, there are less than 10 other anime series I have ever rated this low.
If you're like me and you'll watch anything to say you did, this is the show for you. If you want to watch a good GL series, this is not the show for you.
