Nineteen 19 (original) (raw)

“NINETEEN 19” is a 1-episode OVA about the trials and tribulations of young love that’s half music video and half story. Featuring a nostalgic citypop soundtrack, aesthetic visuals and some innovative montages and scene transitions, this OVA has a lot going for it, but it’s bogged down by the uninteresting characters and plot. The sexually explicit scenes and dialogue also make it an uncomfortable watch.

The story revolves around a 19 (hence the title)-year-old guy named Kubota, who spends his days blithely hitting on girls on the street with his friends, and working at a cake shop under a boss who enjoys grabbing his butt. One... night, he sees his old middle school crush, Fujisaki, in a club. Recently broken up with her long-time boyfriend, Fujisaki is aware of Kubota’s feelings, but she plays hard to get. She eventually reciprocates his feelings, but then she becomes aggressive, urging an uncertain Kubota to sleep with her ASAP. How will their relationship turn out?

The plot is rather simple, and the characters are similarly simple. The main characters get a few brief flashbacks, but that’s it. Since this is only one episode, the relationships between the characters aren’t explored or explained well, so one doesn’t get the full picture they might get if they read the manga. This is really more of a “style over substance” type of anime, so from here on, I’ll talk about those aspects.

The art is stylish, and the animation is mostly fluid, but there are lots of still shots mixed in. Many of the scene transitions are done in an avant-garde style. There are also montages set to music, in which the images range from standard animation to hand-drawn manga-like cutout figures and some other forms of art.

The soundtrack is full of catchy citypop tunes, plus the English song ”Boys! Boys! Boys!,” giving this anime a nostalgic feel. The voice actors are all famous, but their performances don’t stand out here due to the subpar dialogue. Fujisaki (Hiromi Tsuru) says “Kubota-kun” at least 26 times, for instance (I counted). That’s nearly one “Kubota-kun” for every 1.5 minutes of runtime! Also, if you’re familiar with some of the other characters these actors portray, the dialogue feels a little awkward. It’s basically Meryl from “Trigun” trying to get Vash to sleep with her — with Ranma and Dio encouraging him as Soun Tendo sexually harasses him at work. To top it off, the ex is Spike from “Cowboy Bebop.”

There is a significant amount of objectionable content in this OVA, but most of it is in the dialogue. There’s no outright nudity — just some stylized non-detailed nudity around the beginning, and then there are some scenes with a female character in her underwear and a towel. There’s also a condom shown. There aren’t any sex scenes, but there’s almost one at one point. There are several explicit sexual references in the dialogue. In addition to these, there are multiple scenes of and references to sexual harassment, most of which are instigated by an older male boss towards his younger male employee, and these scenes are treated as humorous.

In addition to the uncomfortable sexual content, the story and characters of “NINETEEN 19” are quite lacking, and I didn’t empathize with any of them enough to care about what they were going through. It would have been better if this OVA was either 70% music video or 70% story, not half and half. More story would give us more time to understand and care about the characters, while more music video would have made this feel like something akin to “Cipher.” As it is, it doesn't go far enough in either direction to leave a clear impression.

Overall, “NINETEEN 19” is good at evoking a late ‘80s atmosphere (although it came out in 1990), and as such, those who feel nostalgic for that time period may enjoy watching it just for the images and music, as long as they aren’t bothered by the sexual content or the bland story and characters.