Season aired: Summer 2024

Number of episodes: 12

Watched on: Crunchyroll

Translated by: ?

Genres: Romance

Thoughts: The anime industry has thankfully started to diversify its titles ever so slightly in recent years, releasing about one BL and two to three shoujo and/or josei anime adaptations a season, and Twilight Out of Focus is Summer 2024’s BL title. The anime quickly made rounds on social media, largely due to its poster featuring two male leads who suspiciously resemble the famous Ash and Eiji from Banana Fish. As a big fan of Banana Fish, the protagonists’ similarities to each other only piqued my intrigue more. What I wasn’t expecting to discover, however, is that I’m not a good match for stories that solely focus on romance.

Twilight Out of Focus advertised two leads, Hisashi and Mao, but the series is actually a collection of three different relationships: Hisashi and Mao, Jin and Giichi, and Rei and Shion. They’re all students of an all-boys boarding school, and they’re all either members or tied to the film club. Each couple gets three to four episodes to tell their story, with the series ultimately ending focusing on Hisashi and Mao, the first couple introduced.

This setup has both its strengths and flaws. Its most obvious flaw is by focusing on three different couples, the story moves too quickly. Unlike other shows where all relationships are explored in twelve episodes in tandem with each other, Twilight Out of Focus passes the baton around. As a result, it forces all three couples to fall in love and get together within a much shorter time span, making their emotions and development feel forced rather than natural. I understand why the series chose to do this. By giving complete focus on each couple’s story for a set number of episodes, none of the three feel like “background” couples, which is often what happens in most anime. However, even knowing that, because the series only has romance without any additional exploration of themes and relationships, their romantic development feeling natural becomes crucial, and Twilight Out of Focus misses that mark.

On the other hand, having three couples whose relationships are all equally important does add flavor to the story. The three couples are distinct in character designs, personalities, and dynamics. Because of that, the series almost guarantees the audience will find at least one couple to root for and enjoy, or if one’s a more voracious consumer of romance, satisfied with the variety offered. I, myself, benefited from this variety as I personally enjoyed Jin and Giichi’s relationship the most out of the three and always liked seeing the two on screen together.

This strength and flaw dichotomy is something I experienced with the series as a whole. For example, the animation leaves much to be desired. Bad animation has, unfortunately, become much more standard in the last few years, and none gets hit by this curse as much as BL anime. The characters barely move, no matter the scene, and watching can quickly become a chore when the visual medium becomes a PowerPoint presentation.

However, despite its lack of animation, the series does have good storytelling direction. The series creatively integrates the couples’ shared film club experiences into the visual storytelling. With Hisashi and Mao, when they share emotional and passionate moments, the window becomes wide-screen, coupled with black bars, harkening their relationship to be similar to wide-screen movies. With Jin and Giichi, when their feelings towards each other change, the scene’s lighting goes from generically bright to angled, shining a spotlight on them the same way movies do to their actors. This direction is made even more impressive because for each couple, the series gives a different movie-quality feature to their romantic moments. The last couple has subtle special effects through a swelling of music and an emphasis on sounds like shoes running against the ground.

The story gave me the same hot and cold pattern. There’s nothing else going on in the series aside from the romance. While all the characters have friends, their friendships take a backseat in the story to the point where I couldn’t even name any of the characters outside of the couples. Due to that, I quickly got bored. Unfortunately, throughout the years, I’ve learned that I’m not someone who enjoys stories that solely focus on romantic relationships without any additional themes to explore, and Twilight Out of Focus is one of those anime. In fact, it was watching this series that made me formally conclude that I simply don’t like romance anime. Rather, I like anime with romantic elements.

Yet, despite that, I also have to praise certain elements of the story. One of my biggest pet peeves with anime is its tendency to validate problematic relationships, and this is not just a BL problem. Student and teacher relationships are one of the most popular relationship dynamics in anime, and for the first time ever, I found an anime that not only portrays the relationship as toxic but as criminal. In Twilight Out of Focus, Hisashi directly calls out his teacher, who he was in a relationship with, as someone who groomed him, who took advantage of his youth and his bad family situation, and who ultimately deserves to be called a criminal. I was also impressed by how Shion was written. Unlike most BL characters where sexuality isn’t discussed or characters assume they are straight until they meet the special someone, Shion is a gay character who has known since he was young that he is gay and has proudly been out since middle school.

Because of the factors discussed above, Twilight Out of Focus is a difficult anime for me to summarize my thoughts on. Ultimately I did get bored of the series, despite how charming the characters are. Since there was nothing additional outside of its relationships, it’s not an anime I would ever revisit. However, its strengths should not be disregarded, especially when viewers have fought so hard for more diverse anime to stream. I think if you’re a fan of romance, you’ll enjoy Twilight Out of Focus regardless of all the qualms I had with it.

Rating

Plot: 5 (Multiplier 3)

Characters: 6 (Multiplier 3)

Art/Animation: 4 (Multiplier 2)

Voice acting: 6

Soundtrack: 6

FINAL SCORE: 53