Summary: Taken directly from ANN
The story revolves around the protagonist Hirono Hiro, a poor high school boy who draws shoujo manga for his living. One cold Christmas night after meeting a very strange woman in church, his bike gets stolen by another strange girl. He runs after her and finds her collapsed on the street. Her name is Miyamura Miyako and her bag got stolen by a man on a motorbike. Soon after, they start hanging out together, enjoying highschool life and whatnot. Hiro’s life is also strongly dictated by Shindou Kei, his childhood friend.

Thoughts:
Ef ~A Tale of Memories is a anime based on a game made by minori called Ef – a fairy tale of the two.

The anime production is headed by SHAFT who was responsible for anime such as Pani Poni Dash!, Negima?!, Hidamari Sketch and Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. I was throughly impressed by most of SHAFT’s work and am expecting Ef to be at the same level. However, its one of the first times that SHAFT has actually tried to do something other then comedy, so the anime should be interesting and fresh. This show will probably touch on the darker side of romance as anime like School Days does, judging by the heated conversations.

One thing that stood out in the prologue was the use of facial expressions that, to a certain point, resemble Shuffle! and Higurashi. I have never really seen expressions as animated as that and I’m not sure if it was just for the preview or if they are always going to be like that. The character designs seem to resemble Otoboku mixed with Sola and the background animation is pretty nice.

The music is done by Tenmon, the same person that did the music for all of Makoto Shinkai’s works (Place Promised, Voice of a Distant Star, Byousoku 5 cm) so I have no doubt that the soundtrack is going to be excellent. I enjoyed the song in the prologue a lot.

As for the voice cast there are lots of new people that I haven’t heard of before. The only one I recognize is Shimono Hiro, who is the voice for Ikuto (Nagasarete) and Hiyuu (Tokyo Majin) but hopefully this won’t be a problem for the show.

The preview got me interested in this show and I plan to at least watch the first couple episodes when it airs in early October. The fall season is coming up very soon and a AT Fall Preview will hopefully be coming up within the next few weeks.

-exo