I've said it before and I'll say it again: a romance epic cannot be created within two episodes. With You ~Mitsumete itai~ doesn't break that trend in any way, but it at least tries... I think. Based on the 1998 bishoujo game of the same name, With You ~Mitsumete itai~ is a boring ride through Crapsville that disappoints at every turn. Similar to the series ONE, it attempts to fit an entire bishoujo game into just a couple of episodes. That just spells a recipe for disaster.

Each scene in With You seemed to go from bad to worse. It jumped from scene to scene with no information at all. Things just seemed to randomly happen around me, and I was confused and disoriented the entire time. Not only that, but everything is rushed beyond belief. Things advance so quickly and with so little information that I was constantly left wondering what the heck was going on. The transition between the two episodes was done badly as well. An event that seemed to be really important in the end of the first episode is almost completely forgotten in the second episode, and the characters pay almost no attention to it.

Oh, did I say characters? I meant cardboard cutouts with pretaped robot voices. There's no excuse for characters designs that look this bad or voice acting as atrocious as this. The designs themselves are also pretty run-of-the-mill. Most of the female characters actually look almost completely identical, with the only changes being in the hair color (though a few of them even have the same hair color). The lead male character is really the only one given any background at all. Manami, who is also a supposedly major character, comes and leaves before she can even be developed. We don't know why she came back to Japan or why she left to Myanmar in the first place (something about her father's museum, but this is never explained either).

There are about a zillion side characters too, and each one is just as useless and annoying as the next. Each character is shallow, dull, annoying, and undeveloped. The "antagonist" of the OVA, and I use that term sparingly, appears out of nowhere and leaves just as quickly. We don't know even know WHO she is until her name is spoken in the last five minutes or so, and by that time she had already left. She is given some brief moments of development because of her connection to the jewels, but that is quickly interrupted by yet another spontaneous event which seems to serve no purpose other than to make me even more confused.

The music, something I consider to be an anime's saving grace, is terrible in With You ~Mitsumete itai~. It's monotonous and unoriginal, with an ending vocal piece that made my ears bleed. The sound effects are as much of an abomination as the music. The voice acting was terrible as well, and it only got worse as the episodes progressed.

Despite all of this, it DID earn a 1.75 on my scale. This is because, even though its execution was terrible, I still thought the story was pretty interesting. If it had been done properly, I think it could have turned out rather well. Unfortunately, it was bogged down by so many other problems that made it a nearly unbearable experience.