Secret Santa 2012 – Bartender

This is my first time participating in this anime blog Secret Santa project. For those of you who are wondering, the Secret Santa project is something put together by the guys at Reverse Thieves where bloggers submit their names and recommend 3 series to a randomly assigned blogger as well as anonymously receive 3 suggestions and out of those 3 suggestions we pick one title.

For my first Secret Santa experience, I present to you… Bartender. This is something I’ve been meaning to watch for the longest time but don’t get the chance to do so because I have a lot of stuff to do. I’ve been hearing a lot of good things about this anime and this Secret Santa has just given me the push to start watching this anime. The other choice I contemplated on picking was Kaiba, which I will be watching at a later time, while I didn’t consider picking up the Macross 7 movie because I wanted to try something different from what I usually watch.

Bartender is a slice of life anime, and from the mention of slice of life, the typical anime fan would think of high school, college life or an aspect of teen or youth life. This anime has none of that. This presents a mature slice of life that is palatable to the audience who wants to watch a unique slice of life anime.

The anime follows a cocktail of the week format in which the anime features a certain cocktail per episode, laced with various people of high and low stature, all of whom share unusual troubles and heavy burdens and after being treated to Ryu Sasakura’s fine drinks and with guidance from the young bartender, the customers reflect upon their lives and decide on a course of action to tackle their problems.

THE BARTENDER

This anime is that this isn’t wholly about the main character, Ryu Sasakura. This anime is more about the various patrons of Eden Hall and their problems with maximum 3 episodes dedicated to the main character. The music in this anime greatly enhances the experience of watching this show. I really love the soundtrack of this anime.

I really liked that while watching this anime, it felt very invigorating and motivating, it is as if the anime itself is motivating me to go through some of the problems I’m experiencing. The problems of the Eden Hall patrons are very real and something that most people can relate to. A particular episode that resonated with me is episode 5 which celebrates the human courage because with all the setbacks life throws at me, I sometimes lose the courage to face the challenges of life. As a person with absolutely zero knowledge about wine and spirits, I like the interesting tidbits of trivia the anime gives at the start of each episode and the information about the process of making cocktails. I also hugely appreciated the talk about the language of wine and liquor and other interesting tidbits regarding the world of bartending. As a guy who thoroughly enjoyed watching every episode of this anime, I’m wishing that a bar like Eden Hall exists here in my country where I can rest my weary spirit and quietly invigorate myself with a cocktail.

THE TOOLS OF THE TRADE

At 12 episodes long, the anime is a very satisfying watch. I must say that I haven’t felt this complete and satisfied in watching a 12 episode anime since Level E. This is truly absolutely one of the classiest anime I’ve ever watched. I really enjoyed watching every episode of this anime and I would recommend this anime for the seasoned anime fan.