"More than friends but not yet lovers"...

REC is originally a Japanese manga written by Q-Tarou Hanamizawa, an anime adaptation was produced by Shaft and consist of nine twelve-minute episodes.

This is the love story about a single average salary man and a girl who has a dream to be a seiyū or a voice actress. It begins when Fumihiko Matsumaru, was stood up by a girl he knew at work. He was so upset and he decided to crumple his movie tickets in frustration. As he was about to toss the tickets into a trash can, suddenly he heard his tickets 'yelled' at him so that he won't throw them away. Apparently it was a voice of a girl, Aka Onda. His tickets' 'voice' convinced him and eventually they watched the movie together which was Roman Holiday starring the infamous Audrey Hepburn. During the movie, he noticed she was reading the subtitles out loud and at the dinner he found out that the girl is twenty-year-old aspiring seiyū.

One night, after a terrible incident, Aka was forced to stay a night at Fumihiko's apartment and one thing led to another, they slept together. Soon after that, she moved in with him. She also insists they are not a couple in fact she claimed that she merely needed a place to stay after the terrible incident. She considered that sleeping with him was her moment of weakness and nothing more.

In this anime, I didn't expect that Matsumaru and Aka slept together in one night even though they didn't know each other a lot. That seems rather awkward in Asian society. From one night stand, they developed their relationship from as just a friend to "more than friends but not yet lovers".

The series is heavily concerned with the developing dynamic of their relationship. Another issue that the series is higlighting is the changes in values in Japanese community. Nowadays,in Japan, cohabiting apparently is condoned by their community. One thing that I learn in this anime, that love sometimes comes out of the blue and suddenly hit your heart so bad you won't know what hit you!

This is the LINK to download the episodes. Enjoy!