One Week Friends is a 12 episode anime based upon the manga series. The anime follows Hase Yuki, who is a normal high school student. He develops a crush for a fellow classmate, Fujimiya Kaori, and works up the courage to speak to her. His intentions were to become friends at first and get to know each other but as a big shock to him, Fujimiya outright rejects him.
The rejection is to be expected once we find out Fujimiya's reason. As the title suggests, Fujimiya has a memory problem. That is, Fujimiya can only remember one week's worth of memories if they involve people that she holds dear. Except for family and people she doesn't care about, she will forget them by Monday next week. It's a really specific sort of amnesia and one that you'll just have to accept. Thanks to Hase's persistence, the pair do become friends but then Hase has to deal with the issue of building up a bond with Fujimiya, only to start all over again the next week. There are some genuine sweet moments but also melancholy when you realize that the progress will be reset very soon.
It does get better though once Fujimiya starts to keep a diary and thus at least she isn't shocked of Hase randomly coming up to her to ask to be friends. On the other hand, it's also sad to see her being bullied. Thanks to her condition, Fujimiya has isolated herself from other classmates in order to not cause pain. Unfortunately, this means that everyone else kind of views her in a negative and cold light.
The first half of the anime has slow pacing, as it tends to repeat the same beats in each episode. Perhaps a bit annoying is the fact that some of the challenges that the pair face are resolved through contrived coincidences. Seriously, Hase just finds something that Fujimiya lost through luck, because of all the places to lose it, he just happens to know to search that one unlikely area more thoroughly than others. Hase has a tendency to easily get jealous whenever it involves Fujimiya. Other people talk to her easily? He gets jealous. She mentions someone else to make conversation? He gets jealous. This feels melodramatic for no good reason since Hase shows it so obviously.
The cast is rounded out by Hase's friend, Kiryu, and another classmate, Saki. Kiryu has a cold outward demeanor, and has an attitude that makes it feel that he doesn't care. However, throughout the anime, we see that Kiryu does care for Hase, even though he frequently calls out his faults. While Saki is a forgetful girl, so it feels somewhat of a contrivance at times considering Fujimiya's plight. Fujimiya's memory loss isn't natural and we slowly get to know what caused it in the first place. While it seems to be improving as the series goes on, it remains the core gimmick.
The plot moves forward at a much faster pace towards the end of the series, which is surprising. Although considering it involves the late introduction of another character, it can feel hit or miss. There is a tendency for the characters (in particular, Hase) to do some idiotic things which dampen the mood somewhat. The plot may not take the direction you'd expect it to since it never create any tension between the characters. The ending retains the status quo and doesn't provide too much closure.
Some of the redeeming features of the anime include sweet scenes involving the main characters. Are they just friends? Do they have mutual feelings? Coupled with the beautiful backgrounds, art styles (which makes up for the more simplistic character designs) and serene music, and there are some truly gorgeous scenes. Overall, One Week Friends has a good premise and executes it as well as you'd expect once the main gimmick is introduced and where it goes on from there. The pacing is a tad bit slow and there's not much progress in the plot as a whole. However, the characters are likable and there are some good scenes.
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