Thank you for visiting Anime Rants today. If you’re a fan of modern yuri or shoujo ai, you’ve probably heard of Whisper Me A Love Song. It’s a 2024 anime directed by Akira Mano and based on the manga by Eku Takeshima. Despite major issues with production and delays in release, this series was, in my opinion, decidedly excellent. Today, I present my series review of Whisper Me A Love Song.
This anime left me in tears at multiple points. The drama and emotional stories can be intense. But since these struggles lead to so many beautiful and wholesome moments, I consider this anime a “healing yuri.” Particularly in the last few episodes, some of the most important themes are reconciliation, recovery from grief, and seizing the moment to avoid regrets. For me, this cute yuri anime was a healing experience.
Note: This series is sometimes abbreviated as Sasakoi
Contents
Story
Score: 7/10
Yori is the lead singer for the highschool band SSgirls. After one performance, a cute girl named Himari introduced herself and declared her love to Yori. Though shocked at first, Yori liked Himari and wanted to date her. So, when she heard that Himari only meant she was in love with Yori’s music and not her as a person, she was disappointed. As the two girls spent more time together, Yori set out to impress Himari and make her fall in love for real. That’s the basic plot for Whisper Me A Love Song.
The story concept is solid for a drama/romance anime that isn’t supposed to be epic or thrilling. I think it was good that the plot started so abruptly with Himari declaring her “love.” Anything else would have risked being boring. The pacing wasn’t the best, since it slowed down after episode 5 or 6. It felt like the story dragged a bit after that, becoming compelling once again around episode 8 or 9 when the Shiho drama intensified.
Whisper Me A Love Song had a good content balance of intense drama, healing moments, and cute or mildly funny scenes. In my opinion, the worst of the yuri tropes were avoided. In addition, the thing that makes some yuri icky to me – sexualizing very young characters – is not done in this anime. It’s romantic but not sexual. There will always be creeps who enjoy anime for problematic reasons, but Sasakoi is quite wholesome on its face.
What about the queer side of things? There is no homophobia in the series, which is refreshing, but there’s also a lack of realism. Nobody ever comments about straight romance, and it’s almost like boys do not exist in this universe. Whether this is positive or negative is subjective. Personally, I wish straight romance had been brought up, since I think it would deepen Himari’s journey to discovering she loves another girl. Still, if nothing else, I’m happy that Sasakoi was inarguably Sapphic. It’s impossible to call this queer-baiting.
Visuals
Score: 7/10
First off, I absolutely love the art/animation in Sasakoi. The style is endearing and beautiful. The character designs are also great. I won’t forget them anytime soon. Characters have cute faces with upturned anime noses, expressive and detailed eyes, and bold colors. In particular, I loved the design for Yori and her shorter, darker hair. I also loved Shiho with her rich purple hair and severe face expressions. Finally, Himari is cute as a button and her hair color is such a beautiful rosy-sunset color!
I would give the visuals an easy 8/10 if not for a few issues. The scene transitions in this series, for example, look pretty bad. There’s also a lot of shots with split screens showing different parts of the same scene. Sometimes, it works, but most of the time, it’s jarring and awkward. There was a slight decline in animation quality in the last few episodes, and some of the 3DCG shots of the band playing didn’t look very smooth.
Despite these weaknesses, I still love the visuals in Sasakoi. The sparkles, bubbles, and colorful backgrounds were delightful. There were plenty of adorable chibi moments, or short shots where Himari and Yori have cute animal ears. On a final note, the face expressions are truly on-point for a drama anime. I thoroughly enjoyed them all, both goofy and intense.
Audio
Score: 9/10
The audio is outstanding for Whisper Me A Love Song. Some of the voice-actresses also sing the songs in this anime. The opening song is “Follow Your Arrows” by SSgirls (whose lead singer is Kana Sasakura). There are two ending songs. The first one was “Giftee” by Himari Kino (voice actress Hana Shimano). It’s a fine song, but I prefer the second ending by Laureley. (The singer for Laureley is Sui Mizukami). It’s called “Meritocracy” and it’s my favorite song in the whole anime.
Since this is an anime about girls who play music, there are several other songs worth mentioning. Laureley has an entire album of songs, most of which don’t even appear in the anime. SSGirls also have several songs, including “Sunny Spot,” which is Yori’s love song to Himari. In addition, SSGirls sang “Kanaria,” a beautiful and hopeful song. This time, the singer was Mikako Komatsu (voice of Aki Mizuguchi). These songs are great!
Now I’ll yap about the Japanese voice-acting for a while. Asami Setou proficiently played Yori Asanagi. She is known for a variety of roles including Raphtalia from Shield Hero and Nobara Kugisaki from Jujutsu Kaisen. Himari Kino was voiced by Hana Shimano. Based on the current listings on MAL, this was Shimano’s first time playing a main character in an anime. She did a terrific job for her first time. I look forward to hearing Shimano in future anime.
In addition to the main stars, the voice-acting for the supporting roles was also top-quality. Mikako Komatsu impressed me with her performance as Aki Mizuguchi. She’s had a wide assortment of roles, but the main one I know her from was Jujutsu Kaisen, where she played Maki Zen’in. She also does a lot of young boy voices. Shiho’s speaking voice-actress was Yuna Nemoto, a newer face around the seiyuu scene. She was amazing as Shiho Izumi, leaving a strong impression on me.
I also wanted to mention two other voices that stood out to me. We’ll start with Aoi Koga, who played Miki Mizuguchi. She is most well-known for voicing Kaguya Shinomiya in Kaguya-sama: Love is War. Chika Anzai is the seiyuu who voiced Hajime Amasawa, one of the members of Laureley. Anzai has been in many lead and supporting roles in a variety of anime. I learned about her recently when she played Shizuru Chikura in Train to the End of the World and Sirius Romanee-conti in Re: Zero Season 3.
Characters
Score: 8/10
Sasakoi, in my opinion, had a strong character category. One reason I rate it so highly is that I adore Yori Asanagi. She’s a tall, slender, and androgynous girl with a thoughtful, poetic nature. She’s an introvert, and I deeply appreciate introverted female leads. I also love Yori’s fashion sense, but that’s beside the point. Even though her character wasn’t explored on a profound psychological level, she is still easy entertaining enough to be the protagonist.
Compared to Yori, who defies stereotypes, Himari is a little more of a cookie-cutter character. She is the typical anime heroine: feminine, pure-hearted, impulsive, and a hopeless romantic. However, she has realistic flaws like doubting herself and getting emotionally overstimulated easily. I think the character writing was more than adequate even for a simpler character like Himari.
The supporting cast characters Momoka, Hajime, Kaori and Mari were entertaining and fun. They didn’t have much depth, but they had the potential to be interesting characters if explored further. Shiho is arguably the most well-written character in the series. She went through serious emotional trauma and also – being a bit of a bitch – she has the most room for character improvement. Aki was a great character too. We saw her mature a lot. All these examples prove that the character writing deserves a high score for Whisper Me A Love Song.
Personal Enjoyment
Score: 10/10
My appreciation for Whisper Me A Love is immense. I rarely give 10s in this category since I always have a few complaints. With this anime, it’s not like there was absolutely nothing worth complaining about – rather, I was able to fully enjoy it despite some flaws. The biggest issues were, of course, the production and release problems, which seriously hurt the public reception for Sasakoi. My other main gripe would be that there wasn’t enough psychological exploration of the characters.
As for what I enjoyed, it was a little bit of everything – such as the richly colorful visuals, the character of Yori, and the well-written drama. In addition, I love the song Meritocracy so much that I learned the Japanese lyrics and can sing along. The story of Himari and Yori’s love was so wholesome and romantic. I love a good yuri story, especially if it’s respectful to the LGBT+ community and also not always sexualized.
A lot of my enjoyment for this series also came from the plotline surrounding Shiho in the last quarter of the series. I was amazed that the narrative got me to empathize with Shiho even though she’s toxic and unkind for much of the series. It was a healing experience for me to see Aki and Shiho reconcile and start a romantic relationship. There was so much to appreciate in this cute and beautiful anime.
Overall Score
Score: 8.2 / 10.0
As you probably know, the overall score is the average of the scores for the five categories explored above. Whisper Me A Love Song is an excellent anime that definitely deserves 8/10. I’m actually frustrated and shocked that this anime has such a low rating on MAL. It sits with a score of 6.67 as of late May 2025.
I understand that the delays were initially annoying, but I don’t see why that would harm anyone’s enjoyment of it a year later or after it was fully released. I’m flabbergasted that people rated it so low, especially when many of us suspect that homophobia contributed to the release difficulties of this anime. That’s all the more reason to rate it highly. Personally, I think it’s more important than ever to show support for LGBT+ presence in the media.
In closing, if you want a dramatic but healing yuri anime, you should definitely consider Whisper Me A Love Song.
~Thanks for reading~
Written by 7Mononoke
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