True Tears

True Tears is an anime original story that only shares its title and the theme of 'genuine tears' with the earlier visual novel of the same name by La'cryma; the plot and characters are completely different.

P.A. Works president Kenji Horikawa said he asked Junji Nishimura to direct because he loved the literary, understated style and rhythm of Nishimura's earlier work 'Kaze no Monogatari' (supervised by Mamoru Oshii).

The anime adaptation was announced on February 7, 2006 at the original game's press event, with hints that it would air sometime in 2007, but the broadcast ended up being delayed to January 2008.

The fictional town of Mugibata is modeled on the Jōhana district of Nanto, Toyama Prefecture, where P.A. Works' studio is located, even though in the anime the town faces the sea while the real Jōhana is inland; the seaside scenery was based on Himi, and the shopping mall and Aiko's shop were modeled on real buildings in Takaoka and Toyama City.

Several character surnames—Isurugi, Kurobe, and Takaoka—are taken directly from real place names in Toyama Prefecture, and the schools 'Hotarugawa High' and 'Koshiro High' reference Teru Miyamoto's novel 'Hotarugawa' and Takaoka Old Castle Park respectively.

Despite being set in and produced in Toyama, the series initially was not broadcast on local terrestrial TV; after local media coverage and lobbying by regional assembly members, Toyama Television began airing it one cour later starting April 2008 with local sponsors, and it was later broadcast intensively on Toyama cable TV networks around the Mugiya Festival in September 2008.

The anime's popularity sparked significant 'anime pilgrimage' tourism to Jōhana, including themed snack products ('Aichan-yaki'), commemorative posters, a limited edition point card, and in 2010 the four main characters were even given special honorary resident registration by Nanto City.

A 2009 fan vote on the 'Blu-ray Disc Meister' website ranked True Tears first in a poll for anime that fans wanted converted to Blu-ray, leading Bandai Visual to produce a limited pre-order-only Blu-ray box set requiring at least 2,000 reservations to go into production.

The Blu-ray box set included an exclusive three-minute epilogue not seen in the TV broadcast, showing what happens to the main characters after the story's end.