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Plot Synopsis

It all starts as you're thrown into the life of Yukino Miyazawa, the perfect student. She's got the looks, she's got the grades, she's got everything any girl could ask for out of a school life. She is envied by all the girls and loved by all the boys, and is #1 in her class. The worst part could be the fact that she knows this, and couldn't love being more conceited about it.

Her mask was her life, and she lived fine within it.

Enter Soichiro Arima, now the perfect guy. Miyazawa can't help but notice that Arima has been stealing her thunder. Born under a rich name, looks to kill, and the grades that equal Miyazawa's, she can't help but be infuriated by his perfect ways. Day in and day out among her diligent studying, she plots to take down Arima, to break him.

Then, Miyazawa gets a curveball.
The midterm results come in, and Arima bests Miyazawa by half a point.
Meaning he becomes the #1 student in their class.
Miyazawa, even more angry than ever, as she's just leaving, Arima touches her and merely whispers...

"I love you."

Miyazawa gets yet another curveball, thus starts a comical romantic war between the two as they continue to try to get under eachother's skin. But they only seem to get closer and close until...

Arima then stumbles upon Miyazawa's dark secret, and after that, the seeds of romance start to sink in...

Story & Characters

Ah another love story bought to the small screen, enter the main characters for this series:

Yukina Miyazawa, model student extraordinaire (and fake), lives for praise and special treatment. She does everything in her power to make people admire her, playing up to everyone’s perceptions of an admired and popular student. However in her High School debut she is eclipsed by another model student.

Souichirou Arima, model student (extremely attractive), tormented by unseen demons of his past, lives to be a credit to his parent and to prove his worth to his extended family. Nothing can get past his emotional barriers – until he meets Yukina.

Arima is charming naïve about the female and male admiration he attracts (girls flock around him in groups- where have I watched that before?), and Yukina is, well, a con-artist who has decided to change after meeting Arima. Yukina’s -umm- somewhat colourful character provides continuous comic relief, plots of revenge (which always backfire), well timed jokes and embarrassing encounters liven up the serious themes. The main two characters bumble around each other and slowly gather other (rather popular) students – who are also colourful and strange characters- into a strangely endearing not to mention weird and wacky group of friends.

I guess the moral to this story is, even seemingly perfect people have problems, but nothing that can’t be solved without a great deal of laughter.

Rating

9 (very good)

Art

The art is just plain strange. Animated episodes are interrupted by uncoloured sketches. The animated characters are drawn with nice detail, and serve to outline how different this anime is. Yukina has some awesome fighting and angry scenes, but that’s about it for this anime.

After around episode 22 a whole episode is dedicated to cardboard cut-outs characters being moved around an uncoloured sketched background?????, leaving the watcher to wonder if the animation budget ran out.

The final episodes get the story across with uncoloured sketches, quick comments and a lot of voice-overs. This is the greatest let down of this series, uncoloured sketches were used too much, mixed with sepia coloured photos and real life footage around Japan for the closing credits- the novelty quickly wore off.

Rating

5 (moderate)

Sound

The opening and closing songs for this series are fantastic. Who couldn’t love a series with an opening song called “The Promise of an Angel� and the closing one called “Into a Dream�. These songs are also used as background music to emphasise scenes of emotional depth. The dubbing is good although it is sometimes out of sync with the animated character’s mouth movements- perhaps this is focusing in to much detail. The voices (in the dub) match the characters really well and convey the emotions of that character exceptionally well.

Rating

8 (good)

Presentation

The basic story line for this anime certainly isn’t original, and you might mistakenly label this as just another high school/pre-university sappy love story. However that’s where the similarities to any other anime end. This series took a very unique twist of a well used theme and created a strange and fast moving anime with serious overtones woven in between humorous situations, satisfying punch lines and some pretty cool fight/chase scenes.

The love story between these two flawed High School students is the core of this series – however don’t get the impression that this is a serious anime. This is basically a comedy written in the shadow of a serious anime. It was really a pleasure to watch the developing relationship between Yukina and Arima, the trials, separations, jealousies and misunderstandings between these two led to a greater understanding of themselves, each other and the people that surround them.

Watching and understanding this anime requires involvement in the story and a quick trigger finger on the pause icon/button (to read the translated comments), but is well worth the energy involved as this is required for only one or two of the serious parts, the comedy gags are too frequent to miss them all, and in the end why would you want to miss any?

The end is never really outlined but leaves the watcher to assume the characters will keep following the changes made in their lives throughout the anime (-not a spoiler-).

If you like anime that is based on character interaction and their relationships towards each other, then this is the anime for you. But if you really like a comedy that can make you roll your eyes and laugh out loud, you’re gonna love this!

Rating

9 (very good)

Final Verdict

8.17 (good)

Reviewed by tishdon, 3y 18wk ago