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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

Yukino Miyazawa is the perfect student: kind, athletic and smart. But she's not all that she seems. She is really the self-possessed "queen of vanity", and her only goal in life is winning the praise and admiration of everyone around her. Therefore, she makes it her business to always look and act perfect during school hours. At home, however, she lets her guard down and lets her true self show.

When Yukino enters high school, she finally mets her match: Soichiro Arima, a handsome, popular, ultra-intelligent guy. Once he steals the top seat in the class away from her, Yukino sees him as a bitter rival. Over time, her anger turns into amazement, when she discovers she and Soichiro have more in common than she ever imagined. As their love blossums, they promise to stop pretending to be perfect and just be true to themselves.

But they have plenty of obstacles in their way. First, Hideaki, the school's token pretty boy, tries to come between them. Then Yukino & Soichiro's grades drop because they've been spending so much time together, and their teacher pressures them to break up. Once that's resolved, two more speed bumps are encountered on their road to romance. Maho, a jealous classmate, is convinced that Yukino is deceiving everyone and vows to turn everyone against her. Then an old friend of Soichiro's from junior high tries to steal Soichiro's affections. Somehow, Yukino and Soichiro's love manages to persevere-even after Soichiro spends the summer away at a kendo tournament. In fact, it makes their romance that much stronger, although Soichiro is dealing with some personal issues.

And now, love is in the air at Hokuei High School! Tsubaki and Tonami have fallen for each other, Maho recently confessed her feeelings for Takashi, and Kazuma just proposed to his stepsister Tsubasa! meanwhile, Yukino and Soichiro are still deeply in love. But graduation will soon be upon them all-and with it will come very serious choices...

The story is very smart and unique, and doesn't fail to entertain with it's clever and funny wit. Who ever thought school life could be so funny? The characters are all unique and very likable, and the storyline is interesting as it isn't always predictable and linear.

Although I didn't like all the 'review" style episodes, there were too many to count, although this have been only because I watched this anime in a relatively short period of time. The review episodes might be good for when it's on TV, but for me, they were just a bore, so i just skipped them

Rating

9 (very good)

Art

The art is also relatively unique, certainly easy on the eyes. Lines are smooth, colours are bright and animation quite pretty, and I like this style in particular as it looks good, not having to rely on out-there bodily proportions and super-exaggerated faces with those BIG eyes we're all so used to.

Considering this anime has a high school comedy/romance/drama genre, the animation style suits it. His & Her Circumstances has the clean look of love hina, the "normality" look of GTO (normality in terms of body proportions, no big eyes etc) and the eyes style of DNAngel... which it probably compared most closely to overall.

Rating

8 (good)

Sound

Nothing in the soundtrack stands out, but the opening and closing themes are decent and more importantly likable. The japanese voicing is very good (as per usual in japanese voice acting) but as a bonus the english isn't bad either, it's quite good.
All too often our favourite animes with kickass japanese voice acting is voiced with odd, not matching or just downright wrong english voice acting. No offense, there are probable 100X less english voice actors than there are japanese but still, usually the english dubs don't do the japanese ones justice, althought this isn't the case for His & Her Circumstances.

Rating

7 (above average)

Presentation

Personally I very much enjoyed this anime, and I hope you do too. It has lots of witty humour that it suitable for the whole family. This anime offers a rainbow of different characters so you're most likely to find at least one you like, from the queen of vanity yukino, humble arima, the scaryand vengeful tsubasa, the witless player asaba etc etc.
His & Her is a well paced anime with very down-to-earth roots, and is very entertaining despite this limitation.

Rating

9 (very good)

Final Verdict

8.50 (very good)

Reviewed by Patchy, 2y 43wk ago