His & Her Circumstances

Like a drug,Yukino Miyazawa was addicted to admiration and praise from those around her. She worked hard to become the perfect student, the perfect girl. But that was before.... him. Souichirou Arima. The instant she met him, She hated him.Without even trying , he snatched the very glory from her hands by easily acing the high school entrence exam that should have made her the class representative. To take back what is rightfully hers, Yukino is putting all her efforts into plotting her revenge; but was love part of the plan?

Characters

Yukino Miyazawa-From an early age, Yukino Miyazawa has sought to be the best in her class at everything. She wanted the admiration of everyone… to be seen as perfect. That changed when she fell in love with Arima. She dropped her little miss perfect act and through her own self actualization and her relationship with Arima, discovered pieces of her true self.
Arima Soujiro-Arima Soujiro was raised by relatives from a young age. Because his parents were seen as the bad seeds of the family, Arima felt tremendous pressure to be perfect. He always felt alone because of it. Then he met Yukino began to see himself and others around him in a new light.
Asaba Hideaki-Asaba is Arima's best friend, who's main goal is to be surrounded by and win the affection of lots and lots of girls. He lives alone and can't stand his father's seriousness.
Tsubasa-Tsubasa is one of Yukino's newly found friends. Unfortunately, she's going through some problems at home now that her father has decided to remarry.

Rating
-***' (three and a 1/2 stars)
Review-Imagine an anime that makes a serious attempt at portraying and articulating a high school relationship as it begins and develops. No, this isn’t Love Hina or Ranma, so be warned. The difference is the level of self awareness in each of the characters. It’s like we hear the chatter that goes on in their heads throughout the entire series, and it switches from “her” or Yukino Miyazawa’s perspective to “his” or Arima Soujiro’s perspective as it follows the two. Yukino and Arima are numbers 1 and 2 in their class and both try to be perfect. When Yukino and Arima meet, it first is because of their class competitiveness, but soon it develops into much more. Along the way, we get a dramatic and exaggerated view of the relationship from a fairly realistic perspective. Now, you’re probably thinking that I’ve just contradicted myself there, but the anime has a manga feel to it. When something seems particularly dramatic to a character, the character and/or situation is drawn chibi/distorted and the animation follows a manga like, frame by frame approach. The only other anime that’s similar in terms of drawing style that I’ve seen is FLCL (the story is completely different, however). {This gives it a more Gainex feel to it.} For example, when Yukino thinks she’s done something particularly stupid, we hear her inner dialog about how she is completely stressed that she made a fool of herself, and the animation follows the drama of her inner dialog. The drawing style may resort to black and white pencil drawings or part may be overly exaggerated or the entire scene may be fairly realistic looking. Once Yukino and Arima become comfortable in their relationship, the story looks out around them to how they interact with others in their environment. This encompasses how different each of their family lives is to how their classmates interact with them. Because this is high school and Arima is so perfect and popular in the eyes of all the school girls, Yukino sometimes finds herself in catty battles where she must effectively deal with her “rivals” or the entire school ignoring her. There is also the issue that because the two spend so much time together, their grades drop and teachers start intervening in their relationship. And of course, there’s the physical aspect – how to show affection and how far to go. Overall, this is an interesting anime in terms of portraying how two people meet, start looking outside themselves to accept others into their world view, how they change in the process, and how that relationship blossoms in the face of outside forces. It’s well worth watching as a character focused and driven exercise that few anime have taken. For the most part there are some aspects that are better conveyed in the manga but this is a great series.

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