Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou

Yukino Miyazawa is the female representative for her class and the most popular girl among the freshmen at her high school. Good at both academics and sports on top of being elegant and sociable, she has been an object of admiration all her life. However, in reality, she is an incredibly vain person who toils relentlessly to maintain her good grades, athleticism, and graceful appearance. She wants nothing more than to be the center of attention and praise—which is why she cannot stand Souichirou Arima, the male representative for her class and the only person more perfect than her. Since the first day of high school, she has struggled to steal the spotlight from her new rival but to no avail.

At last, on the midterm exams, Yukino gets the top score and beats Souichirou. But, to her surprise, he congratulates her on her achievement, leading her to question her deceptive lifestyle. When Souichirou confesses his love to Yukino, she turns him down and gloats about it at home with only a hint of regret. But the very next day, Souichirou visits Yukino house to bring her a CD and sees her uninhibited self in action; now equipped with the truth, he blackmails her into completing his student council duties. Coerced into spending time with Souichirou, Yukino learns that she is not the only one hiding secrets.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Miyazawa, Yukino Main

Enomoto, Atsuko Japanese

Arima, Souichirou Main

Suzuki, Chihiro Japanese

Shibahime, Tsubasa Supporting

Shintani, Mayumi Japanese

Asaba, Hideaki Supporting

Kisaichi, Atsushi Japanese

Pero Pero Supporting

Miyazawa, Hiroyuki Supporting

Kusao, Takeshi Japanese

Izawa, Maho Supporting

Noda, Junko Japanese

Sena, Rika Supporting

Fukui, Yukari Japanese

Ikeda, Kazuma Supporting

Ishida, Akira Japanese

Sakura, Tsubaki Supporting

Chiba, Saeko Japanese

Kobayashi, Noriko Producer

Matsukura, Yuuji Producer

Kamimura, Yasuhiro Producer

Abe, Michihisa Producer

Reviews

Nov 10, 2006

Crystal

Recommended

Kare Kano was a romance anime that could have become incredibly great, if it had the proper budget and ideas from the producer to actually complete the show properly. Unfortunately the stale ending that Kare Kano ended on left myself and I’m sure many other fans in frustration. Based on the popular shoujo manga by Masami Tsuda, Kare Kano is about the blossoming love between two high school students who lived a life of lies, pretending to be the perfect person for their own reasons. Being able to truthfully open up to each other, their initial friendship turns to love. Sadly, life isn’t so easy ... for them as they face many trials to be together.

At first glance, Kare Kano is your average high school romance story. Thankfully, the odd personalities of the two leading characters break the idea of this just being another romance story. Kare Kano does contain the usual shoujo romance story elements when it comes to the trials for our main couple (jealous outsiders, temporary separation). But originality is able to come through with the way the leading characters handle their problems, often ending in a comedic resolve to their troubles. Besides the usual love trials, Kare Kano also features a number of interesting side stories about the support characters, so if you’re not a fan of the main couple, fear not, there are other amusing couples in the series as well. Unfortunately, Kare Kano’s story takes a nosedive with the lack of an ending. The last few episodes continue to build the plot up, but the series simply ends before anything can come out of the previous events. This is one of the greatest annoyances when it comes to Kare Kano, especially if one is not a manga reader.

The animation is more or less quite poor in Kare Kano. Taking into account this show is from 1998, anyone can easily see the budget was definitely not allocated to producing good animation. The first half of the show had its moments, the animation in this part of the series were acceptable. One of the techniques that the producers used was to cut out still images directly from the manga, which can be both a good and bad thing. Obviously this saves the producer a lot on cost of actual animation and some may think it is quite cheap of them. But I would think majority of people feel the black and white manga images added to the atmosphere of the show, especially in the moments they were used (which were when things became more serious). The second half of Kare Kano was when the animation began to lose its charm. More still images were constantly being used. Episode 19 of Kare Kano had the entire episode made up of cardboard cut outs, which were stuck on sticks and moved around (like a puppet show). The last five episodes were horrendous, a lot more of the manga pictures were being used, but rather then adding to the atmosphere, it just made the entire show feel cheap. The final episode barely had any animation at all, simply still images.

The sound in Kare Kano is one of its stronger points. The opening and ending have catchy pop songs that some may or may not like depending on their taste in music. There are also a number of enjoyable piano tunes in Kare Kano. All in all, the background music fitted well to the mood in this anime. A good pat on the back for the Japanese voice actors of Kare Kano as well. The VA for Yukino (the leading female) did a wonderful job in bringing out Yukino’s two faced personality, as did the VA for Arima (the leading male). If anything, the only complaint I have for the Japanese VAs was the one for the supporting character Tsubasa. I only felt her voice did not feel right.

Perhaps Kare Kano’s strongest point would be the characters. The leading couple is two somewhat eccentric two faced people (particularly the female) who pretty much break out of the stereotypical shoujo couple. The leading female, Yukino is an absolute riot to watch. You will witness her stressing over the smallest of things, unbelievable for someone who at first glance seemed to be the most perfect person you could find anywhere. Supporting characters such as Asaba and Tsubasa are also equally enjoying to watch as their odd personalities fit in perfectly with Kare Kano’s quirkiness. Character development is very thorough in Kare Kano, with even Yukino’s parents having screen time to develop their back stories. The only negative feature when it comes to the characters is that even towards the end of the show the characters are constantly built up with development, only to have the show end before anything could happen.

For why I enjoyed Kare Kano, I was previously a fan of the manga already. My favourite character would definitely have to be Yukino for her weirdo personality and decisions to solve her problems. I also really like the ending song, which I thought was perfect. Albeit I was definitely frustrated with how the show ended. The terrible animation was just painful for me to watch (especially the last 6 or so episodes). And I thought it was a poor decision on the producer’s part to end the show like it would end every other episode, and slap on a “The End”. I mean, nothing ended at all.

Overall, despite its obvious flaws Kare Kano still manages to be a favourite amongst the shoujo lovers for its interesting array of characters and somewhat unique storyline for the main couple. If you aren’t normally fond of stereotypical high school love stories, try giving Kare Kano a try. It’s recommended though to continue with the manga after watching the anime if you want to see how the story ends, since you won’t find any ending from here. So yeah, If you like comedy, romance, weird characters and high school settings then Kare Kano will probably be for you.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Jul 9, 2010

aoi-ryu

Mixed Feelings

OK so I really liked this anime the characters in it were great, I loved the fact that it is set apart from almost every other anime in this genre with the lead characters not being the typical boy meets girl, boy likes girl (or other way around) but both being to timid and shy to do anything about it, in Kare Kano they get on with it and happily admit that they like each other, I also loved that the lead characters were real in the fact that when at home they were completely different from when out with friends or at school.

What I ... really did not like at all about this anime and the reason that i have given it such a low overall rating is the fact that the last final episodes (25 and 26) do not follow the story line that has been set and are really just filling you in on what has happened throughout the series so far and then the final episode finishes without really giving you an ending, so really it is like the producers thought "hey lets make this manga into the anime" and then halfway through it they got bored of it and decided they just didn't care anymore and couldn't be bothered leaving all the fans going "ummmmm huh OK, so where is the rest?"

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Aug 14, 2019

ktulu007

Not Recommended

Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou is an anime from the late 90s released by Gainax & JC Staff. It was based off of a manga by Tsuda Masami. And, apparently, she was unhappy with the way Gainax handled it which resulted in it not receiving a full adaptation. So, what exactly is wrong with the adaptation? Let's take a look and see what went wrong. Or maybe she was just being overly picky. We'll see. 

Story:

Miyazawa Yukino excels at everything. She's an outstanding student, a strong athlete and is well liked by everyone. There's just one problem. She doesn't show her true personality to anyone outside of her ... family. She puts on a mask because she loves to be praised. One day her major rival, Arima Soichiro, uncovers the truth behind the mask. The pair become friends and quickly go beyond friendship. The narrative from there goes into their ups and downs as well as their relationships with those around them. 

The big narrative problem with this anime is that the last third is really atrocious. Here's the thing. Roughly the first two thirds have a strong comedic aesthetic where problems come up, get resolved in ways that are pretty entertaining  and things flow from there. Roughly the last third throws that out and adds a bunch of terribly written angst and poorly thought out drama. This causes the series to devolve from an entertaining romp to being virtually unwatchable. The ending is trash too. Most anime that aren't going to cover an adapted work entirely have the decency to give some closure and end with some pressing issue getting wrapped up. This one takes the rubbish heap route and leaves every single plot point unanswered. 

There are some lesser problems before that. Yukino's friend, Maho, talks about dating a dude who's almost thirty and no one finds it creepy except the people in the audience who have sense. Hate to break it to you guys in your late twenties, early thirties, but if you're chasing after high school girls you are objectively a complete fucking creep. Same with those of you in your mid twenties. Even early twenties is pushing it given the developmental difference. The anime is also pretty lazy. It features a lot of long recap segments, a full recap episode and two episodes that are half recap. To an extent, I do understand it since the economy was doing poorly, but it still does impact the quality of the work when it wastes your time rehashing to that extent.

On the positive side, the first seventeen or eighteen episodes are enjoyable, except for the recaps. The high levels of humour work quite well. To the point where you can almost completely forgive the lazier elements. If it had maintained that momentum, this could have been a very solid anime. But some incompetent moron working on the adaptation lost the plot. It was probably Zach. No one likes that guy.

Characters:

The characters were never super complex. Even before Zach ruined everything. But this was a more comedic series and the characters did work well in that regard. Then we reach the shite segment of the series and Arima gets obnoxiously angsty and drags the whole cast down with him. They also introduce a male love interest for the girl who has spent the entire series showing interest exclusively in cute girls. Which actually makes me mad. Like, I haven't entirely forgiven Fire Emblem Fates for pulling that shit with Soleil and I liked that game considerably more than I liked this anime. 

It's also a bit annoying that they basically get rid of all Tsubasa's character after wrapping up her arc about her dad remarrying. It's like they couldn't think of anything for her character to do and didn't know how to work her into the friend group. So, they gave up and had her just go feral. 

Art:

This is another area where the obvious fiscal problems resulted in a lot of laziness. There are a lot of scenes where characters will be talking and they'll just show some still images of street lights or some other nonsense that doesn't matter and is just boring to look at. They'll also just cut to quiet scenes of the same kind of scenery for no narrative reason and just linger on it to pad out the episodes. The series uses a lot of boring still images and recycled animation in general. It doesn't help that it has one of the worst drawn dogs I've ever seen in anime. How do you have a dog that isn't even a little cute? Honestly, most of it looks pretty bad. 

Sound:

Here's where the director royally failed. The acting in this can be pretty damn bad. Shintani Mayumi, Fukui Yukari, Kiyokawa Motomu and several other actors sound really stilted in their delivery. There's also a lot of over the top comedic exaggeration that might be fine in more moderation but gets grating when it's employed this often. I'll give the series credit for having some theme tunes that are pretty good, musically. The imagery isn't. The rest of Sagisu Shirou's soundtrack is pretty mediocre. 

Ho-yay:

There's Sakura and her thing for cute girls. There are also moments where both Asaba & Tonami seem to have a thing for Arima. And there's an episode where Yukino's sisters seem to pick up female admirers solely for cheap jokes. Naturally, this episode is at the point where the series has already gotten bad. 

Areas of Improvement:

Lose the badly written, ill conceived angst. There's a place for angst. Preferably, as a temporary shift due to some major events. But it doesn't work in a mostly comedic series. Especially when it just keeps going. 
Do not give the one character who's been portrayed as not straight a hetero love interest. Yes, we get that bisexual people exist. However, there's also this terrible tendency in media to have one LGBT character to earn some "representation points" and then give that character a hetero normative relationship so you don't actually have to deal with any of that queer stuff. Fuck that. Fuck it with something long, awkwardly shaped and covered in literal spikes. 
Have a satisfying conclusion. I get it, Zach is an awful writer and screwed up, thereby making it so the series had to end prematurely. At least give us some closure. End the emo Arima phase and show Yukino's play. Just give us something to make it feel somewhat satisfying. 

Final Thoughts:

This is, honestly, a bit difficult for me to rate. On the one hand, I did enjoy the series for about two thirds of it. And if it had maintained that standard, I could somewhat forgive the lazy, rubbish artwork, the lazy rehashing and even the poor directing. If not for the way it ends I'd be going with a "6" maybe slightly higher. However, the final third is utter tripe and those elements that worked get heavily bludgeoned to the point of being nearly unrecognisable and a whole slew of problems come in to make sure they stay damaged. And if the entire series was like those last eight episodes, I'd be giving this a "1" and making rude gestures in its general direction. Still, I can't bring myself to call it bad given the way it started. So, I'm going with a 4/10 for the whole thing. Maybe I'll go read the manga and it won't have the same problems at the end. Maybe that final stretch is what made Tsuda unhappy with the adaptation. In which case, completely justifiable response there. 

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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