Boku no Kokoro no Yabai Yatsu

Kyoutarou Ichikawa may look like a shy and reserved middle school student, but deep within his heart is a bloodthirsty killer. His ultimate desire is to see his classmate Anna Yamada's beautiful face writhing in pain before he ends her life. But this fantasy may never come to fruition, as Ichikawa starts to see an entirely different side to Yamada.

Often seeking refuge in the library, Ichikawa frequently runs into Yamada. It is during these encounters that Ichikawa realizes his model classmate is actually an airhead who can never read the room. As they spend more time together, the boy cannot help but feel not only a sense of endearment toward the very girl he wishes to murder but also a desire to protect her at all costs. Is it possible that this sudden change in Ichikawa's perspective could lead to something more?

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Yamada, Anna Main

Youmiya, Hina Japanese

Ichikawa, Kyoutarou Main

Horie, Shun Japanese

Ichikawa, Kana Supporting

Tamura, Yukari Japanese

Sekine, Moeko Supporting

Han, Megumi Japanese

Yamada, Sanae Supporting

Minaguchi, Yuko Japanese

Imaginary Kyoutarou Supporting

Fukuyama, Jun Japanese

Hara, Honoka Supporting

Toyosaki, Aki Japanese

Kobayashi, Chihiro Supporting

Asai, Ayaka Japanese

Adachi, Shou Supporting

Okamoto, Nobuhiko Japanese

Yoshida, Serina Supporting

Tanezaki, Atsumi Japanese

Sotokawa, Akihiro Producer

Matsui, Yuuko Producer

Endou, Kazuki Producer

Lee, Sang-jun Producer

Reviews

Nov 1, 2024

Marjar

Recommended

Very cute romcom that actually accurately portrays middle schoolers as the awkward, horny little creatures they are. Don't think I've seen an anime that's supposed to be wholesome be brave enough to talk about boners as much as this one did.

Basically feels like a gender-swapped version of Kimi ni Todoke, only without the dumb forced shoujo drama that series ends up relying on occasionally. The romance aspect obviously is the focus, but a major theme of the show is clearly about Ichikawa's insecurities and low self esteem and slowly growing out of it and opening up more to other people. Very relatable as someone ... who has suffered from similar issues. Also helps that I'm a manlet like the MC too. It's time for more short king propaganda.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Apr 6, 2024

Marsh37

Mixed Feelings

This review will be broken down into sections on story, characters, and aesthetics. For the purposes of convencience I will refer to the series as 'Bokuyaba' throughout this review.

Story: Bokuyaba is a simple story following the the slow developing romance of its two central characters, Yamada and Ichikawa. Events within the story often revolve around seemingly coincidental interactions between Yamada and Ichikawa. Particularly the early interactions happen in or around the school library, where both of the main characters spend their break times for their own seperate reasons. The story relies on the quirks of Yamada and Ichikawa to drive their interactions, which sometimes results ... in a funny, cute or heartwarming scene, and sometimes results in a moment of typical anime romcom cringe. The cringe moments however, are to be expected given that the characters are inexperienced middle-schoolers, who are both socially inept in their own ways. Ultimately, the cringe wears off as Yamada and Ichikawa become more familiar with one another. A big bonus for some viewers is the use of the unusual height difference between Yamada and Ichikawa. Many vertically challenged male audience members who like taller women will undoubtedly be willing to excuse Yamada's faults to indulge in various self-insert fantasies. Overall Bokuyaba uses the designs of Yamada and Ichikawa to its advantage in its more intimate scenes.


Characters: Bokuyaba is primarily a story driven by its characters. Ichikawa, being the socially awkward main male character, is clearly designed to be a self-insert character for viewers of a similar disposition. Early on, it is emphasised that Ichikawa has something a little bit more wrong about him in the head, with an obsession over the topic of murder, almost framing him as a potential yandere in the opening episodes. This character trait, whilst occasionally relevant, does die off over time, which is overall a positive thing, both for Ichikawa and the series as a whole. This character trait goes underused for the better, however it does raise the question of if it was really necessary for his character at all in the first place. Overall, Ichikawa's introduction is subpar, and he only becomes a likable character after the first 3 or 4 episodes, when his more relatable flaws start to recieve more focus over what is shown prior. Ichikawa does show himself to be a decent person who is just very insecure and low in confidence, however for many viewers, the damage to his image may already be done within the first few episodes

Yamada is subject to a very similar issue at the start of the story, where her eating obsession and general low IQ are overemphasised to a point that will make her initially come off to the viewer as annoying unless they are really into girls who are, quite bluntly, stupid. Yamada does remain a complete dork throughout the majority of Bokuyaba, however after the first few episodes, she starts to actually appear to engage her brain to some extent. Some viewers will likely find her endearing from the start, whilst others will find her annoying, as some of her more low IQ actions are unrealistically dumb by the standards of a reasonable human being.

The side characters are nothing special, but some of Yamada's female friends do play minor roles in ways that bounce off of Yamada's character well. Despite them being very different to Yamada in lots of ways, it is believable that they are friends with her and genuinely care about her.


Aesthetics: The character design is fitting for the main cast and the art style is appealing to the eye. Other than the opening music being decent, there is not much to say about the music. It neither significantly enhances nor takes away from the viewer's enjoyment of the show.

Overall, Bokuyaba gets off to a rocky start, which may spoil the investment of many viewers early on, however, whilst the anime does occasionally do things that will make many viewers cringe, these moments decrease over the runtime of the show. Generally, outside of hardcore romance anime enjoyers, many viewers will likely fall off Bokuyaba quite early unless Yamada is really their type, or if they strongly relate to some of Ichikawa's less concerning character traits. That said, if you can get through the first few episodes without being completely turned off by Bokuyaba, it only gets better from there.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Oct 22, 2024

BadGuyBoog

Not Recommended

Funny

(Updated review because MAL doesn't let you make new ones for some reason.)

Original Review:
You know, I don’t really mind when a show divulges (or better yet evolves) from its premise, even if it was character based. Of course as the character grows, motivations change and the circumstance changes with it. Like in Love is War, the whole premise is trying to get the other to confess, but when they get together, that premise is gone, but still because of how the characters were developed, there was still a lot more story to tell. The premise evolved and changed. That is a good series. But I’m ... sorry, you cannot just forget your premise of, oh yeah, your main character planning the murders of his classmates! Like seriously, this kid is actually fucking deranged, carrying around a box cutter waiting for the perfect moment to kill people. That is the actual premise of the show. A loner who plans to murder people falls in love. And the show just glosses over it. He’s just added onto the pile of loners who get with the popular girl but like… This kid was going to kill people, you can’t just pretend that didn’t happen! This show makes him seem like just another loner character, but other loner characters are just sad and unconfident, not psychotic. Basically you’re just supposed to forgive him and feel sympathy for him because now he’s in love. Even though there was literally a moment where he was about to stab her before chickening out. What the actual fuck? And the girl isn't even all that. She has 3 character traits: she’s ditzy, she likes snacks, and she has big boobs. Her big boobs are one of her 3 personality traits. Did I forget to mention she’s in middle school? The more I think about this show the worse it gets. I mean if you want to make the argument saying it’s a statement on how tragedies including loners who snapped could be avoided, then I’ll say, do you really think this show is smart enough for that? Be real. I don’t think anyone has ever actually made that argument, but now that I think about it, that’s the only way this premise could work. But that takes smart social commentary, a focus on his murderous intentions and the reasoning behind them, and a full character evaluation on both the protagonist and the love interest. This show is not smart enough for that.

Updated Points:
This is a review I wrote casually and I wasn't expecting it to get the attention that it has, and because of how nonchalantly and somewhat jokingly I wrote it, I have gotten a lot of angry comments complaining about my review. So I thought I might press my point and address theirs.

The main argument my somewhat angry fans pointed out to me was his murderous intentions were never meant to be a focus and were never meant to be taken seriously. What I'm assuming they meant was his thoughts of killing people were meant to highlight his isolation and loneliness, therefore emphasizing the impact the heroine has on his life. Following that line of thinking, my point of them abandoning his delusions early on is nonsensical because from the moment she enters his life, his loneliness diminishes and so does his desire to kill. It's a progression of the story and his character and not an oversight or lack of competence by the writer.

My response to that is, what kind of deranged or dethatched people think that murderous fantasies of people you know is a normal response to being a loner? Maybe I'm wrong because I was never what you would consider a loner, I always had at least one friend. However, lets look at what his fantasies are supposed to represent. Our main character feels like he doesn't belong. No one has reached out to him and because of that he has grown increasingly jealous of people around him. With this, a person can go two ways. Either blame it on themselves and have extreme low self esteem or blame it on others and grow spiteful. Our MC is the latter. So now he's spiteful of his classmates for having friends and a 'normal' life and is enraged at seeing their happiness. I understand this.

However, in no time during this did his classmates ever act malicious towards him. They might have pointed out that he was a loner, but as far as we know from this season, the MC hasn't been bullied or threatened, or even excluded on purpose (maybe, it's been a while since I've seen it ngl). My point is his murderous intentions aren't out of response to some severe stimuli, where he feels murder is his only option, it is a result of nothing but jealousy.

And the argument that it wasn't meant to be taken seriously doesn't work either. We, as an audience, know that he, deep down, doesn't have the guts to do what his delusions are telling him to do. We know that he's not gonna kill. But the protagonist has convinced himself he is. And he's prepared. And he carries a weapon with the intent to use it. I mentioned how he planned on killing the heroine at one point. We know he's not going to, but he thinks he's ready to do it, only chickening out due to a lack of guts, or willpower, or maybe some part of goodness in him. But the fact remains that he believed himself capable of killing her. And she had done nothing wrong to him. In fact, she had been nothing but kind to him up till that point. That takes a deeper level of hatred then just jealousy in order to get to that point, and if it's not that, then something else is going on mentally to get him to that point.

The writer never addresses this, never explains how he got to that point and never intended to use his murderous intentions as part of his story. Notice I said murderous intentions instead of fantasies, because the moment he brought the knife, it became an intention. My point was, that his 'bloodthirstiness' was nothing but clickbait to get peoples attention and a mark to differentiate his character from the other thousands of loner characters. The writer never wanted to write a character with deep rooted problems, or show his character in deep distress, because he just wanted to write a romcom. Perhaps he was too afraid of his Protagonist being too unlikable, but buddy, that's the point of writing stories. Those fantasies are real and dangerous, and to use it as clickbait for your story is both lazy and disrespectful.

I stand by my original opinion. Also the other complaint I got was I called the heroine bland but like, dude, I'm not gonna argue over your fucking middle school waifu. I didn't care for her, I thought it was kinda funny so I added it to the review. My bad.

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

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