The story may seem cliche to many people. In fact, I know I've seen the same basic idea in a few shoujo mangas. Hiroya is a good kid on the student council who consistantly gets good grades and never does anything you would even consider calling rebellious. Misaki is smart enough when he applies himself, but he never does as he's too busy being the opposite of Hiroya, as rebellious as is possible for him to be. And naturally they're the main characters and the couple focused on in Yatteranneeze. Hiroya decides he needs a change and he wants none other than Misaki to teach him how to be a cool kid rather than an upstanding student. If that were all there was to the story it would maybe get a 6 from me, but there's much more to it than that. Yatteranneeze is one of the few yaoi series I've seen actually focus on a lot of issues facing gays and people in general, including homophobia, AIDS, rape and more. Overall the story was a great blend of comedy from Hiroya (who is, at times, overwhelmingly innocent), drama and romance, all excecuted in a way that makes you want to keep reading.
I'm a bit biased on the art. I love mid-90s manga artwork and Yatteranneeze is a prime example of this. The character designs are all relatively simple, which fits the series as it's only portraying relatively normal students in Japan. Overall I really liked the artwork of the series though it wasn't anything revolutionary it went along very well with the series and was always consistant and at times was very beautiful.
I have to say if there is a bit of a downfall to the series it's character. However I'm still giving it an 8 for very good. Character development was actually superb, by the end of the series you can see how all this time has affected the main characters and even some side characters. However I never really loved any of the characters. Misaki is the only exception, the rest of them were nice enough and didn't make me want to stop reading, but I wasn't overjoyed with them in any way.
Often times I find series more enjoyable than anything else, which is how I felt reading Yatteranneeze. Every chapter ended in such a way that I wanted to read the next one. The romance is believable and the drama is somewhat over-the-top at times but it makes it even better. Overall I found that I wanted Hiroya and Misaki to stay together, whenever something threatened their relationship I would actually become sad because I wanted them to be together. I rarely care about couples that much in any series, which just shows how much I enjoyed this one.
So overall I give Yatteranneeze a nine. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants a good love story, as long as they're open-minded to yaoi, because I think that even someone who isn't a fan of yaoi could read Yatteranneeze and see past the fact that it's two boys to the point that it's as simple as a great love story.
