The main girl is named Sawako. Although the story makes you feel like you're watching Sawako live out her high school years, in reality she's actually dead - and no, that's not a spoiler.
The story makes it very clear early on that everything that's happening around Sawako is inside her own head, or more specifically, her soul. Despite Sawako's complete inability to understand people and their emotions, everyone in her school starts to gradually treat her like a saint. Her new-found friends are completely obsessed with her and whenever they're apart, they talk about Sawako incessantly. At first you may pass their dialogue as completely normal, but when these scenes keep repeating, the positive emotions begin waning. As you start paying closer attention, the heartwarming scenes begin to feel awkward, like the author is trying to drill a message into your lazy brain.
Reaching You's story takes place in a high school. Sawako doesn't have a single friend there. People actively call her Sadako instead of Sawako, it's a joke based on her creepy resemblance to the ghost from Ring, the famous Japanese horror movie. The first scene of the series is in a bathroom, a classic stage for horror. Later in the season we return to this place to find clues on how Sawako actually died. Despite this and other blatantly anvilicious clues, one could still be easily swayed to think Reaching You is just a cheaply produced romance anime - one would be wrong.
The strongest indication of the author's intent is the abundantly utilized bubble-effect. I dub this effect "emo bubbles", because the bubble backgrounds appear every time when Sawako feels strong positive emotions. Though "emo bubbles" are a common cost-cutting trick in romantic anime (artists can skip painting backgrounds when there's bubbles), their frequency in Reaching You is extraordinary. Instead of making the viewer feel happy and connected to Sawako's character on her important moments, the constant usage of the bubble effect actually starts to feel grating. One particular episode featured over thirty bubble effects, and during some of its scenes you would see this effect every second shot. This is when I started feeling unexpectedly uneasy in the stomach, like my subconscious self was noticing something was off. It was only after watching near the entire first season that I realized what was happening: Reaching You is designed to feel uncomfortable on purpose. The authors intentionally try to strike a stark, yet subtle contrast which challenges most people's perception of reality. The bubbles are symbolic of the metaphorical bubble Sawako is living inside, they indicate the delusions her ghostly being is experiencing during her crossing to the afterlife.
There's a scene in the middle episodes of season 1 where Sawako is cornered by a group of gangster girls. Once again, she's alone in the restroom against a hoard of bitches. Miraculously, she is saved by her friends without any violence, but the emotional release fails to materialize. At first I thought this crucial scene, this big turning point in Sawako's life, was dragged out needlessly, as it took an entire episode to finish the climax - with the minutes rolling and close to nothing happening, the climax didn't happen for me. This scene took so much more time than necessary and it felt so watered down in the end that there was no payoff. Even the dialogue felt odd and hollow, like there was no drama, like there was no struggle. In fact, not a single punch was thrown, even though the emotional dynamic in the scene seemed built on the anticipation of violence erupting. Sawako defies her bullies who completely outnumber her, yet nobody gets hurt, not even when the cavalry arrives.
With all the hints on the table, it's not even a challenge to decipher the meta narrative: Sawako died in this restroom. Everything that happens in the scene is the exact reverse; the big crowd waiting outside the toilet, Sawako's love interest showing up to reconcile with her, her friends coming to the rescue - they're Sawako's dream of what should've happened, but didn't.
I would've passed this off as just a mediocre romance anime, were it not for the symbolic "emo bubbles" tipping me off about the story within the story. Instead of making me feel warm and fuzzy, like a good romance anime usually does, Reaching You made me feel anxious, pained and emotionally hollow. I can absolutely respect the series' artistic merits, even though I couldn't bring myself to enjoy it.
