Myself ; Yourself follows our hero Hidaka Sana who is a teenage boy with no extraordinary skills. He actually wears fashionable clothes, has one of the sweetest male voices on the planet and is caring for all of his friends. But that’s it, he’s just a guy in a T-shirt who pretty much is your average student sitting in the same classroom as you are, but you never really know him that well.
As the anime begins, we see a group of young children having tea together and celebrating an event. Or rather, trying to soften up the wounds that are about to be opened. Sana will be leaving town because of his parents and has to leave everything behind that he has grown up with, including the bonds that he has with his best friends. After this quite cheerful piece of animation, we jump five years ahead and see the same Sana returning to the same town he left. This time, he is completely alone, with no parents, with no one by his side to accompany his journey. After going through the dramatic trip of nostalgia (or just walking through the hometown), he finds a couple of pretty interesting facts after his return. We get to know that, in a way, all of his old friends will be common things he will encounter on his path that is called ‘’daily life’’. Some of them will be in his class and even live nearby his newly acquired house. All’s well, end’s well, we shall say. But if it wasn’t for a very teensy-tiny little problem raised by this group of friends, this anime would be at its end in one episode.
We get to see a hand that victimizes Sana’s face by slapping it in what may be the most intense slapping sequence in anime history. What the animators probably realized by this point (and most likely you too, reading this review) is what we have seen until now is one of the most clichéd beginnings any storyline possibly can start of with. For this anime to stand out, the animators have got to try something completely new, or do something truly amazing. The animators started to think big. They realized that this kind of story has been done over and over again. Nobody is willing to watch the same story covered with some kind of fake chocolate cake over it to attract viewers, only to realize later that the chocolate cake was tasty for the first five minutes and the rest was actually something else that’s brown. No, what this studio has done is raising the bar for cliché storylines altogether.
We see that the hand is the beautiful girl Yatsushiro Nanaka’s hand. Of all the childhood friends Sana had (he had four of them), Nanaka is the most special one to him. Even when they were little kids and they had no idea what the word ‘’romance’’ even meant, Sana just took Nanaka’s hand without thinking and always protected her of all peril and threats the world threw at them. But now, Nanaka just looks gloomy and has distanced herself from almost all social contacts, including the other childhood friends and the returning Sana. She doesn’t even return the greeting when Sana says ‘’Good morning!’’ with a handsome smile. The reason why she slapped Sana in the face? He could not recognize the beauty that Nanaka has become after all those years. He even introduced himself to her assuming she was someone he didn’t know. A slap for Sana, joy for us.
Character design. The word of choice if you had to describe the graphics Myself ; Yourself has to offer. It’s safe to say that this anime has one of the best character designers working in the industry. Every one of the characters looks so natural and clean but different enough to tell that each character has some depth in it. If you can do that as an artist, you have done your job well. Moreover, the artists responsible for the environments and backgrounds deserve applause. Never was the desire so big to be able to watch this anime in High Definition and lose yourself in that incredible world the artists created.
However, we were talking about how the studio of Myself ; Yourself managed to set the bar for these kinds of clichéd storylines. We have quality character designs. We have top-notch background creators. And we have compelling characters that hold story and depth in them. Ingredients for a nice skin for this anime are available but what really makes or breaks an anime is the body.
It’s there. The body is there and it’s amazing.
This body can be broken down to two segments. First we have the scenario. The story of Myself ; Yourself is written in a classical way of storyline development in drama/romance stories. The first half of the series is to set the tone of the series. To explain all the things that are important, to let you meet all the characters and to get familiar with the world of the story. The second half is the traditional ‘’problems’’ half, or hell-half, if you will. Everything that has been explained to you will be important here. The characters will face problems and difficulties and it’s up to them to solve it. You follow those characters and get involved with the dramatic story, not being able to stop until you watch the last episode. This is the route Myself ; Yourself has taken in terms of storytelling which isn’t bad but nothing groundbreaking either.
What is groundbreaking however, or rather wave breaking, is the music. Anime music is underrated nowadays and there is this belief that music doesn’t add as much to the enjoyment as people believe. The story of Myself ; Yourself which backs you up, tears you apart, lets you cry waterfalls and shows a light of hope breaks this belief. Never has music been this much of an impact as in this series. Especially the heartbreaking scenes have been able to shed tears to people who claim to have a heart of stone. It would be a lie that the music wasn’t a part of this.
Flaws haven’t been spared in this anime though. The animators forgot that in the episodes with a lot of heart shredding scenes, they let the opening just play the way it was. The opening, which on a side note is a very good song and well animated, is a cheerful one with the message of hope. It collides with the sadness displayed in the anime and takes you away of that sympathy, of that ‘’I can feel this character’s pain’’ vibe.
Another flaw that’s quite larger is the differences between serious scenes and normal scenes. The serious scenes are well executed, with perfectly timed music and above average animation. Clearly directed by a professional director.
Normal scenes however are slow, dull, don’t have much energy and are not animated well enough. It’s easy to see that they did this to not go over budget and to maintain the relaxed flow Myself ; Yourself has in the beginning. Generally, this would not disturb you given the fact that you get used to it throughout a series. But the borders between serious and normal scenes are so clear in this series; it does make you wonder why the animators did not choose for a more consistent approach of animating.
Despite all this, Myself ; Yourself manages to distinguish itself from all other anime with similar storylines and have its own face. It is a tale about returning to one’s long lost comfortable zone, only to realize that this comfort zone turned into a field of problems one must solve. Hidaka Sana encounters these problems, realizing that he cannot just return and assume that he can just sit there and live his life. He has people caring about him, needing for help and they’re desperately trying to solve their own problems. Sana understands this and is willing to reach a hand to every friend, even if it hurts himself. Physically or in his heart.
