For starters, I've never really ventured into the girls' love genre of anime/manga, not deliberately, but simply because no Yuri series really appealed to me. After noticing Yagate Kimi Ni Naru on a lot of people's favorites lists, I decided I'd check it out out of curiosity. There's no way it could be THAT good, right?
From the first 5 chapters alone, I was absolutely hooked. I had already added it to my favorite manga list at that point because of how enticing the plot had already become that early on, and little did I know it'd end up getting so much better.
The way Yuu is shown to be super into love songs and romance in media, yet has never truly felt that herself, is something I found myself relating to quite a lot. I've had very superficial and surface-level "crushes" in the past, as most people have, yet I have yet to ever truly experience love for myself. The concept of love is so foreign to Yuu that upon being confessed to, as opposed to the magical feeling she thought she'd feel, she just felt nothing. Because of this, she's been given the impression that she is simply incapable of falling in love.
Although I can't say anyone's ever confessed to me, I do relate to her as I often find myself wondering "Am I actually capable of loving someone like the people in these romances do? Am I capable of being loved?" and where this series absolutely set itself apart from any other romance I've read is that it has provided the answer to both of those questions for me: yes. Even someone like Yuu, who is so insistent that she can't fall in love with someone, or someone like Touko, whose love for others is far greater than that which she has for herself, are capable of finding their special someone in life.
Another thing that I found to be incredibly moving was Touko's backstory and her development throughout the series. The idea of a person who has lost their true self while chasing the accomplishments of others, while not an entirely new concept, is something I find quite interesting. The thought that "if I were more like so-and-so, maybe they'd like me more. Maybe my life would be better if I were more like them", and so on, is not an unfamiliar one to me. I spent years in middle and high school trying to be more like someone else, and although I didn't exactly mimic their behaviors, I found myself wanting to do the things they did just to appease other people, despite my true feelings on the matter. The way Touko finally found her true self was also absolutely amazing, and the means by which they did it was equally as beautiful. As the curtains rolled down after the play, the tears streaming down her eyes and probably yours too were enough to truly mark a change in her life.
This series provides an amazing example of the importance of truly being yourself. Not who others want you to be, not who you think other people would want you to be, but what YOU truly are. You deserve love, and you deserve happiness. Regardless of how much you think you aren't cut out for romance, or how little you think of yourself, you are good enough.
