In here, though, there is a consistent sense of progress when it comes to the main guy. While he’s still the classic shounen romance lead–staggeringly insecure, anxious, but a good boy overall–mangaka manages to push the character beyond the archetype. And however little outside of that archetype the character of Ichikawa lands, it is still enough to make him stand out.
Storywise, it’s a shounen romance–if you’ve read a couple, you’ve read them all. It’s set in middle school, but it somehow still manages to be less cringe and awkward and annoying than a good deal of high school romances while still revelling in the fact that these are actually kids more so than teens. You have your standard sick days, festival days, Valentine’s days, white day days, and a plethora of other tropes that you’ve likely grown familiar with. But like with all shounen romances, the story is irrelevant so long as the characters can hold the weight of the narrative–and here, well, they can.
As I said, Ichikawa is the classic sho-rom protag–from the onset he’s presented as a loner, anti-social, and the ever-classic ‘mumbles every word spoken to a girl’. While his ‘murderous wants’ do set him apart initially, they’re just a hook or, character-wise, a coping mechanism for what is effectively the ail of every boy like him–the dude’s just fuckin’ lonely. Over the course of many chapters, the growth is evident–it is not immediate. Just meeting the girl and chatting with her doesn’t dismantle his insecurities, but it does consistently push him into new things, evolving his character bit by bit.
Romance is slow, yes, but it harkens back well to the idea of romance at the age of 13-14 without stagnating or being boring. What helps is a decent cast of side characters that, while hardly ever developed into standalone people, do allow the story to breathe further beyond its basic romantic plot. A lot of it is simply glancing at the singular moments of middle schoolers–when they’re fighting, exploring new things, understanding it, trying to behave older than their age and so on, a fragmentation that captures our own memories of those days well enough.
Yamada, the counterpart to the main guy, is a semi-standard shounen romance main girl. She’s an extrovert to an introvert, she’s beautiful, popular, nice, all the good stuff–but, just like the main guy, she’s also insecure, uncertain, but to a level where it’s somewhat believable. That’s not to say that she clearly isn’t echoing manic pixie dreams that men for some reason seem to be beholden to even today, but just like Ichikawa, she does evolve beyond the prototype of the standard pixie girl whose sole reason for existence is to be there for the main guy.
She has a life outside of romance–she has passions that have nothing to do with the main guy, and even if they do feel somewhat surface-level, it is an important distinction that gives her a life beyond being a prop of a love story. Oftentimes, female leads in shounen and even seinen romances are relegated to being a stand-in fantasy, a prop beyond the scope of reality, something that never was or can be. And I actually have no issue with that–so long as it is understood as a fantasy–but it is always refreshing to see a female lead whose entire persona, individuality, and life isn’t tied to one guy. She’s not necessarily a mainstay standout, but she goes well beyond ‘serviceable’ into the realm of fairly decent characters.
What started as a fairly simple fluff romance (and, in all fairness, consistently was exactly that if you’re worried about some traumatic drama) does eventually dip its toes slightly beyond the base fluff of these types of stories. First loves are exciting and can never be lived twice in reality, so being able to capture the essence of them on paper in any capacity is always a win–it is the reason why we read these stories, after all, even when we’re well beyond the age of living them out in any capacity.
‘Boku no Kokoro no Yabai Yatsu’ might surprise you as it surprised me. I won’t claim it will turn your head or that if you’re not a fan of shounen romances it might make you one, but it is better than generic drivel that seems to pop up frequently these days. Few shortcomings–like very stale side characters, overreliance on some tropes of the genre, very misleading hook and so on–don’t break what is essentially a very decent capture of first love, awkward and odd and blush-dominated though it may be.
