A show with a good romance on the side is a rarity, and a show that focuses on romance without becoming stale is downright mythical.
… Well, what can I say? Here I am pulling the sword from the stone and calling myself King Arthur, because The Dangers in My Heart is precisely what I've been hoping to see for years.
Kyoutarou, our lovable little scamp of a protagonist, starts the anime by telling you how much he wants to kill his classmates. Is this a shock-value hook? Yes, it is. And that might have left a sour taste in my mouth if it wasn't done so well. See, it becomes obvious pretty quickly that little Kyo indulges in these idle power-fantasy daydreams because he feels powerless. He's a gloomy loner who spends most of his time alone in the library, and he's clearly not super jazzed about it.
Enter Anna, a popular girl at school who gets curious about Kyoutarou and starts interacting with him. Is this wish-fulfillment? Yes, it is. And that might have left a sour taste in my… wait a second, I'm feeling some deja-vu here. What was I saying?
Right. Anna. While Kyoutarou is the show's protagonist, Anna is the force for change. She acts, and stuff happens. She's not powerless. Kyo sees that, and he hates her for it. She's at the top of his list of people to kill—not that he'd ever actually do it. But then she does something that takes him by surprise:
She starts treating him like a person.
Before he can say "character development," Kyoutarou is faced with a difficult quandary: he has long hated Anna, but now she has become his only ally—the only person who gives him the feeling that he's worth anything. And this happens slowly. A brief interaction here. A little comment there. It's not like his world changes instantaneously. He spends a good few episodes offhandedly thinking to himself, "Hey, this would be a good chance for me to kill her."
Of course, he never goes through with it. He can't. Because he's completely smitten.
Now, this might bug a lot of people, but my favorite thing about Kyoutarou is the way he gets a little obsessive. It might be cringeworthy, yeah, but it's believable. There's this mistaken impression that real men—or at least worthwhile men—are "cool" and don't care what women think of them. In reality it's the exact opposite: most men want women to like them, and they're willing to do almost anything if a girl shows even the slightest interest in them. It's a masculine aspect that is both embarrassing and wonderful.
This is what I love about Kyoutarou—he might be a physically small, depressive, wimpy nerd, but he's such a MAN.
Modern society has really tried its best to tear men down in recent years. Words and phrases like "toxic masculinity" and "simp" exist seemingly for the sole purpose of making men feel bad for being manly and wanting to impress women.
Well, I'll come out and say it—trying to impress women is what we're supposed to do, and it's actually one of our best features. More often than not the desire to impress a woman leads men to be courteous, thoughtful, and brave. In other words, we better ourselves in this pursuit. How is that a bad thing?
The Dangers in My Heart goes a step further and contrasts Kyoutarou with Haruya, a typical playboy. Now, Haruya isn't evil by any means, but he IS confident, pushy, and willing to use other people as tools to get to the girl he's interested in. In other words, he doesn't care much about the person, just about what they can offer him.
None of this is blown out of proportion, though. It's portrayed tastefully, tactfully, patiently. Just like the adorable romance that begins to develop as the show continues. Is some of it a little contrived for the sake of those heart-pounding moments of accidental intimacy? Absolutely. But I'm willing to look the other way, because this show meaningfully explores how a relationship can bring out the best in a person, and that's something worth my time.
Also, there's going to be a second season, and waiting for it is going to be the longest wait of my life.
Thanks for reading.
