Now let’s use it in a sentence: “I wish Kyoutarou Ichikawa from The Dangers in My Heart wouldn’t stammer so goddamn much.” Dangers is a show I dislike more for its modus operandi than its objective. Put plainly, HOW it does what it does is more irksome than WHAT it’s trying to do. The base premise of a lonely boy learning to love and open himself up to others is fine, but the journey he takes to get there is just so loud, predictable and trite that I couldn’t get attached.
The show is often praised as “realistic” and I find that notion simply laughable. There’s exactly one aspect of the show that I found even vaguely realistic and it was Ichikawa’s thought process, mostly in relation to how he feels about Yamada (the love interest) and how he thinks she feels about him. We learn pretty early on that him wanting to “murder” Yamada is more of a coping/defense mechanism than a genuine desire and that he’s dealing with a lot of self-esteem issues. I like when this manifests itself through Ichikawa being timid, avoidant and unsure of himself, but more often than not it’s portrayed solely by him stammering his way through interactions with others.
I don’t know that I’ve ever been more annoyed by a cast of characters in my life. Not so much because of their actions, more so because most of them are unnecessarily loud and have incredibly shrill and irritating voices. I ended up watching the dub, but flirted with the sub until I realized it was just as grating. None of this is helped by Ichikawa’s frequent internal monologues and interjections. Let me walk you through how Dangers structures one of its, like, two jokes.
Yamada is the definition of an airhead, so she frequently does stuff that baffles Ichikawa. One of her quirks is that she’s (almost) never without candy, so she’ll sometimes dump a jar’s worth out of her pockets to eat at inappropriate times. That’s the set up. The punchline is almost always Ichikawa screaming (internally) about how absurd Yamada’s being. And that’s pretty much it. It wasn’t especially funny the first time it happened and it gets severely less funny the more the show does it.
Speaking of Ichikawa’s monologues though, when they’re not being used as the punchline to a painfully unfunny joke about Yamada’s lack of social grace, they’re the essence of insipid. Bro just doesn’t have interesting thoughts. He either just recaps what we’ve already seen or meditates on his burgeoning feelings for Yamada – which are usually already obvious. Ichikawa gets like 5 points for being an accurate portrayal of a boy with confidence issues and -50 for being a shrill, overthinking twerp.
Yamada fairs no better; she’s paper thin (character-wise, physically she looks like 2 watermelons tied to the top of a flagpole). I feel like she’s a bunch of quirks in a trench coat parading around as a fully realized character. She loves candy and Ichikawa, she models and acts and she’s ditzy to a “comical” degree, but I feel like I never got a sense of an actual, real character beyond all that. She likes Ichikawa, ostensibly, because he’s not like the other boys (i.e. not blatantly trying to fuck her). However, before long, my suspension of disbelief was pushed to its breaking point because, aside from one kind of cute interaction at the end of the first episode, I just don’t see what Yamada sees in Ichikawa to relentlessly pursue him like she does.
I get it, Professor. Yamada sees who Ichikawa really is, accepts him for it and everyone lives happily ever after. That works thematically, sure, but in a practical sense I just don’t buy her feelings. Ichikawa, due to the self-esteem issues I mentioned before, has trouble connecting with others. Yamada, the angel she’s portrayed as being, however, cuts through all of those issues with the patience of a saint and the understanding of a trained psychologist (okay, slight exaggeration but you get my point).
The word “incel” has pretty much lost all meaning, but a lot of Dangers does play out like the world’s most stereotypical “incel” fantasy. Ichikawa just happens to find the school’s most desirable girl wrapped around his finger basically by showing the bare minimum amount of kindness and personality. She’s not offput by his downer demeanor or morbid interests and is exceedingly patient with him missing her cues and acting like an asshole at times.
This can, no doubt, be approached from a lot of different angles. It’s absolutely important to find someone who likes you for you, warts and all. I don’t think that’s a bad message to try and impart, but Dangers reads almost like total wish fulfilment when it comes down to it. There’s a kind of half-assed thread of Ichikawa coming to love himself because he realizes it’s important to do that before entering a proper relationship. He thanks Yamada for helping him come to this epiphany, but she waves away any responsibility on her part and says that it was all his own doing. Nice sentiment, but blatantly untrue. For all intents and purposes, he was dependent on her to help him realize that he’s worthy of love.
Ichikawa’s backstory is also really quite tame for what he ends up becoming. For his issues, I was expecting some serious trauma, but it essentially boils down to not getting into a really prestigious school and being picked on for liking true crime. I can understand him becoming a bit of a loner but for him to become, essentially, a shithead edge lord Shinji Ikari with a fraction of the personal drama feels ridiculous.
While the show kind of drags its feet with the “will Ichikawa and Yamada realize their feelings for one another?”, it goes out of its way to put them into some ridiculously contrived scenarios meant to push their personal physical boundaries. We’ve got one scene where a teacher finds them and it looks like Ichikawa just blew his load on Yamada’s face and chest (it’s actually a milkshake or something), another where Yamada sits, legs open, right in front of Ichikawa in a cramped janitor’s closet and, my favorite, a scene where Yamada pulls Ichikawa into a dressing room at a clothing store to avoid scrutiny from his sister. I suppose my brain just isn’t rotted enough to find these scenarios as endearing or as funny as I’m supposed to. Great, her tits are right up in your face. Again. What a surprise. Whatever.
It especially doesn’t help when the payoff’s the same every time. Ichikawa gets super flustered, usually pitches a tent and they both awkwardly stammer their way out of the situation. By the millionth time it happens, I’m sick of them being so nervous. They hold hands a few times throughout, and Ichikawa’s reaction is the exact same combination of embarrassment and arousal every time. It’s tiring.
I’m genuinely happy for you if you like this show, and I don’t mean that in a backhanded way. Some people like having their nuts stomped on and some people like working a 9-5. That’s all valid. For myself, however, there’s just not enough justifying Ichikawa and Yamada’s unlikely situationship. I don’t buy her pursuing him and I don’t buy his backstory having as catastrophic of an impact as it does. Beyond that, they’re SO loud and the situations they find themselves in, while they’re intended to be humorous, mostly left me rolling my eyes.
Scores:
Art (5/10)
Music (4/10)
Characters (3/10)
Story (4/10)
Objective (4/10)
Subjective (3/10)
A lot of people like this show, and it’s not totally without merit. There are, infrequently, some genuinely cute moments between the two leads and I still maintain that, while dramatized in a weird way due to his backstory, Ichikawa’s internal thought process is generally well-realized. Otherwise, The Dangers in My Heart struck me as just contrived, unfunny and loud wish fulfillment.
