Kare Kano

I’m writing this post from Shinigawa, Japan.  I’ve been over here for 8 days playing around, and I need to get a post in.  Today I’m going to talk about Kare Kano.  Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou, often abbreviated Kare Kano or called by its English translation, His and Her Circumstances, is one of the first slice of life anime series I watched.  Up until that point I didn’t realize that they made anime series about everyday life.  It was also the first high-school boy and girl love story I watched, although I soon realized that the mismatched high school boy and girl that get together is a VERY common theme in slice of life anime.  Other than being my first series of this type, it’s not much different from others like it.

Kare Kano is a romantic comedy about Miyazawa Yukino and Arima Souichirou, two bright, driven, high schools students.  Miyazawa maintains a façade at school as a cool, brilliant girl who is adored by the teachers and her fellow students.  She’s nice to everyone, helpful, and at the top of her class, but what isn’t known is that at home she’s an entirely different person, slovenly and a non-stop studier.  Enter Arima.  Arima is also at the top of the class, but his is natural ability rather than continuous struggle.  Miyazawa sets him up as her rival, and always strives to beat him.  Arima for his part also has hidden personality traits, including a fear of becoming like his real parents and disappointing his adoptive parents. 

Arima is secretly attracted to Miyazawa, but she’s too busy trying to best him to notice.  One Saturday Arima visits Miyazawa at home and discovers her persona away from school.  He uses the discovery to blackmail her into helping him, basically to get to be near her.  When Miyazawa finally snaps and objects they discover that both of them have a school persona that is not their real self.  They begin dating and decide to learn to be their real selves all the time.

That’s the basic story line.  The series goes into depth with the background and feelings of both of the main characters.  It also shows their growth along the way and their struggle to maintain their grades, their teachers’ respect and their friends while doing it.  There are enough interactions and side stories with the lesser characters to keep the series interesting.  Miyazawa and Arima end up with a bunch of quirky friends, and various aspects of the side characters’ lives are also played out in this series.   It’s a story about growing up, and so it also includes the growing pains of many of the characters.

It’s been awhile since I watched this series, but if I recall, although I liked the series in general I wasn’t all that impressed with the ending.  They left the main characters and began focusing on lesser characters, and then ended it without really ending anything.  Overall though, the music was decent, the characters were fun to follow and the story line was okay.   It’s a good series.