Thoughts on 'Kimi to Boku no Seihantai' by Koucha Agasawa (Volumes 1-7)

Volume 1

The manga is so well-crafted!!

I love the 'motta motta' sound when Suzuki-san runs, and the 'zunda zunda' sound when she walks.

Volume 2

The story, the art, and the manga-making are all just too good.

I read 'Skip and Loafer' thinking it was a new-era shojo manga, and this work is exactly the same. It feels like there is a great compatibility between the 'gyaru' spirit and liberal ideology, such as in the re-examination of 'pure love' and male-female relationships where friendship feels more natural than romance.

The relationship between Yamada and Nishi-san is heartwarming, but the predetermined path of the Taira-Zuma hetero coupling feels a bit frustrating. It's that unpleasant feeling of, 'Oh, so you're pairing those two up in this group of boys and girls,' similar to the Mika and Mukai pair in 'Skip and Loafer.' I'm sure I'll be able to root for them eventually depending on how things go. The title does say 'You and I,' but if the work relativizes heteronormativity, it could go even further. I'll keep my expectations for characters like Sato-san and Watanabe-san.

Volume 3

It's a relief that they periodically include Hilcrhyme's 'Shunkashuto' (it's one of the best nostalgic songs for my generation).

In short, it's a manga in the same vein as 'Horimiya,' where a gloomy male protagonist (the boyfriend) joins a group of popular high school students and they have a lively youth, but I'm impressed by how it delves into what love is and the nuances of human relationships with high 'resolution,' moving forward while providing modern answers.

Rihito-kun, who can't fit into high school and misses his middle school days too much. The fact that he is already reminiscing about and clinging to his past youth while he is a high school student—who should be in the middle of his prime—has a certain reality to it, as there are indeed people like that, and it's good to feel the multi-layered nature and diversity within 'youth'.

Suzuki-san's mother is too cute. His father, too.

The Taira-Azuma story was great, wasn't it? It's good that while it seems like Taira is unilaterally 'saving' Azuma, Azuma's ability to easily forgive people becomes a form of 'absolution' for Taira (a point Taira himself hasn't realized yet). This is also 'opposite.' Yamada and Nishi-san are also opposites.

The technique of only coloring specific subjects was brilliant in this volume too. The rental shoes at the bowling alley~~

I still can't read the regular pages while imagining Suzuki's hair color as pink. I end up perceiving it as blonde or yellow-toned.

Volume 4

School trip!!!

The story of Azuma-san, who was often used by people around her because of her beauty and had bitter experiences in middle school from being swept along by them, finally opening up to the Nabe-Sato duo in high school... it was good. Azuma gives the impression of being a hybrid of Yuzuki and Mika from 'Skip and Loafer'.

The resolution of the high school life depiction is high, such as the anxiety and consultations that arise because the pace of preparation for the school trip differs by class. Like the complaints about the class representative who uses club activities as an excuse to dump work on the 'go-home club' members... In that regard, for Class 7, the skill of the middle-aged homeroom teacher who asked the go-home club for help from the start quietly shines.
(Also, I like the gal-like class representative girl in Class 7)

Nishi-san's best friend Hon-chan (Honda-san) is also a great character~~ I'd like to see an interaction between Honda-san and Azuma-san, as a girl with a strong gaze who seems to have a composed and philosophical outlook on many things.

Wait!? Nowadays, do you buy photos after a school trip by ordering online from a smartphone...?? Are sample photos not hung in the hallway...?? Do you not write the numbers of the photos you want on a piece of paper with a pencil and submit it...??

Nishi-san is too cute~~~
It's so sickeningly sweet that I'm writhing in agony over this.

Volume 5

I like the episode with the three boys on Christmas night.

If you want to share something happy with someone, thinking 'I wish they were here,' then that person is already 'family.' ...That's something I learned from 'Chihayafuru'! That shojo manga mindset.

Suzuki's mom is really cute. I wonder if there's a spin-off.

It's helpful that they do a hill climb every season (regular occurrence).

The realism of the mothers and other female characters is amazing, but Tani's dad, who asks his son, 'Don't you want to look at the graduation album together?', is a fictional father (not that there's anything wrong with that).

I love Nabe-san (Manami-san), a 'genius at entertaining herself'.

The Tani-Suzuki couple is becoming stable and affectionate for better or worse, and it seems like the story will focus on watching the slow progress of the other pre-couple heterosexual pairs.

The setting of Suzuki-san's funny face (smile), or the plot focusing on the struggles of Suzuki-san, who has to desperately dye her hair black because she's suddenly going to greet her boyfriend's family on New Year's, makes me realize that this is essentially a shojo manga. It's a work that successfully blends a female perspective—a commitment to 'wanting to properly depict these kinds of things even in fiction'—with the fantasy of liking these kinds of male characters.

As of now, the reason I can root for the Yamada-Nishi pair the most is probably because Yamada's relatable inner life as a high school boy rings true, and Nishi-san is simply too cute—in short, it's easy for it to be 'appealing to men'... (A gender essentialist binary that should be despised!)

Volume 6

Taira and Azuma... It would be absolutely amazing if these two stayed 'best friends' without dating, but I'm sure they'll end up together anyway... If this were a manga centered on these two, there might have been a chance. I understand that if they become a romantic couple, it would be very 'precious' in its own way, though...

The timing for revealing each character's real name (first name) for the first time is so well-calculated... (Though some characters have theirs revealed very casually and roughly, which is also skillful in its own way).

Finally, a Hon-chan episode...!
Her name is Rikako Honda.
Honda-san is an otaku to the core, but she's not the gloomy type; she's a 'strong' otaku who is envied by others. I'm sure there are people like this too.
Hon -> Nishi is unexpectedly strong!! This is really good...
By encouraging the reader to imagine the uniqueness/exclusivity of the 'girlfriend' (lover) position from the perspective of 'someone who isn't that,' Hon-chan gives Nishi-san a push.

So Nabe-san is a younger sister... That makes sense.
Come to think of it, there was Azuma's friend, Kawasaki-san. She's in a different group from Suzuki and the others, so she doesn't appear much, but I'd like to see more of her.

They're really digging deep into Taira's inner life.
Adding the reading 'hantai' (opposite) to the word 'koutai' (retreat). Using a word included in the title.

Come to think of it, even though this manga is strictly a school story, it's all classmates, and almost no upperclassmen or underclassmen appear. That's because they're all in the 'go-home club' (not in any club).
Also, the presence of teachers is intentionally kept very thin. Although parents and family are depicted when necessary, adults are ultimately just the background, and the story is told thoroughly from the perspective of the protagonists of their youth.

Has Nabe-san ever had a romantic experience...?
There is only information that she once hit a guy with a block in the past (the best).
I wanted to see more of the class representative with the thick eyelash makeup and two-toned hair.

Rather than the sadness of spring coming, the second year ending, and graduation approaching, the sadness and anxiety of 'what will happen after the three couples are formed, since the Yamada-Nishi couple has succeeded and Taira-Azuma is inevitable' are stronger.

Volume 7

The pace of the seasons has really picked up now that they are in their third year. I don't think it will continue past graduation, so it must be wrapping up. In reality, once Taira and Suzuki start dating, it's "the end." (There seems to be some trouble happening with Nishi-san, but that just feels like stalling to me.)

Azuma realizing she likes him is cute... I mean, she's incredibly cute, and on the other hand, it's also good that Taira is still struggling with it, insisting it's "not love but narcissism," so I don't feel like "I don't want these two to date" as much as I did before.

However, there is still a part of me that feels cold, thinking, "So it's just a story about three pairs of classmates forming hetero couples," and regarding the depiction of Taira's "verbalization," I also feel a bit of a snag: was love ever something that demanded such noble character and humanity?

I feel that as a result of trying to eliminate hate elements as much as possible to bring out the charm of the characters, and creating "perfect people" while telling a love story, the values have become something like "love ability is human ability." That's not necessarily a bad thing, but personally, among romance stories, I prefer stories that can be read with a stance like, "Love is such a trivial endeavor! Trivial people doing trivial things... it's seriously the most fun!"Mari Okada worksor things like "WHITE ALBUM 2" ... (The usual conclusion).

At first, I was reading it with excitement, thinking it was a very high-sense, new-era shojo manga, but once they started dating, my impression was that it settled into a mediocre but very interesting romance story... for better or worse.

Summary

To repeat the above, because of the unique high-sense pop style in the manga's expression and tone, at first I had high expectations that it would be a romantic comedy manga that would break through with a novel design sense, like Minoru Toyoda's work. Of course, the direction of using color in parts, typical of web manga, is incredibly high-sense and good, but as the story progresses, it becomes a manga that faithfully does very "proper" things as a youth hetero romance story for a group of high school boys and girls, with couplings forming and relationships deepening steadily. It is very interesting as a new-era romantic comedy, but... I have the feeling that it was more "ordinary" than I thought.

No, it is interesting. For better or worse, I think it's a popular work on Jump+. It's full of ingenuity to make you like each character with every chapter, and small details that make you want to mention them in the comment section, and it's optimized for that format. That's not a bad thing at all, but it was slightly off from my current tastes. It feels like a character-driven business. (I also touched on my dislike for character-centrism in my impressions of the anime"Euphonium").

I'm sorry to both sides for bringing them up for comparison so many times, but among the works currently being serialized, when it comes to "new-era romantic comedy" manga that deal with the youth and love of a group of high school boys and girls, the existence of "Skip and Loafer" is personally huge and overwhelming, to the point where I read every chapter while shedding tears more than I thought possible. Of course, I am well aware that they are "Jump+" and "Afternoon," so the genre and target audience are completely different, but when reading both works, the connection inevitably flickers in my mind. In fact, there must be quite a few manga readers who love both works. I am basically one of them, but regarding this work, I felt that the Jump+ style didn't quite fit, even though I wasn't even reading it on Jump+. You know, my body has become one that can't sincerely affirm anything unless it's a romantic comedy where they are having affairs, as if to say, "Hate management of main characters? What's that, is it delicious?" like Takako Shimura or Kiwa Irie... help me.

By the way, it's not that I like every hetero romance/youth ensemble drama about a group of boys and girls, and I remember watching the anime "Horimiya" (though I haven't read the original manga) while grinding my teeth quite a bit (even though the visuals are wonderful). I recognize "You and I are Polar Opposites" as a work that is, to describe it naively in my vocabulary, at the midpoint between "Skip and Loafer" and "Horimiya." The way each character is handled and the texture of the story is... (too abstract!)

I love youth romance dramas, but among them, I love love triangles, and I'm a person with troublesome tastes who often can't like stories that assume a fixed 1-on-1 coupling, so I end up writing these kinds of frustrated impressions. I'm sorry.

However, my assessment was just wrong because of the initial impact, and basically, I'm reading it and enjoying it as an incredibly interesting romantic comedy youth manga.

Since I'm a contrarian at heart, when everyone starts having hetero romances like this, my favorability toward characters who aren't like that... in this work, Sato-Nabe and Hon-chan, tends to rise relatively. I especially like Nabe-san. It would be even better if they didn't just place such characters as mere lively, impulsive, stupid characters/comedy relief, but still got close to her humanity and respected it.

I'm looking forward to the continuation!!

Impressions of the original manga will come eventually...