I take it back. I once thought Kimi no Todoke was just a commonly-used shoujo manga story setup with a remark­ably good pre­sen­ta­tion. Oh, it’s still stereo­typ­i­cal, and we can still see the incom­ing events from a mile away. But to take such plain story/character con­cepts and — for­get touch­ing my soul, try hug­ging and deeply embrac­ing it — Kimi no Todoke has gone beyond just an excep­tional sto­ry­telling style. It doesn’t need the scream­ing drama and con­ve­nient rev­e­la­tions of shows like Toradora. It doesn’t need the sur­real premises of KEY works, nor the con­trast­ing dark­ness that main char­ac­ters must chal­lenge in most Nakige visual nov­els. It doesn’t even need to focus on the main pair­ing rela­tion­ship like one would expect out of a romance drama, espe­cially shoujo. It man­ages to warm the soul and draw tears from our heart with­out any of those excep­tional ele­ments, with­out even the need to make us feel depressed. That, is pre­cisely why Kimi no Todoke is so pro­found in its own right: its pre­sen­ta­tion isn’t just excep­tional, it’s godly.

The setup of this story is so com­mon it feels like it could hap­pen in your neigh­bor­hood; the deliv­ery of the story feels like it did hap­pen in your neigh­bor­hood, to your best friends and right before your very eyes.

.

It’s ironic in a way. Kimi no Todoke adheres to stay within the box of nor­mal shoujo manga, but in doing so it exceeded the lim­its of not just the shoujo genre, but tra­di­tional romance-drama in general…

.

‘Friends’ fight­ing against one another for their love. ‘Friends’ plot­ting against the other. Friends stand­ing up for each other. Friends for­giv­ing one another. Like Toradora of last year, Kimi no Todoke relies on human good­ness and the beauty of friend­ships to carry the show and its mood for­ward. But unlike expec­ta­tions, Todoke’s romance between Kaze­haya and Sawako feels like merely a premise, one to bring out some­thing far warmer, far bet­ter. Of course, I may be speak­ing too soon, and another arc may present some­thing that would indeed prove the Kaze­haya x Sawako love to be hard-earned, rather than just lovebirds-at-first-sight that just hap­pens to work them­selves out.

What has most impressed me thus far in Todoke is, against all my expec­ta­tions: Kurumi. At first, her schemes were evil enough to draw con­sid­er­able ire from me — enough anger and annoy­ance for me to tem­porar­ily stop watch­ing. It took me three weeks before I con­tin­ued, and in a sin­gle episode, I some­how man­aged to for­give all her faults and wrong­do­ings. Kurumi’s actions were sin­is­ter and vile, but her story also spoke of her gen­uine heart. When com­bined with Sawako’s vir­tu­ous nature, the story really brought out the bet­ter parts of Kurumi. After all, Sawako is some­one who has such an angelic per­son­al­ity that it made one feel incom­pa­ra­bly self­ish and lack­ing just stand­ing next to her. Mak­ing real friends with her and declar­ing rivalry in a con­test of love is… no small feat, and cer­tain not an achieve­ment man­age­able by most people.

I think I’ve become a fan of hers.

I have never seen a more beau­ti­ful declaration.

After two months of devel­op­ment, I could finally claim Kimi no Todoke is worth every bit the hype it has been get­ting this sea­son. It doesn’t meet the usual expec­ta­tions, but that’s because it exceeds some­thing entirely different.

No won­der why its manga sales have been sky­rock­et­ing in early January…

Pos­si­bly Related Posts

• Fall 2009 End­ing: A Sea­son of Many Disappointments
• Thank You, Angel Beats!
• Arakure and the Yakuza Shoujo

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 at 12:51 and is filed under Analysis, Anime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.