I've got a real soft spot for anime love
stories from classics like Toradora to
trash like Love Hina there are a few
romance centric anime that I won't at
least give a shot at first if I'm being
perfectly honest I got into those
stories out of a simple desire to escape
my own teenage loneliness but as I've
grown up I've come to appreciate the way
the genre allows us to explore
characters and their relationships with
greater depth and subtlety than is
allowed by your typical shown in battle
fracas but of course the genre doesn't
guarantee good writing for every his and
her circumstances he got 20 ma Barajas
or wolf girl and black Prince's and even
among the good and great ones you'll
start to notice some shall we say
similarities repetitions and themes
setting plot lines and sometimes the
story structure of entire shows anime
that explore human relationships are a
dime a dozen a penny a dozen if you
count romantic subplots and other genres
but most of them tend to focus on just
one period in the development of those
relationships that is the beginning most
romance anime and love stories in
general are all about the chase in
hero's journey terms the meet-cute is
the call to action the pursuit of
romance creates the trials and
tribulations of the journey and the end
goal of relationship miss is the elixir
that the hero seeks and in a sense this
is fine chasing the guy or girl of your
dreams can feel like a big adventure and
it can be a story worth telling but
there are two big problems with it the
first is that it's kind of limiting by
choosing to tell this kind of story you
end up inevitably following a very
time-worn structure without much room
for variation it goes more or less like
this boy meets girl then some mix of the
following happens either one falls for
the other one they fall for each other
but don't tell each other one of them
already has feelings for someone else
or they don't like each other at all and
fall in love later they're kept apart by
a series of increasingly severe and
absurd misunderstandings caused by
miscommunication or the machinations of
romantic rivals until eventually they
both figure out their feelings and get
together or maybe they don't if it's
trying to be subversive there's a lot
that you can do to keep that formula
feeling fresh but there's only so much
ground you can really cover with it it
only really allows you to talk about how
pee
meet and form initial connections and
maybe how friendly or antagonistic
relationships can change over time into
something more it kind of ignores the
whole lifetime of experience that comes
after two people decide that they will
officially and maybe exclusively have
sex on the rigs and that's the second
bigger problem a lot of these stories
present a relationship is a state that
you attain as part of your happily ever
after which is something that just
doesn't exist in real life good
relationships are built up over years
with hard work communication and loyalty
and there's a lot of interesting stories
that can come out of that process
stories that we rarely get to see on
screen because it's kind of hard to fit
them into the standard hero wants thing
hero pursues thing hero learns important
lesson and maybe gets thing if it's
really what's best for them story
structure that dominates most media but
those stories are still interesting
there's still a huge part of the
experience of romance and there's still
something that a lot of people could use
guidance in navigating themselves which
is a big part of what makes Oda koi my
third favorite show of spring 2018 feel
like such a breath of fresh air it's not
about two people on a glacial collision
course with their romantic destiny it's
about two friends with common interests
who decide to try dating and then
gradually fall in love with each other
over the course of their relationship
and it's also about the dysfunctional
but loving existing relationship between
their two coworkers there's a lot of
nerdy references tossed in on top to
draw in the otaku crowd and to some
extent the show is explicitly about
otaku's dating but while the title is
love is hard for an otaku the underlying
theme is really that love is just
generally hard for you know people it's
just a little bit harder for otaku when
they try to cover up their nerdy nature
and day to day life our protagonists
Nara me and Hirotaka
definitely have otaku problems but their
real issues come from trying to read
each other's minds instead of being open
about how they're feeling from wallowing
in their own deep-rooted insecurities
the kinds of real issues that plague
most early relationships and a lot of
the series conflicts come from them
learning to navigate
those pitfalls where in a typical
romance anime a dramatic confrontation
might come from save the shy girl
protagonist thinking that her popular
boy crush is secretly dating her best
friend because she saw him holding her
hand while he was taking her to the
nurse's office and she's incapable of
asking her friends basic questions about
context here it arises because of things
like Naru me worrying that hirotaka is
just settling for her when he prefers
girls with bigger boobs and being afraid
to say that because she doesn't really
want to know the answer you know the
kind of real self-inflicted problems
that actual human beings have and with
that down to earth drama comes down to
earth dialogue that is honestly some of
the most authentic that I've heard in
anime not just because a one Pictures
paid the money to actually be able to
refer to real anime manga and video
games including Nintendo stuff by name
but because the characters just talk
casually
about things that interest them and
what's going on in their lives they
dance around their real worries probe
each other with questions that have
double meaning argue very earnestly
about a lot of pointless [ __ ] and
use jokes to cover up their real
feelings there's not much here in the
way of poetic shoujo manga proclamations
but there is a lot in the way of nerds
being nerds and people being people and
that makes those rare heartfelt open
moments feel really special just like
they do in real life it's not just
refreshing to see this kind of thing in
anime though it's also genuinely helpful
shoujo manga and especially male
oriented romance anime can create a lot
of unrealistic expectations for what
love is like I know they [ __ ] me up
when I was young seeing fictional people
worried about the same [ __ ] that you
actually worry about day-to-day and
getting through it can be reassuring and
can help you figure out what you
actually need to change about your own
approach to life it's especially helpful
when other parts of those characters
daily lives also line up with yours if
you're working day-to-day it can be a
bit hard to relate to some horny high
schoolers in a lovey-dovey fantasy land
but it's easy to connect with other
adults doing the 9 to 5 grind that's
part of what makes a gret schoo so
special and well it's a different kind
of show that's what makes Oda koi shine
as well it's a really good thing that
Oda koi isn't set in high school or even
college both because the high school
setting is overplayed as [ __ ] and
because the fact that only 2% of
marriages are between high school
sweethearts and they have a higher
divorce rate all but guarantees that Ryu
G and Tyga are doomed not to rain on
your pool a parade or anything like that
although the silver lining to that is
that all of those losing harem members
in every anime you've ever seen still
have their shot down the line so don't
give up on your nonsense ships tumblr
not that you need me to tell you that
how the [ __ ] is zu Taurus still a thing
funnily enough Kappa Kura and Cohen a gr
actually two high school sweethearts who
beat those odds and they demonstrate
both why so many of those early
relationships fail and what it takes to
make them work they're acutely aware of
all of each other's foibles they're not
perfectly compatible and they easily get
on each other's nerves but they
understand each other intimately and
they communicate what they're feeling
and what's bugging them even if it takes
a bit of prodding to coax out the heavy
stuff that kind of thing requires
emotional maturity that most high school
kids obviously lack and in general I
think that adults just make for more
interesting romantic leads both because
they have experience under their belts
that kids simply haven't had the
opportunity to get yet including
sometimes romantic experience and
because their lives are complicated in
ways that just don't affect somebody
who's living on a high-school schedule
life is so different for people working
on their careers than it is for students
even college students who are at most
holding down part-time jobs trying to
get along with your co-workers keep up
appearances make deadlines and just get
through the work day can put a lot of
strain on both you and your partner your
plans can be interrupted by a new
assignment or a schedule change and if
you're not dating a co-worker your
schedules can be wildly different on the
other hand if you are dating a co-worker
that can well it can get really messy
and life in general gets messy once
you're out on your own and steering your
own ship and bringing someone else
aboard complicates that again there is a
lot of fodder for great stories and
conflicts both romantic
and otherwise buried in these essential
parts of everyday modern life but hell
if you'd know it from watching most
anime you can practically count on two
hands the number of shows about real
working adults and you can bring that
down to one hand if you don't count more
fantastical careers like the space
janitors of planetís or period pieces
like rakugo Shinju and maybe that's
because the average otaku just watches
anime to escape the daily drudgery of
their modern life maybe my perspectives
a bit skewed because I don't have a
normal job but I still find a lot of
catharsis and value in the parts of
shows like Oda koi that do accurately
reflect parts of my own life and
experience and I think that value is
something that anime in general isn't
doing the best job of tapping into but
Oda Khoya Gretz KO and others slice of
work life shows in their vein
demonstrate how powerful and fulfilling
stories like that can be at least if
they're executed well and how refreshing
they can feel next to the season's 50th
show about teenagers and I hope that the
successes of these shows and titles like
Sheryl Baca before them encourage other
anime producers to take chances on other
properties in that vein because anime
especially anime romance could benefit
from a little bit more maturity and I
mean that in every sense of the word
there are a lot of potentially great
love stories out there waiting to be
told and waiting for us to fall in love
with them speaking of well actually I
don't have a segue for this but I'm
gonna be a guest at Anime Expo in LA
this coming Independence Day weekend
from July 5th to the 8th there's a lot
going on there and I'm gonna be around
the convention hall doing stuff all
weekend but if you want to make sure
that you catch me you should come to my
panel in room 404 that's live
programming 5 on Sunday the 8th at 12:30
p.m. in that hour I'm gonna be doing a
live analysis of the brand new my hero
academia opening which should be out by
then as well as a Q&A about the channel
and anything else you guys might want to
ask me about
and since ax is the place to go for live
premieres we're gonna cap things off
with a sneak peek at an upcoming
mother's basement video once again
that's happening Sunday the 8th from
12:30 to 1:30 in live programming room
five if you're at a X you're not gonna
want to miss it but if you're not at a X
you do have some other chances to catch
me this summer East Coast fans can catch
me and ten laid as guests at Otakon in
Montreal Canada from August third to the
fifth and I'll be back on the west coast
for crunchyroll Expo in San Jose
California from September 1st to the 3rd
if all of those are a little too far
afield for you to reach there is always
next year
and there's always other conventions I
love traveling to events seeing new
places and meeting new people so if
there's a con near you that you'd like
to see me at tell the organizers that
you want them to invite me and if they
get back to me I'll do my best to make
it happen
I'm Jeff through professional shitbags
signing out from my mother's basement
you