First Impressions – Hananoi-kun to Koi no Yamai

Shoujo has made quite a comeback in anime over the last year.  There was a stretch where it seemed everything but the very top dogs was going to live-action, but we’ve had a busy run of late.  Romance is the meat and potatoes of the demographic of course, though we’ve even seen a few adaptations from other genres like fantasy.  Hananoi-kun to Koi no Yamai is very much a fastball straight down the middle for shoujo genre-wise however (though I have a few doubts about whether it’s as straightforward as it seems).

This is an adaptation of what seems to be a pretty well-regarded shoujo manga, from yet another of those studios (East Fish) that’s barely registered in my awareness.  I do know director Makino Tomoe – she did the very good Koutarou wa Hitorigurashi and the excellent romcom Aharen-san wa Hakarenai.  That gave me a fair bit of hope, and the premiere was pretty solid.  It concerns a first-year high school girl named Hinase Hotaru who considers herself completely disinterested in romance and an ikemen named Hananoi Saki whom she covers with an umbrella when she finds him sitting alone in the snow after a bad breakup she witnessed.

Hotaru is the sort of role in which Hanazawa Kana used to be pretty much eponymous, so the character feels very familiar.  Hananoi instantly reminded me of Izumi from Horimiya – and darned if he didn’t cut his hair too, as if to prove the point.  Hananoi seems to be a serial relationship guy, as much out of limitless opportunity as anything, but none of them serious.  He seems to take an interest in Hotaru partly because of her random act of kindness, but also because he senses that she’s different from all the girls who chase him down.

This mostly comes off very shoujo wholesome, with lots of selfless acts of romanticism and gasps of wonderment.  But what kept crossing my mind was the question of whether the series is playing this straight.  Frankly Hananoi-kun comes off as pretty messed up.  His latching onto her like a puppy was a bit odd to begin with, but stuff like him cutting his hair based on one random aside and taking out his earrings to try and appeal to her sensibilities just isn’t normal.  He’s way too eager to please, to the point where you get the sense there’s something pretty dark going on there.  I mean, spending hours on your hands and knees looking for a hairpin in the snow?

I guess the other interesting question is this: do I hope the show isn’t playing it straight?  And I guess the answer would be yes, because I feel like Hananoi-kun to Koi no Yamai might get boring pretty quickly if everything was as wholesome as it’s played off in the first episode.  I’m not looking for School Days or anything here, but if Hananoi is genuinely a troubled soul and the series delves into that seriously, that has a lot more potential to hold my attention.  Hotaru is fine for what she is, but she doesn’t come off as especially fascinating herself.  I do see some upside here, but the potential for bait-and-switch makes it way too early to make any assumptions about what sort of story this is.