His and Her Circumstances, Vol. 1

Shoujo anime at its best, His and Her Circumstances is The Good Stuff.

Minor spoilers

Every school has its share of Perfect People. You know the type—always immaculate, excellent at sports and classwork, willing to help others, involved with what seems like hundreds of extracurricular activities, and constantly surrounded by adoring friends and fans.

Yukino Miyazawa is one of the Perfect People. She's a high school freshman, but already the talk of the class—lovely, well-groomed, bright, helpful, capable, talented.

The trouble is, it's all an act. Yukino is the very soul of vanity, a girl who feeds on the praise and flattery of others. She's been honing a public image of perfection since grade school—much to the consternation of her family, who think she's weirdly obsessed. For her part, Yukino can't understand how her parents and sisters can bear to be seen as average, when it's so wonderful to be adored. In the privacy of her own home, she's a lazy, grouchy slob who has no time for family or fun, since all her energies are focused on improving her Miss Perfect persona.

Yukino's quite content with her double life, her public mask firmly clamped over her private face. In fact, she looks forward to being chosen as official spokesperson of the freshman class—after all, who else could possibly touch her in public perfection?

Why, Arima Shouichirou, that's who.

Arima is also a freshman student, and he's driving Yukino insane with jealousy. He too is a Perfect Person—handsome, well-dressed, an excellent student, fantastic at soccer and kendo, involved with nearly every school club and extracurricular activity one could imagine. Arima was born into wealth and luxury, while Yukino's family is strictly middle-class. Worse, it all seems to come to him so naturally. Boys want to be his friend, girls idolize him, and to add insult to injury, he is chosen over Yukino as freshman class spokesperson.

Well, this slight pushes Yukino right over the edge. She's on fire with determination; no rich boy is going to spoil her perfect image. After weeks of study, she gets the highest score on a test, beating out Arima; her joy at the thought of rubbing his face in it is palpable. But rather than showing anger or annoyance, Arima smiles and offers his congratulations. It is only then that Yukino realizes Arima might not be entirely like her. His kindness and friendliness seem genuine, unspoiled by concerns over public image—perhaps it doesn't even matter to him how others perceive him. For the first time, she is ashamed of the mask she has created.

All this without taking into account Arima's declaration of his love for her, or the horrible day he discovers Yukino's true face, or some of the less-than-Perfect-Person things we soon discover about Arima.

His and Her Circumstances, produced by Studio Gainax and directed by Hideaki Anno, is a fun example of shoujo anime—animation primarily intended for a teenage girl audience. The style is heavily influenced by some conventions of shoujo manga—girl comics—such as pretty-looking boys, written information about characters and their thoughts shown directly on the screen, switching back and forth between realistic and cartoony depictions of characters, and occasional pencil-sketch stills and falling cherry petals at more serious moments. Some of these conventions are openly skewered in the show, as when Yukino turns up the charm and is instantly framed by roses (later, she demonstrates to Arima how she can turn the floral frame on and off at will).

Although the humor is often zany and over-the-top, His and Her Circumstances is different from many other popular shoujo shows in that it makes the effort to tell a more or less realistic story about two very believable high school students and their progression—both in terms of personal maturity and ability to love. If you're looking for flying robots, green-haired alien girls or magical transformations in this series, you may be disappointed—its charm stems primarily from the humanity of the characters, writ large for humorous effect. It may sound odd to praise a show as "honest" when there is so much humor and physical comedy in evidence, but I can't think of a better way to explain a show where the primary characters find themselves in realistic life situations and who subsequently handle these situations as would real human beings. No effort is made to take the easy, sitcom way out with puppet-like characters performing ludicrous hijinks; creator Anno respects his characters too much to make them stoop so low.

His and Her Circumstances, Vol. 1: The Appearance of a Normal Life contains two discs with six full episodes, told from both Yukino's and Arima's points of view. Options include original Japanese or dubbed English dialogue, English subtitles, and English titles (to explain the numerous kanji characters on the screen). The title- and subtitle-heavy information, especially in the first episode, often makes it difficult to keep track of everything going on. Also, this DVD package is fairly thick with data, which means most players not made within the last year or so will have trouble displaying all the titles and subtitles without choking on something. Other players may freeze in mid-episode or refuse to play these discs at all, and manufacturer A.D. Vision is notorious for insisting that nothing is wrong with their DVD mastering process—so if you buy this set, be sure to get it from a source that accepts returns, just in case. These hardware glitches are the only reason why this otherwise excellent series doesn't get a full five-star rating.

Otherwise, though, it really is anime-licious. Go get a copy.

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