Hello once again everyone. This week I begin winding down my focus on school-themed manga series, and will complete it next week. Have you ever tried being someone you’re not just for the sake of popularity? That’s what the main character in Masami Tsuda’s Kare Kano, also known as His and Her Circumstances, did.
The main character in Kare Kano is Yukino Miyazawa, a young schoolgirl adored by her classmates for her near perfect grades and beautiful appearance. However, this is all just a facade that Yukino works hard at maintaining just so she can be showered with praise. Yukino’s real self is a spoiled and lazy egomaniac who spends virtually all of her free time studying to keep her grades high.
Well, at least she's honest....wait....
However, in high school, Yukino is no longer the subject of everyone’s undying adoration. That honor goes to her classmate Soichiro Arima, a handsome, athletic young man with even better grades than Yukino. As a result of, unintentionally, stealing her thunder, Yukino hates Soichiro with a burning passion.
Slowly over time Yukino’s goal began to change from wanting to be praised for being the best to simply wanting to be better than Soichiro. Eventually, this drive to be better than Soichiro consumes Yukino, but pays off when the results for their first term midterm tests are posted and Yukino scores 6 more points than Soichurio, putting her at the head of her class for the first time in high school.
So, now what?
However, Yukino’s feeling of victory is short lived, as when Soichiro goes to talk to her about the results, she expected him to feel defeated, but instead he happily congratulates her for doing well on the test. As a result, Yukino loses the happiness she got from beating him, because she realizes that Soichiro didn’t really care about being the best in the class at all, and in fact the only one who ever did was Yukino herself. This realization makes Yukino embarrassed at herself for putting on an act for everyone at school while Soichiro was being himself the entire time.
Yes, yes it is.
The next day, Yukino tries to avoid Soichiro, but as she was heading to the music room to pass time until school began, she ran into Soichiro. Yukino turned and began to run away, when Soichiro grabbed her hand and tells Yukino that he loves her.
D'awww....
When we next see Yukino, she’s back to being a boasting egomaniac because of Soichiro confessing to her. Yukino then reveals that she actually turned Soichiro down, because she doesn’t want to blow her cover. The following day, Yukino is at her house all alone as her parents went shopping and her sisters left to go see a film. Yukino hears a knock at her front door and answers it by kicking the person at the door in the chest, as she assumed it was her sisters coming back for an umbrella. The person at the door was Soichiro.
Please kill me.....
Yukino spends the next several days at school paranoid that Soichiro will tell everyone her secret, but each day goes by without him as so much as mentioning it. That is, until the day Yukino finally stops acting paranoid. Soichiro uses Yukino’s secret to blackmail her into helping him with student council assignments, revealing that Soichiro was also putting on a facade the entire time prior.
Eventually, Yukino has enough of Soichiro taking advantage of her via blackmail and she slaps him when he wouldn’t take his hand off of her. Soichiro apologizes to Yukino and tells her that he never intended to reveal her secret in the first place and didn’t even know he was causing her pain.
Yukino eventually realizes that she loves Soichiro, and they both agree to abandon their facades and be who they really are. Through the course of the series, Yukino begins to slowly open up and makes some real friends, beyond Soichiro. The rest of the series also follows Yukino’s and Soichiro’s relationship through its ups and downs.
Kare Kano is made up of 101 chapters that were bound into 21 tankobon volumes and was licensed in North America by Tokyopop. The manga also spawned a 26 episode anime series that covered the first 7 volumes of the series. The anime would’ve been longer, but there were some creative differences between Gainax, the animation studio, and Masami Tsuda. Tsuda was upset because she thought Gainax wasn’t focusing on the romance aspect of Kare Kano enough in comparison to the comedy aspect.
This manga is certainly an interesting one in that it delves into something not a large selection of creative works do, and that is looking at kids not being true to themselves while they are at school. For that reason alone, I think you should give the series a shot, but I also recommend it for its romance storyline.