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Kare Kano: His and Her Circumstances, Vol 1

By Masami Tsuda (TokyoPop)
ISBN 1-59182-485-0

Soichiro Arima is a good looking, over-achieving boy who has just moved to a new school. Normally that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing but Yukino Miyazawa is already the perfect student. Pretty, athletic and super-competitive, she is the school’s number one student, the last thing she wants is some Johnny-come-lately stealing her glory. She also doesn’t want to like him. Yet she can’t stop herself and that “like” might be turning into something stronger…

This is well drawn if oddly confused and meandering school romance story in the Japanese Shojo tradition (‘stories for girls’). It’s full of the misunderstandings, confusions and little victories and defeats that define these always-evolving, never-resolving storylines. Competent and engaging for the gentle-hearted, there is nevertheless an odd quirk in this volume.

After concentrating on Soichiro and Yukino, the book suddenly diverts to another young romance; that of “plain-Jane” Koharu and cool bad-boy Toshiro Sakajo, with a promise to return to the main cast in the next volume, which means that this is a book that has not one but two unfinished tales. It’s just like a damned soap op…. oh wait… I get it…

Although not really my cup of tea, this is a good graphic equivalent to those interminable dramas that teens seem to thrive on and if that equates to more comic readers I’m all in favour (even if I am a soured old prune who doesn’t remember first love and never had a heart to break in the first place…)

This book is printed in the ‘read-from-back-to-front’ manga format.

© 1994 Masami Tsuda. All Rights Reserved. English text © 2003 TOKYOPOP Inc.

2 Replies to “Kare Kano: His and Her Circumstances, Vol 1”

  1. The manga is not my cup of tea either but the cartoon is well dubbed and remarkable for its incrediblly fast dialog. It reminds me of movies from the late 30s actually. I was shocked that I enjoyed it despite its banal subject matter.

    It is one of the few translated videos I’ve watched in which the dub is prefered, in this case because the dialog is so fast and overlaping that it is nigh impossible to sub it readably…or read it substantively.

  2. Hi Ken

    Thanks for the sidebar; I often forget when I’m reviewing stuff that the stories can exist in other media.

    I don’t watch nearly as much TV movies or anime as I used to when I was working in the industries, but perhaps I should.

    It’s reassuring that other people feel that odd dissociative feeling of “I don’t like this sort of stuff; why do I like this?”.

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