Boku no Kokoro no Yabai Yatsu Review: Why Does the Romance Not Work for Me?
Watch Link: HiDive
[SPOILERS FOR BOTH SEASONS]
Earlier this year, I was somewhat surprised when I saw the 2nd season of BokuYaba suddenly skyrocket in its ranking on sites like MyAnimeList and Anilist, and even now it currently holds an 8.8 aggregate score on MAL and sits at the 25th highest rated TV anime position on Anilist. The first season caught some flack early on due to how edgy the main character, Ichikawa, seemed from the get go, the first on-screen interaction being him wishing death upon a classmate for bumping into him and stating his desire to murder the most beautiful girl in school, Yamada, for seemingly no reason at all besides that she is beautiful. I’ve seen this opening heavily criticized, even by fans of the show I feel like, and it probably scared away a lot of the haters before they could jump into the 2nd season. I don’t want to attribute its high score solely to sequel bias, though, and somewhat want to pick apart my own issues with the show, both to somewhat further my own understanding of the show, and to put my perspective out there as a call to hear other perspectives who might understand the show a bit better. I actually have somewhat been reaching out to people in circles I’m in who like the show to get another perspective on it. Unfortunately, I still don’t feel like I get why it’s so beloved, and think this is a good time to spell out what I’ve thought about so far.
Now, there are various facets to the show which I feel are worth examining, but I would like to focus mainly on Ichikawa and the romance of the main couple, since those are the main reasons I have been given for why people like this show so much more than I do. To give my initial impression upon finishing BokuYaba, I had a good number of gripes, but one of the biggest reasons I ended up somewhat sour on the 2nd season had to do with the ways in which the series drags itself out to cross the finish line. In short, I feel that the series made Ichikawa realize that Yamada actually does have feelings for him too soon, and then struggles to justify not having a confession as soon as he figures that out, and so Ichikawa suddenly starts pushing Yamada away more aggressively, only to pivot at the last moment to him confessing, followed by her confessing and asking him out, all seemingly out of the blue. This is obviously the moment we’ve been building to for the whole series, but putting that moment after the point where the couple is the most distant they’ve been since near the end of Season 1 feels unfitting, and if I wasn’t so annoyed with them delaying to begin with I would probably have preferred they leave the confession for a future season. The confession should have happened in the nurse’s office after Yamada turned down Nanjou, or the show after that should have been focused on Ichikawa working towards that goal, rather than focused on the reasons why he couldn’t when they didn’t really have time to do that plus get them back to a place where the confession would make sense. With that out the way, let’s back up a bit and take this apart.
Ichikawa
Probably the best place to start would be Ichikawa, since he’s the element which I have the biggest problem with, and the character I’ve heard most praised. As mentioned before, Ichikawa doesn’t start on the right foot. I feel like his murderous intent and imaginings are extreme to a point where it becomes difficult to like him all that much off the bat. He does get better pretty quickly, as his desire to kill Yamada turns into a conscious crush on Yamada, and the edgy stuff barely exists as mere dressing for his character. This isn’t too important to discussing the relationship, outside of the somewhat quick turn from psychotic desire to murder Yamada to being in love with her, but it makes it so the series has more ground to cover to make Ichikawa actually likeable. Anyway, the first season is mostly about Ichikawa getting to know Yamada past the superficial and growing to like her, while doing the usual nice-guy things that win over her affection. And this aspect of the show I actually do kinda like a bit. It’s a lot of light flirting back and forth, and is a sweet story of two people with very different backgrounds forming a friendship, albeit one with stronger feelings underneath that friendship. This is fluff, so it’s hard to make this into something exceptional unless it panders specifically to you, but it’s also not bad. To give a bit of praise to Ichikawa, mostly to acknowledge the parts which work, Ichikawa is fairly self aware about his love of Yamada, although he questions it plenty in the first season. He knows he likes her, and in the second season states in no unclear terms that he wants to be her boyfriend. His introspective nature is probably one of the biggest reasons people find so much value in his character, since he’s basically able to explain to the viewer his development as his perspective changes. I do think that there are some issues, though, in how the show sometimes uses this framing to state something about Ichikawa, but doesn’t make it make sense outside of that.
There’s a point where the show flashes back to after Yamada’s nose was hurt playing basketball, and she was worried that it might be broken, jeopardizing her modeling career. At this point, Ichikawa clearly states that his love for Yamada is founded in an admiration for her dedication to her work. This is an odd moment, since it immediately precedes Nanjou using the same reason as to why he likes Yamada. Nanjou has, up to this point, been pretty problematic. In his introduction he insists on getting Yamada’s number, and then later tries to get Ichikawa to give him Yamada’s contact information. We get mentions that he’s dated multiple girls at the same time, he attempts to use one of Yamada’s friends to get Yamada to spend time with him, and he treats the women he hangs out as secondary to his pursuit of Yamada. The series attempts to walk back his introduction a bit by pointing out that he led the effort to get Ichikawa’s bike out of the river after it interrupted his attempts to get Yamada’s contact info, but it’s pretty much impossible to walk that back when he was so insistent that he assaulted and threatened her. In the end, Nanjou confesses to Yamada at his graduation, and Ichikawa connects with this moment, saying that Nanjou is a lot like him. Having your main character relate to someone like Nanjou is already a bad choice, since Nanjou has been shown as nothing short of misogynistic, manipulative, and entitled, but the series then makes one last attempt at redemption for Nanjou, trying to make us feel bad for him since he was injured playing soccer and can’t play despite his passion for the sport, Yamada relating this passion for soccer to her own investment in her work. After being rejected and leaving the room, Nanjou says he didn’t bring his injury up because he didn’t want Yamada to go out with him simply out of pity for him. This is uncharacteristic of him. He’s not been shown as prideful, he’s been shown using underhanded tactics to get what he wants, and using guilt to win over Yamada would easily fit that aspect of his character. The show also further tries to excuse his previous shitty behavior by having him say something he knows Yamada will hate him for, playing this kind of behavior off as intentional for a good cause. Anyway, what this has to do with Ichikawa, besides having someone worse than him as a rival to make him look better, is establishing a couple things about his understanding of his attraction, as well as to inform him that Yamada does like him romantically. His statement that his attraction has to do with how much she invests in her work isn’t wrong, and the show extends this to him seeing her as more grown up than him and their peers, but the show doesn’t really go into why he’s so attracted to her on this basis. Even Nanjou has more reason to be interested in Yamada on this basis, both being passionate about something, creating a point of connection for them. This isn’t to say Ichikawa can’t find passion and effort attractive or like that about her, even without being that way himself, but simply stating this as a reason for his attraction without tying it back to his character isn’t as satisfying.
Ichikawa’s other romantic rival is Adachi. Adachi is presented more innocently than Nandou, naïve instead of malicious, just generally being a gross middle school boy, obsessed with sex and falling in love with Yamada solely because he’s more sexually attracted to her than other girls. This is the status quo for most of the series, with Adachi ignorant to Ichikawa’s feelings for Yamada and confiding in Ichikawa about his attraction to Yamada, putting Ichikawa in a tough spot since he likes Yamada but also wants to maintain his friendship with Adachi. However, one of the final parts of the show is centered around Adachi realizing Ichikawa’s feelings for Yamada, and trying to contend with that as well as his own feelings for Yamada, and reconciling their rivalry with their friendship. This isn’t a bad way to set this up, although again it feels odd to place it in the middle of a time when Ichikawa is actively pushing Yamada away, so why is now when he notices? Where I have issues is with how the show resolves Ichikawa’s feelings about Yamada here. During their cavalry battle, Ichikawa makes the case for why he belongs by Yamada’s side over Adachi, that reason being that he sees Yamada for who she is, while Adachi is superficial in his attraction to Yamada. I would argue, however, that Ichikawa’s view of Yamada is objectifying in its own way, in how possessive he gets when it comes to Yamada. We’ve already had a few moments where Ichikawa is a bit gross in how he talks about Yamada as “his”, once during a confrontation with Nandou after Adachi asks Nandou for advice on White Day presents, and then again during the White Day double date while he’s alone with Kanzaki. We can also look back to the times where Ichikawa prevented Adachi and Yamada from interacting, which Adachi is kind enough to remind us of during their quarrel. I think that the show wants to use Nanjou and Adachi to show how men can be gross and controlling in how they approach relationships with women, and wants to show that Ichikawa is better, but he’s not really overcome either of them by that much in terms of how he views Yamada, just in how he treats her nicely. Ichikawa acts entitled to Yamada’s feelings because he believes he knows her better than Adachi, something called into question when Nandou has a similar foundation for his attraction, but which is never actually explored in that capacity. He acts like she is his alone, actively keeping Adachi away from her. Reminder that these two have not started dating yet, which isn’t to say Ichikawa’s view of Yamada would be appropriate even if they were dating, but it feels especially off-putting to have Ichikawa claim possession over Yamada before she’s even told him that she likes him. So, the show uses these toxic male rivals to make Ichikawa seem like the good guy, but I think it still has work to do before we can say that Ichikawa doesn’t hold toxic views of Yamada himself. This also gives a bit of an icky feel to their relationship at this stage of the show, since Ichikawa ends up winning without much change on his part past this point in this regard.
Dragging Out the Confession
The other aspect of the romance which doesn't work for me is how the show pads its time after Ichikawa figures out that Yamada has feelings for him. I don’t have an inherent problem with will-they-won’t-they romances. As long as I’m enjoying myself, I won’t be too bothered that a couple in a show hasn’t gotten together, and if progress is consistently being made, then all the better. BokuYaba doesn’t really achieve this, though, and part of the problem lies in the reasoning for why Ichikawa and Yamada don’t just start dating. The show does present reasons for why he doesn't immediately ask her out after he learns about her feelings, but I come into contention with these reasons, as there are some key contradictions. The primary reason presented for why Ichikawa doesn’t ask Yamada out after learning that she likes him is that she’s a model and up and coming actress, so her having a boyfriend will affect her career. The show doesn’t actually seem to condemn the parasocial nature of fans and their tendency to shame actresses who engage in romantic relationships, instead putting this out there as just an aspect of the world we live in which Ichikawa must accept. The show features an actress who has a scandal when it’s revealed she has a boyfriend, and then an actor who has had 35 lovers. This is just the world we live in.
Something important to keep in mind when we’re talking about the couple not getting together because of Yamada’s career is that Yamada has no say in this. She does not voice that she wants to avoid relationships to allow her career to advance, she doesn't say that she’s prioritizing her job over romance. It’s pretty much just Ichikawa deciding for her that she needs to keep her distance from him because he wants her to prioritize her career, and he uses the fact that he likes her for her dedication to her career as justification to keep her at arms length. This part of the show just feels bad, and backpedals on what we’d built up to this point. Now, the show wants to play with this, as well as Ichikawa's white knight act where he martyrs himself for Yamada constantly. In the final arc of the show, Yamada chooses to go on the school trip with Ichikawa and pass up an audition for an adaptation of her favorite manga, showing that she’s more dedicated to Ichikawa than to her career. And the show makes her absolutely miserable for it. In a way, she’s sacrificing something she cares about to give him something he clearly wants, a good time on his school trip, and this mirrors how Ichikawa would often make a fool out of himself or sacrifice things to help Yamada out of situations. But Ichikawa is pretty much never made to feel bad for putting himself out on account of Yamada. He’s embarrassed for some of them, or ends up making Yamada jealous, put into a bit of a pinch, but the repercussions are mostly just that, and he ends up growing closer to Yamada or the friends he makes as a result. He gets to be the hero, the one who puts her first, but when she does it, she has to hate every second of it, until he tells her that she didn’t need to do that and she should go to her audition. This is a weird double standard the show holds, and seemingly exists solely to maintain Ichikawa’s position as the “nice guy”, and as a lead-in for the confession.
Unfortunately, there’s a contradiction in the resolution. This is the arc where Ichikawa confesses to Yamada, but the whole arc is spent with Ichikawa misunderstanding why something seems off about Yamada, and pushing her away so that Kankan doesn’t reveal to the whole class that they like each other and force him to confess his feelings for her. And in the end, despite this distance created, despite the apprehension caused by Yamada’s career, when Yamada asks Ichikawa to be in a relationship with her, he says yes. I’m not going to claim that this resolution is unearned, but I can’t quite call it satisfying because we introduced a bunch of new bullshit to pad the runtime to the conclusion. We’ve been building to get here, and if it had happened sooner, either at the end of Season 1 or right after Ichikawa discovered Yamada likes him, I would have absolutely been satisfied with it. It doesn’t fit here, though. On top of that, we haven’t actually resolved the reason Ichikawa wouldn’t ask Yamada out in the first place. It could be said that Yamada is making clear to the audience (although not Ichikawa, since she keeps it secret from him) that she is fine putting him ahead of her career, but if it were that simple to resolve these hang-ups, I have to question why they weren’t resolved sooner. The manager did tell him that them dating would affect things, and she clearly cares about her career, but he doesn’t talk to her about this, doesn’t see how she feels about it or express his concerns. In fact, he tells her not to make sacrifices for him and to go do the audition, but this is followed by her asking him out anyway and him accepting as if he has no concerns regarding her career. Essentially, BokuYaba wants to have its cake and eat it too. It wants to have a dramatic reason to keep Ichikawa from asking Yamada out after he figures out she likes him, but it also wants to get them together before the end of it, but they don’t have the time to resolve things in a satisfying way for both of them with everything they’ve set up, so it ends up feeling out of place. I’m not even sure why they decided to do it here. Part of me assumes that they knew they weren’t getting more anime after this, but that would be to assume that this doesn’t happen at this point in the manga, and I haven’t read that to know.
Conclusion
Having such high expectations will usually lead to disappointment, and that’s something I tend to try and account for, but usually, when I come across a show which is as highly praised as this one seems to be, I can at least see why someone else might feel more strongly about the show than I did. With BokuYaba, however, I was left wondering what it did better than any other show of this type, and I’m still searching for that answer. This is obviously not a comprehensive review, and there are things I do like about this show which I didn’t get into here, such as the supporting cast, but the show never felt like it was doing much worth the level of praise it receives, and instead tries to have it both ways whenever it feels it can get away with it and play things safe.
