"my dream is to die thinking, wow that was fun im tired"
"thats right our lives are just starting to get interesting".

karekano: his and her circumstances is an appealing shoujo romance drama about a multitude of characters intertwined by their numerous circumstances. After the seemingly impetuous ending of the anime series i became interested in starting the manga and i dont feel an ounce of regret for what i did. from the attentively developed cast of characters to the tragic psychological drama that becomes more apparent as the story progresses especially in the few final parts of the manga. despite that, still managing to provide a lot of heart for the reader to relish in. this heart-warming narrative will take you on an emotional feels trip of love, anger,friendship, hatred,sucess, exaltation,frustration, truth,lies, hurt,salvation, greed,generosity, degradation and rebirth.

now lets talk about the main couple yukino miyazawa and shouichiro arima. miyazawas narcissistic personality is something i can relate to, she is a self concious ego maniac that would do a whatever and whichever little thing that can be done if its to deserve praise from someone and create the perfect model student image at school. you can define this personality as twisted, you could even call it admirable. a hard working person is always worthy of commendation. Subsequently, arimas stimulus is a more honest one well.. not exactly. to become more mature, to live up to the standards of his aunt and uncle, to avoid the scorn of his family he strives for perfection. However, he has a dark past bottled up inside of him that enabled him to create "an other self" within him. little does he know that sealing a box in his mind weighing it down and sinking it into the deepest part of his memory whilst deceiving others would come back to bring him suffering later on. "he" and "she" promises each other to be true to themselves after they become a couple but it did not go so well for him as it did for her. Arima confronting the darkness inside of him is one of the highlights of the manga and i think is a very engaging part of the story.

i haven't read as much shoujo romance before but this is definitely my favourite, karekanos romance takes a different approach of maintaining their status as boyfriend girlfriend rather than giving more time for both of them to actually explore their love for each other. This is a good thing to implement in the story on account of most romances that tend to be dragging their story as much as they can. also, its not like being in a relationship cant develop the romance between characters. Being a couple can develop their romance even further since your partner is the one you are most close to and overcoming trials and turbulence with each other would surely strengthen their bond. besides yukino and arima, there are other compelling character relationships, but most of them are likeable and relatable because of their flaws and the difficult circumstances or situations they are put in that we as an audience can empathise ourselves in fact of how real they seem.

The art is... not so good but it does get slightly better over time. Masami Tsudas art on how she draws character faces becomes a lot more veristic in later chapters but unfortunately with the site im reading the scans are more unseemly so im not able to enjoy it as much. there are some beautiful moments in the manga that dont require any excessive dialogue to seem meaningful such as the subtle changes in character expressions that speaks volumes or aesthetic landscapes assorted with beautiful soliloquy and i commend Tsuda for that. She also excels at portraying mental illness and adolescence despite a portion of the series being too melodramatic with arimas descent into madness though how he subjugated his dark self was satisfying so not much to complain about. the manga also delves into much deeper things like age gap romance, child abuse and suicidal tendencies. it also somehow glorifies teen pregnancy which i dont really support but i guess the characters handled it pretty well.

i would also like to take advantage of this opportunity to talk about the anime. Earlier, i mentioned how abrupt and rushed the anime ending was. Thats true but the start of the anime was really good and anno hideakis chaotic directing, extensive portrayal of characters thought and emotions and heaps of symbolism seems to fit quite well with the series in spite of being a slice of life romance. unfortunately, the studio was running out of budget and the mangaka wanted it cancelled because it was veering off from the tone the manga had. you can also see a alot of effort was put in to the opening it looked really great the ending however were just live action shots of a school or something idk i skipped it.

I would highly reccomend this to people who are infatuated with character driven stories and shoujo romance fans. The conclusion was great and just what i hoped for. its the book of youth and contains hapiness, pain,confusion and all things that people go through high school life.