How beautiful it turned out to be...
The Dangers in My Heart has had quite an interesting run, from a full on cringefest to an incredibly wholesome ride filled with great character growth, and moments that really dangered my heart indeed. Granted, I liked the show from the beginning even with how cringe some of it was, but fast forward to about nine weeks in, and this became one of the shows I looked forward to the most every week in the spring anime season. From being lukewarm on the protagonist, I definitely came around on him, and he became one of my favourite male characters of the season. If you want to watch two dumb, goofy characters get together in a very entertaining matter, I highly recommend this, as it’s one of my favourite new romcoms I’ve seen in quite some time.
Many of us have been a cringe teenager at some point right? Right? Come on, admit it. Kyoutarou Ichikawa, the male protagonist, is the embodiment of the cringe teenager personality. He’s edgy, a bit creepy, and wants to kill his classmates. What a guy, am I right? I fully expected his edginess to be the focus of the comedy, but he ended up being a much better protagonist than I ever thought he could be. While he is an incredibly chuuni character at the start, his edgy personality makes him quite a perceptive person, who’s very aware of what happens around him, and thus, that perceptiveness allowed him to help others, and it turns out, he’s quite an empathetic character who cares a lot for the people around him.
The word “Karte” in Japanese, refers to a patient’s medical record. If you’ve watched the show, I’m sure you noticed that the title of each episode has this word in it. In a way, it means with each passing episode, Kyoutarou is getting cured from his chuunibyou personality, little by little, and is maturing. In my eyes, it’s an awesome example of “show, not tell”, as there’s just a lot of nuance here, the development isn’t just thrown right in your face, but slowly, but surely, you see Kyoutarou opening up, talking to more people, becoming braver. The romcom genre is quite a saturated genre these days in anime, and it’s pretty rare to have a romcom protagonist grow in a very “earned”, and natural way without it being forced, so I appreciated his development a lot. Not to mention, it’s also pretty rare to see an extremely short male character compared to the female character, and I honestly liked that change of scenery. I love my short kings!
And then there’s Anna Yamada, the adorable glutton who seems to like the perfect girl to the people around her. In reality, she’s quite a doofus, and does some inexplainable things that leave me scratching my head sometimes. Kyoutarou puts her on a pedestal just like most of the boys would, but that tall pedestal slowly shrank and he wouldn’t have to look too high up anymore, though he still would need to look up at the towering girl that he likes.
The direction is also top-tier, from the first-person angles, to the colour palettes, to the framing, and the soundtrack from Kensuke Ushio, a legend who has worked on big name anime such as “A Silent Voice”, “Ping Pong The Animation”, and even another anime this season in “Heavenly Delusion”, did a fantastic job on this show as well, as it only added to the important scenes and made it ever more impactful.
From the awkward exploration of teenage love, to the heartwarming moments that left my heart in danger, this is truly one of my favourite romcoms in recent memory in my eyes, and I only hope we get to see more of these two doofuses together making some great memories.