Contains Spoilers

How Can A Boy-Girl Friendship Survive is a frustrating romance anime that falls into a lot of the most annoying tropes of the genre but most especially the trope of stupid protagonists and contrived conflicts. I can’t think of any other anime that delivers such a spectacularly dense, blind, and emotionally constipated main couple. The problem is so bad that it overshadows everything positive about the anime, which isn’t much.

In case you can’t tell, this anime pissed me off, and I can tell you the exact moment I threw up my hands and rolled my eyes so hard they’re still stuck like that.

Episode ten brings together the female lead, Himari, and the male lead Yuu. They go on a trip to a sunflower festival to pick a flower for an accessory Yuu is making in order to win a bet with Himari’s romantic rival’s older sister so he can clear debt Himari accrued when she pretended to join a modeling agency and move to Tokyo and lied to Yuu about it. In case you were wondering, yes, it’s exactly as contrived as it sounds.

Throughout the entire series, Himari continually teases Yuu by pretending to confess, or trying to kiss him, or saying something sincere and sweet, only to shout “Baw-ha!” and then she laughs at him for being such an idiot. Keep this in mind because it’s important.

Himari confesses very seriously to Yuu in episode ten and says she loves him and wants him to stop looking at flowers and look at her. She thinks Yuu doesn’t hear her because he’s ‘in the zone’ but of course he does. He responds by telling her the situation is serious, they need to win the accessory bet, and this isn’t the time for jokes. Basically, Yuu thinks Himari’s trying to trick him and go “baw-ha!” like she has so many times before. A totally reasonable assumption.

What does Himari do? She gets unreasonably pissed and runs away. This girl has the audacity to get upset because the sincere clown she’s tricked in the exact same way like ten times in one season wasn’t telepathic enough to decipher her confession as real and not another baw-ha moment. She rips off the ‘meaningful’ friendship accessory Yuu made for her and then kisses him. Insane stuff, like truly unhinged behavior, and at this point I don’t want them to get together anymore. I want them to board different planes going to different hemispheres.

Of course, Yuu responds to her kiss by freaking out, being obtuse, wondering what she could have POSSIBLY meant by that kiss like it’s not painfully obvious what a kiss means. He talks to flowers about how obtuse he is, because of course he does, he’s basically a shrub in terms of intelligence at this point so they’re clearly related and it’s important to lean on family in times of crisis.

Yuu talks to his best friend ‘the playboy’ who is another contrived plot device just to sow discord and chaos between Himari and him, but of course he takes this two-dimensional idiot’s advice to heart. The conclusion?

Yuu shouldn’t worry about the kiss. He should focus on the accessory bet. Yuu considers this action very rational. Clearly, he can’t focus on two things at once because he’s a fucking potted plant, so it’s all or nothing and obviously he picks to all-in focus on the accessory and not the kiss he just shared with his long time crush and best friend. I wonder where this is going? It’s such a mystery. The plot is simply such a complex, finely woven tapestry, I simply cannot figure what will happen next.

Let’s talk about the ‘comedy’ in this anime. Loud = funny. That’s it. Full stop. Expect drawn out ‘shocked yell’ voice acting during an exterior shot of the building the characters are currently in with a shake visual effect overlay. Truly, very funny stuff. Moving on…

The biggest problem about Himari and Yuu is that there’s a perfectly good partner for Yuu sitting right there. Enomoto, the third point in the triangle, is better for Yuu in pretty much every conceivable way. First off, she never toys with his feelings. Second, she’s just as cute if not cuter (not an opinion, this is written into the plot). Third, she doesn’t give up on him. Fourth, she doesn’t manipulate him emotionally by lying and saying she’s moving to japan, wracking up a huge debt, and entangling Yuu in a ridiculous accessory bet. Fifth, she’s actually honest about her feelings. Six, they have a cute backstory together, so they have history too. Himari doesn’t have a monopoly on romantic history, people!

Enomoto is sincere, sweet, and she knows exactly what she wants. Girl’s willing to put in the effort to get it. The anime might have benefited from placing a far less likable romantic rival in Enomoto’s shoes because, currently, Enomoto outshines the female lead to the point I can’t even see Himari anymore.

The worst part is Enomoto only exists as a plot device despite being a far more likable character than Himari. Enomoto never stood a chance. Poor girl has no idea she’s only there to create forced conflict between the main couple.

How about the fact Himari straight up refuses to be with Yuu in any capacity, even as a friend, if he stops making accessories? If you were ever wondering how to make a romance in a story feel completely shallow and cosmetic, you’re not going to get a better example than this. If Yuu’s not making dangles and knick-knacks, Himari doesn’t have any time for him. Yeah, I’m convinced, they’re soulmates.

Overall, this show is bargain bin level romance and it’s three cats in a trenchcoat pretending to be a comedy. I wish the show ended with Himari and Yuu deciding never to see each other again.