This pissed me off enough that I need to articulate exactly how and why

Contains Spoilers, But Do You Really Care About That?
With every new migration season of White Storks comes a slough of anime titles that you're supposed to either enjoy or hate-watch (and enjoy) and You Can't be In a Romcom with Your High School Friends is that particular anime that takes the crown this season. Because I think this anime does something interesting that tries (sometimes) to make the thesis work. It doesn't try to solve the Harem Plague by making one girl Obviously Correct, instead it inverts the entire value system to make you fall in love with all of them specifically because the story isn't (unfortunately for the romantics, if you're picking this up you KNOW what you decided to watch, you read the synopsis, this is on you) structured around a zero-sum competition for the MC's affection. Naturally we'd know to expect the childhood friend to be the default loser; they only win when there's no competition. and so when the author pondered this trope and asked the question: "well what if the entire competition is made up of childhood friends who the story allows to get attached rather than as competing marriage candidates in a breeding tournament because that'll end the show by episode 2" what you get is You Can't be In a Romcom with Your High School Friends.

To be fair this is actually a semi-rare premise in the genre because more harem stuff are allergic to the idea that reader(watcher in this case) might not map 1:1 onto "who should win". Not being able to decide is usually failure. Here its designed as a FEATURE. Loving multiple characters IS the point. And Im not even mad at the anime because the title already tells you what to expect: "we know you know how this goes, we're just going to go our way anyways". Unfortunately, (and this is a personal preference, this being a personal review) im bummed this premise still collapsed into the Standard Harem Endgame.

The fall off starts off around Episode 6-ish in preparation for the bog-standard fireworks festival (this happens so often that not seeing this in an anime and a romcom for that matter is considered an anomaly) and shion's statement: "we're both in love with him and thats OK :)" is where things go to die because you know the story has lost its spine. You might have not been certain of how it wouldve ended from episode 1 (with little to work with and how it set up the premise) but at this point you're certain of atleast one thing: it was going to be harem with extra steps, and this is so predictable because if they were hostile or only childhood friends to Eiyu alone, it could've been some much more redeemable. Im going to pivot a bit to an akane/kana comparison from oshi no ko and their dynamic over Aqua works precisely because they're not friends, the only romantic ties being because of Aqua himself. friendly competition between childhood friends s just conflict-free conflict. its the equivalent of those sponges shaped like brass knuckles. They preemptively try to diffuse the tension with "im glad the person in love with him is ALSO a childhood" friend and effectively take out the teetch by pruning out an entire (potentially interesting) plotpoint.

Won't even bother mentioning that this isn't how 'childhood friends' act at all irl; there'd be guilt, paranoia, passive-aggressive recon missions disguised as girl talk, the entire structure of the friendship being retconned as fake, but that's besides the point. this is an entirely novel take on the genre that is a meta-commentary of the tired trope, of course it wouldn't also devolve into the same things it mocks (spoiler: it does). At this point i think im just going to use this as a launchpad to talk about the trope in general, because this anime speedruns the lot of them and sticks a physics-defying kiss landing (no joke, this literally happens lmao)

there's a narrow window where "i don't want to misread signals and ruin friendships" is understandable. but then we have Eiyu whom I believe has an undiagnosed case of brain damage because no functionally ok human being is that oblivious to cues, and the story NEEDS him to have brain damage to keep the plates spinning, and the longer it goes the more the obliviousness becomes less of "i am insecure" and more of "i have a traumatic brain injury". I honestly don't understand how one could actually be that bad at reading obvious romantic interests and end up in a harem situation in the first place.

Shio was my default pick for the sole reason that she's blue-haired (I have a personal preference for blue-hairs) and I expected her to be the first to bite the buck because of blue-hairs infamous trend of being the losers in every romance/romcom anime, after childhood friends that is. unfortunately I found myself endeared to Akari too after Episode 2, which likely stemmed from how braindead our mc seemed to be towards her advances that my empathy became admiration with just how simultaneously determined and repellant she was, which makes scenarios where she takes action such as in Episode 6 where Eiyu and Akari have to share a room after being left behind on a trip much more satisfying. she initiates physical contact (high risk), he reciprocates (mutual escalation confirmed), girl verbally confesses (I love you), mc hears it correctly and then selectively applies genre literacy, like you'd expect someone who read romcoms peppered with these known tropes to clock immediately that Akari gave off massive tsundere energy to conceal her romantic interest.

And Eiyu goes on to flex just how dense he could possibly be when the girls force a binary choice scenario at the fireworks event, a choice that cannot be evaded and his next reaction is "this has to be a prank"?? Like what exact prank does he think this is? "haha we made you pick a location, gottem"? what's the punchline he's imagining? they're going to jump out and go "PSYCH you thought we had romantic interest but we actually wanted to see if you know basic navigation"?? the girls have done everything except literally write "THIS IS A ROMANTIC DECISION POINT" on a giant posterboard and he's treating it like some elaborate bit.

Runa was the point where I felt the author lost control of the premise though. Why? She's kryptonite to this kind of story because the shortcuts all the will-they-wont-they drama and is honest about her feelings day 1, and so Eiyu can't deploy his "but what if im misunderstanding" shield, so the story has to either 1. let her win (collapses the harem) 2. have him explicitly reject her (requires actual character development) 3. sideline her into irrelevance (what happened). and they picked 3 because its the only one that preserves the status quo without actually forcing narrative progression. this story only works if everyone's a coward and so it cannot handle a girl with agency. and it doesn't help that Eiyu's argument is "she's like a sister to me" and the others aren't? Or the fact that they treat Runa like a child when she's just a year younger?

The worst of the bunch has to be Haru who was not only introduced too late to matter, but feels like a very obvious commercial mandate. a tomboy for demographic coverage and a useful Narrative Function where she tells Eiyu straight that if he's not able to make a decision he risks losing ALL his "precious childhood friends" and then oh she's too competent, make her fall for him too so she stops threatening the equilibrium. And its particularly sad because the anime was meta-aware from the beginning and it fell off in the worst possible way because the story started by saying "we know this genre is bs" and concludes with "but we're gonna do it anyways because we ran out of ideas".

Eiyu pulls the "you're all precious to me :)" multiple times, trying to avoid a romcom while also obsessing over the idea of one, avoids the explicit warning of "if you don't choose you'll lose them all" and then calls it "how Real Life works". And then it ends where the story simulates a choice for narrative closure but cannot commit so it does this weird ritual where the answer is "I refuse to choose" and ends up being a harem anime anyways. Huh... so childhood friends still lost anyways, but they're ok with the quasi-romance so its cool I guess?

This anime tried to subvert the genre and got consumed by it, which if you look at it is particularly on brand for what it tries to do. its a trashy romcom that shows how every compromise, cowardly pivot, every moment showed a bit of commercial pressure that made the story rot from the inside out.

Now in spite of all of what I've said about it, its (mostly) an enjoyable watch if you're a veteran of the genre and you know what to expect. Now why did I go off several paragraphs on what is otherwise a mediocre anime at best? Because my brain needed closure on time wasted and a review is how I get it