You and I Are Polar Opposites

Episode 3

So far, You and I Are Polar Opposites has done a good job of living up to its name, and the first two episodes covered a lot of ground in highlighting how Miyu and Tani's differences are affecting their new relationship. Of course, pretty much all of that has been from Miyu's perspective, and as fun as it's been to be in her head, the show could easily run the risk of getting repetitive if we're watching her constantly gush everything Tani does, so I'm glad that this week's episode decided to explore their dynamic from Tani's point of view - and from some of Miyu's friend group as well. It's a nice change of pace, and while it doesn't significantly shake up the humor, this does allow the show to flesh out its supporting cast a bit, and I'm glad to see that they're every bit as charming as our heroine.

The first half of the episode sees two of Miyu's friends reacting to the news of her and Tani becoming an item. One of them is a girl named Azuma who has a penchant for bad boys, and since she knows that Miyu's pretty into bad boys herself, she's a bit surprised that Miyu would go for someone like Tani. Otherwise she seems cool with the relationship beyond lamenting that she has yet to find the one for her. The same can't quite be said for Miyu's other friend, Taira, who sees Miyu and Tani getting together as some bizarre disruption of the social order, but not for the reasons you'd expect.

Taira is basically the walking epitome of a teenage misanthrope, and much like any other overly cynical teenager, he has a very skewed view of how relationships are supposed to work. From his dour perspective, people only couple up with someone else to increase their social standing. While he doesn't have anything against Miyu and Tani's relationship, he also can't really fathom what would make someone as self-conscious as Miyu attracted to someone so far from her ideal type, much less a person who's her opposite. It's a pretty shallow way of thinking, and if you've ever known or have been a tryhard teen cynic like Taira at some point or another, it's equal parts hilarious and embarrassing to watch him mutter all this only to finally realize that the only person who was really obsessing that much about the idea of a grand social hierarchy was him. This journey towards self-awareness also ended up being the most I've laughed at the show so far, so while I could see Taira's pessimism getting annoying if it's overused, for the time being, it's shot him into being my favorite member of the supporting cast so far. I'm looking forward to seeing more of this sad sack trying to convince himself that he's the only one who understands the way society actually works. There also seem to be some hints towards potentially pairing Taira and Azuma up as a future side couple. While it's currently a little hard to imagine how these two would work in a relationship, it does at least seem as though it'd be a fun little sideshow in between all the antics of our main couple, so I'm down for wherever the show decides to go with these two.

Taira and Azuma's introductions also lead into the back half of the episode, where we focus on Tani, who turns out to be a lot more bothered by the idea of not being Miyu's normal type than he lets on. At first this manifests in a brief moment of jealousy when he sees Miyu riding to school with a guy on a motorcycle only to later learn its her older brother (who turns out to be Azuma's exact type, so I'm curious if that might throw a wrinkle into whatever ends up happening between her and Taira), but we mostly see this with him being quietly frustrated that Miyu sees him as “adorable” instead of “cool,” since she doesn't seem to have any real criteria for what she's willing to label as the former. Tani's lack of verbal communication skills only adds to his insecurities, and being someone who isn't great at verbal communication myself, it's nice to see so much sincerity in exploring the gap between how Tani actually feels about Miyu and what he says in his awkward attempts to avoid inconveniencing her. However, while the show does a good job of capturing how much these insecurities weigh on Tani, it's just as good at recognizing that they aren't as much of a hurdle to this relationship as he thinks they are. Even if Miyu might not necessarily see him as cool in the traditional sense, she's drawn to different people for different reasons, and the parts of him that stretch outside of her normal definition of cool are also what she finds attractive about him. While this likely won't be the last time we see Tani worrying about how Miyu perceives him, this is a good enough resolution for the time being, and wrapping this up by having Miyu practically melt into pudding when Tani calls her adorable was the perfect punchline to end this on. As much as Miyu's cartoon antics helped to carry the first two episodes, it's great to see that the rest of the cast can more than pull their weight. If the show can continue to squeeze as much out of them as we got here, then I'm pretty confident it'll be able to make its current level of charm last through the rest of its runtime.

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You and I Are Polar Opposites is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.