You and I Are Polar Opposites

Episodes 1-2

The competition for good romcoms is certainly fierce this season, but You and I Are Polar Opposites is doing a pretty good job of standing out from the pack. I checked out a few chapters of the manga when it first debuted on Jump Plus, and liked what I read, but it eventually ended up falling into the endless sea of my backlog, and I haven't managed to get back around to it since. Fortunately, the debut of its anime adaptation gives me a chance to correct that mistake, and I'm happy to say that what we've gotten here so far has been absolutely delightful.

A lot of that delight comes down to the show's presentation, as this is far and away the best-looking of Winter's rom-com offerings. Our heroine Miyu is one big bundle of awkward teenage emotions. While the manga was pretty adept at making every single one of those emotions look as comically exaggerated as possible, the animators at Lapin Track have managed to take that to its absolute extreme. Whether she's struggling to hide how easily embarrassed she gets, or being swept up in the waves of romantic bliss, there's rarely a moment of her screentime where Miyu doesn't transform into a wacky little cartoon blob, and even when her expressions aren't laugh out loud levels of funny, the animation does such a great job of selling them that it's impossible not to crack a smile while watching this show. All that visual humor is further aided by Celeste Perez's performance as Miyu in the dub, and while her comedic delivery isn't always as over the top as I tend to prefer out of comedies, she more than makes up for it by how well she sells all of Miyu's constant mood swings. Between that and how well the dub script balances a barrage of teen slang with a strong sense of sincerity, everything here helps to make Miyu feel like a fairly realistic teenager, which only adds to the overall charm of this show.

Good presentation and a fun protagonist can only carry a rom-com so far. While the show is pretty solid on the comedy side, I'm glad to see that it handles itself even better on the romance side of its formula. True to the name of the show, Miyu and Tani are basically polar opposites, with Miyu being a loud, extroverted gyaru who has trouble communicating how she feels, while Tani is a quiet, bookish introvert who is a man of few words, but knows how to be direct when he says them. In a worse-written show, a budding romance between a quiet nerd and a popular girl would threaten to come off like wish fulfillment, but similar to how DAN DA DAN smartly centered itself around Momo's point of view, this series has made the equally good decision to frame the relationship from Miyu's perspective and it's all the better for it. With how much Miyu wears her emotions on her sleeve, it's not really hard to see why she'd be attracted to someone more outwardly put together like Tani, and while Tani might not be all that sociable, his ability to read the room where she often fails to, is a strong enough counterbalance make all their interactions come off as genuinely adorable, while also doing a lot to help sell the romantic chemistry between the two of them.

At the same time, having such opposing personalities also comes with its share of hurdles, and even just within these first two episodes, we see how Miyu's tendency to be loud about everything sometimes leads to her getting in her own way when it comes to her relationship with Tani. In the first episode we see that while she isn't exactly subtle about how she feels about him, she still gets easily embarrassed about her crush, and while Tani does manage to pick up on the fact that she's into him, trying to downplay her feelings in front of her friends (who all turn out to be completely on board with seeing them get together once Miyu decides to be honest) nearly causes him to get the wrong idea before she confesses. In the second, we see her realize that she has no idea how a girlfriend is supposed to act, and ends up trying just a little too hard to pose as a perfect girlfriend in front of him on their first date before realizing that he's just as nervous about this new relationship as she is.

With how lighthearted of a show this is, nearly all of these moments are played for laughs, but it's still nice to have these kinds of occasional wrinkles tossed in. The trend in modern rom-coms of having the leads hook up early rather than dragging it out is an overall net positive, but it sometimes carries the risk of making the main romance feel less exciting to watch. It's good to see that the show isn't glossing over the difficulties of trying to navigate being a couple, given just how contrasting their personalities are, and it looks like it should provide it with just enough tension to keep their dynamic from getting stale. You and I Are Polar Opposites may not be the most aggressively funny anime rom-com of the winter lineup so far (that particular distinction would go Tamon’s B-Side) but it is making a strong case for being the most charming, and between its great heroine and equally strong production, I have no doubt that charm will hold for the whole season.

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