Looking Back: Myself; Yourself

Go figure that, in a show about multiple girls, the most memorable moment involves the friendship between two guys.

(Note: This Looking Back post is free of all but the most minor of spoilers.)




Myself; Yourself, currently available for streaming on Crunchyroll and also on DVD from Maiden Japan, originally aired in 2007 and was a show I watched while it was airing. It's a visual novel adaptation (with the twist that the visual novel was released after the anime debuted), and a reasonably good one at that; it can get a bit heavy on the drama, but the story works well enough and there are some twists you might not see coming.

The story centers around a group of childhood friends, and particularly male lead Sana as he returns to his hometown after some time of absence. He reconnects with his old pals, starting with Aoi (who is mainly just there as comic relief) and then the twins Shuri and Shuusuke. He then meets Nanaka, not realizing who she is, which gets her angry as the two were particularly close as children (plus several more plot-spoilery reasons). Other girls also join the main cast, including Shuri's friend Asami and the elementary-schooler Hinako. Their stories are interesting enough, as is the "main" story involving Nanaka. They can get quite intense with some of the situations they encounter, and the drama can get overbearing sometimes with the crap that some of these characters go through, but the show is about overcoming difficulties and ultimately works well with that theme.

Still, probably the one thing that stands out to me from this show is episode 11, which even after several years of watching anime, I still consider one of the single best episodes of anime of all time. I won't get too much into the details because I'm trying to keep this post spoiler-free, but the climactic event in this episode connects with a past event in an absolutely beautiful way, even moreso in that it involves the friendship between the two main males in the show. For a bishoujo game adaptation to give such attention to friendship between guys is practically unheard of, and is one of the biggest things this show has going for it.

This show was one I liked quite a bit back when I first saw it. Now, after rewatching the show recently, while it doesn't hold up quite as well as it did in the past, it's still a solid visual novel adaptation with some really good elements to it. You could certainly do a lot worse as far as such shows go.