I’ll admit, if we cut the first two episodes off, Nakanishi is an idiot, but a good guy. The fact that the rest of the anime portrays Nakanishi as a ‘good guy’ who actually just wants to be Asami’s boyfriend and doesn’t mean any harm also doesn’t sit well with me. It also bothers me that Yamato defends his friend Nakanishi as being a good guy, despite the fact that he’s bad mouthed Mei even before we know who he is and then tried to pull her skirt. And while there are people like this, chameleons, who slide in and out of social groups and fit in everywhere and nowhere, they don’t make for a compelling romantic lead. Even around Mei, he seems to just change to fit her mood and tone rather than being genuine. People just kind of converge around him and he puts on the face they want to see, and that’s kind of him. We don’t know if he is particularly good at anything. He is, by anime high school standards, incredibly good looking… and you know what, that’s about it. No, my mixed feelings and problems with this show come from Yamato. You know, if the story had focused entirely on Mei, I’d have been okay with that. This actually allows her by the end to help two other characters as they struggle with their own personal demons and is a nice circle to show us how Mei has overcome her own drama. Through it all, Mei’s basic character doesn’t change, but her outlook on other people slowly expands and she starts to see potential that she couldn’t see before. Mei has to work hard and want changes to happen for them to happen and even then there are set backs, failures, and misunderstandings. It actually is a fairly authentic character development and wasn’t a ‘get boyfriend and life gets better’ kind of deal. The romance begins and Mei gradually learns to open up and trust others. This ends up resulting in Yamato pestering Mei and giving her his phone number among other things but she more or less resolves to ignore him, until she realises she’s being stalked and can’t get a hold of her mother. And she does it in the fantastically amusing manner of a round house kick, that unfortunately doesn’t hit the idiot who actually deserves it, Nakanishi, but instead collides with Yamato, Nakanishi’s friends and one of the most popular guys at school. Yet one day, having had to put up with too much already, when a boy goes to pull her skirt on the stair-case, she snaps. She tries not to let the ridiculous taunts of those at school get to her. She deliberately keeps everyone and everything at arms length, save her mother and her cat. She starts out as the typical loner who has chosen not to even try to make friends having been burned when she was younger. Tachibana Mei is an amazing romantic heroine. From a plot point of view, romance stories are incredibly formulaic, and while there are a few variations on the theme, once you’ve got lonely high school girl and popular high school guy together there really aren’t that many paths for the story to take and for it to still stay grounded in any kind of manner. To understand my feelings about Say I Love You, I kind of have to point out that what makes or breaks almost every romance story for me are the main pair. It’s a story that actually deserves quite a bit of attention, even if ultimately it wasn’t one that really moved me in the way that something like Kimi ni Todoke did.
However, it also wasn’t one that passed by without needing comment. Say I Love You didn’t quite succeed at that. Every now and then though, a romance comes along that really grabs my attention and even after it is done I still remember it and in such cases, while I’m still very much more fond of action, horror and fantasy, but in such cases the romance may very well work its way into my heart and become a story that I treasure. Some to great fanfare, most quietly appearing and disappearing with little comment or noteworthiness. While not quite as notorious as isekai stories, these roll out with at least a handful every single season premiering. Love stories are a dime a dozen and in anime particularly, high school romances are prolific.
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