The Dangers in My Heart feels like missed potential.
I want to start by saying that I did not hate ***The Dangers in My Heart***. I gave it a **7.5/10**, which is a decent score. The production quality was really good, the direction was solid, and it is a romance, which is already a genre I am biased toward and generally forgiving of.
That said, I can’t shake the feeling that this anime had the potential to be something truly unique. A lot of people seem to dislike how the show starts, but honestly that is only at the beginning. I kept thinking that if it had taken that initial route and gone in a more serious, grounded direction, something closer in tone to *The End of the F*\*\*ing World\*, it could have been incredible. A darker, more introspective story that slowly turned into a healing, emotionally honest romance would have been really special and different from most middle school romcoms we get.
As it is, the show ends up taking a much safer path. That is not necessarily bad, but it does make it feel less memorable than it could have been. My biggest personal disappointment is Anna Yamada. As someone who has watched way too many romance anime, I think she is, in recent memory, one of the most forgettable female characters I have seen in an anime as popular and as well received as it is. She just exists in the story, and the two things I really remember about her are that she likes to eat a lot and she models. We really get nothing else about her.
With a romance anime, one of the most important things is making the relationship between the two characters feel convincing. This is something many shows fail at, and honestly this show is no different. I think a lot of people root for Ichikawa because the odds are stacked against him. He is the underdog, and she is out of his league. Ichikawa is likable, but the relationship itself makes very little sense. The development we see from Yamada is abrupt and, frankly, stupid.
To be clear, my 7.5/10 rating is helped a lot by the strong production and by the fact that I like romance anime. Without those factors, I would probably have rated it lower. Overall, this show is good, but it feels like **missed potential**.
That said, I can’t shake the feeling that this anime had the potential to be something truly unique. A lot of people seem to dislike how the show starts, but honestly that is only at the beginning. I kept thinking that if it had taken that initial route and gone in a more serious, grounded direction, something closer in tone to *The End of the F*\*\*ing World\*, it could have been incredible. A darker, more introspective story that slowly turned into a healing, emotionally honest romance would have been really special and different from most middle school romcoms we get.
As it is, the show ends up taking a much safer path. That is not necessarily bad, but it does make it feel less memorable than it could have been. My biggest personal disappointment is Anna Yamada. As someone who has watched way too many romance anime, I think she is, in recent memory, one of the most forgettable female characters I have seen in an anime as popular and as well received as it is. She just exists in the story, and the two things I really remember about her are that she likes to eat a lot and she models. We really get nothing else about her.
With a romance anime, one of the most important things is making the relationship between the two characters feel convincing. This is something many shows fail at, and honestly this show is no different. I think a lot of people root for Ichikawa because the odds are stacked against him. He is the underdog, and she is out of his league. Ichikawa is likable, but the relationship itself makes very little sense. The development we see from Yamada is abrupt and, frankly, stupid.
To be clear, my 7.5/10 rating is helped a lot by the strong production and by the fact that I like romance anime. Without those factors, I would probably have rated it lower. Overall, this show is good, but it feels like **missed potential**.
Commentaires
Their relationship develops organically and completely in line with how two kids experiencing romantic love for the first time would do. I feel like you either missed, or largely ignored all the subtext, and there was a shit ton of subtext in the show, it got to the point that damn near every scene set in their own rooms was full of callbacks to previous encounters that built up just how much they liked each other and both being scared because they don't know how the other feels for sure.
Not a damn thing reserved or safe about that one, SUCH a breath of fresh air, and I would sell 3 kidneys to get it adapted well.
Super fun, well developed main characters, with tons of chemistry.
[Actual art.](https://jonahwrites.blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/screenshot-171.jpg?w=574)
So really what did you expect them to do, completely change the story?
It was a damn fine watch imo. Great characters great voice acting, animation was great, soundtrack was great.
I bet the editors at the magazine either didn't like the direction the series was going or it was getting low readership. Thus why the series changed. Even if this theory is wrong, it still felt like the series was growing while you were reading it. The mc began to mature and become more and more bold. The background characters were made more intelligent. Yamada was given more depth. The art got better and better until it was barely comparable to that first chapter. I think the anime captured that slow and gentle growth well, and that's what made it special.
I think you missed the fact that she's a big dork, which is weird because her best friend (Kobayashi?) regularly states it aloud. In the first episode she hangs out at the store near the magazine that she's in, preening for the random girls that have no idea who she is, with no concept of how weird she's being. I think in the same episode we see her making one of those sugar food kits for little kids, oblivious to the fact that kids her age have stopped making those and they are very uncool.
Despite literally being a model, Yamada rarely ever acts like one. She's an awkward, self-conscious child that just also happens to be perceived as beautiful. And this awkward girl does not remotely think that she's in a different league from Ichikawa, so I never had a problem with the romance at the center of the show. When the kids meet at the mall and Yamada sees Ichikawa talking to Hara, a plain & overweight girl, Yamada gets jealous because she does not perceive herself to be any better than Hara. I'm not a big fan of the "she's the most beautiful girl in school" aspect of the story, but a think there's a sweet innocence to Yamada and that she's so much more as a character than just 'pretty girl' that I got over that pretty quickly.
For a character whose inner monologue you never hear, and who doesn't just come out and state how she feels, I think I understand Yamada and how and why she acts the way she does moreso than I do with most other characters. That is a big positive for me.
Yeah, it's a story about two middle schoolers that have no idea who they are and have crushes that they are figuring out how to act around. It is not a show about a developed romantic relationship and I think it is shortsighted to hold it to that standard.
> We need a reason to like them together beyond just feeling bad for Ichikawa.
I'm trying to make sense of this comment, since I don't feel bad for Ichikawa. I am *happy* for Ichikawa throughout. He's an awkward kid that is figuring things out, learning to put himself out there, and that's great.
I like them together because a desire to spend time with Yamada and please her keeps pushing Ichikawa forward and developing him. I like seeing how affirmed Yamada feels by her interactions with Ichikawa, and how happy she is when she sees Ichikawa step up and show others the Ichikawa that she sees. I love seeing Yamada get smug when something goes her way and Ichikawa's internal monologue where he doesn't think it is something worthy of being smug about. I love their awkward little interactions where they're affirming that they want to spend time together but they don't really know how they're supposed to act so they just kind of make it up.
I take so much away from their interactions and it sounds like you just don't get nearly as much out of them as I do.
I think this is a 'you' problem where you're allowing your personal view to override the story.
Yamada is an awkward child. She perceives Hara as a threat, so she clearly doesn't believe that she's anything special or better than those around her. She has a middle school crush on a boy that is similarly awkward and interacts with her as the child she is and not the adult that others try to make her.
Why would she want to be "just friends" with the first boy she has a crush on? And since they are so young, it's not like there's much difference anyway.
He has those trademark Ichikawa eye rings.
Yamada is the starry-eyed underdog.