Forum - View topicREVIEW: Our Dating Story: The Experienced You and the Inexperienced Me Anime Review
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jmckenna15
Posts: 146 |
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Dating Story was a breath of fresh air honestly -- and what's nice about this show is that it seems to be part of a hopefully increasing trend of romance stories involving already established relationships rather than will-they-wont-they nonsense that plagues the genre.
Far from the characters being wallpaper paste, I found both Ryuto and Runa interesting, especially Ryuto given that he almost goes against type and wants to wait until their relationship actually develops before having sex. That's very mature for a teenage boy, and he genuinely wants the relationship with Runa to work out. We even see in Runa how much this dynamic changes her outlook on relationships. There's enough hints that her past relationships are almost transactional in nature, which didn't give her nearly the kind of happiness Ryuto has given her. It's also realistically awkward at times. Not "where did your brain go" awkward, but genuine realistic awkwardness that comes with teenage romance -- especially a romance where it at times felt like those around you wanted it to fail, especially Ryuto's friends who I felt harbored a clear jealously that he was dating a girl in a completely different league (she's a gal, they're nerds, we all remember teenage hierarchies). Resolutions to problems might have been too quick at times, but you see their relationship get stronger after each argument or pitfall and that was great. It might not have been the best romance of 2023 (Insomniacs wins that prize, Dangers a close second) but it was just nice to see a relationship be established and develop even if we didn't get the payoff at the end that we wanted. Oh and Nicole Best Girl. No Notes. |
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Jabootu
Posts: 239 |
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I love Romcoms, anime and otherwise. However, Ryuto is the sort of character pretty much unique to anime who drive me nuts. I call them Unremitting Wusses in my head, and I loathe them. They come in all brands of anime, such as often being found in the lesser sort of Isekais, but they are particularly dire in romcoms.
Look, I get that Ryuto is a completely inexperienced kid entering into his first romantic relationship, and that's even aside from the sex stuff. So I give him a bit of a pass at first for being just outrageously flustered about everything. But he never stops! Even after they've been going out for months, he about passes out shrieking if their hands accidentally brush against each other's. Don't get me wrong, I'm in no way demanding that male characters be complete testosterone-fueled Chads, but at least grow more acclimated to being in a relationship, dude. Look at Gojo in My Dress Up Darling. He gets flustered sometimes, but on the whole he's pretty mature and chill. More of that, please. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18435 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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I do agree with many of Caitlin's criticisms, especially about how the series could have benefited from more introspection by Runa; seeing her thought processes would have been interesting, and with the perspective mostly being Ryota's, it comes off as a bit of a wish fulfillment scenario.
Still, I rated this one higher overall. The series absolutely could have been more than it was, but I still appreciated the effort that was put in to infuse some fresher angles into typical anime romcom and saw a lot of praise for the realistic way that some relationship developments late in the series were handled. |
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Turtleboy76
Posts: 161 |
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I see others are sort of countering a lot of criticisms in the review.
Its a weird one, i feel like if it was a playboy going after a virgin girl, people would have been a lot harsher on the matter. Japan being obsessed with purity, especially with stuff like idols and most people under 30 being virgins, i feel like its hard to make a story like this with a lot of nuance or deeper means. We are always going to have the double standard, as like i said, if the male MC was an absolute player getting a virgin, it would no doubt be bashed as male slut shaming doesnt seem to be a thing. But considering the characters, we did get, the interactions were believable, if not a little boring. There are better romcoms out there, but there are also many that are far worse. Its nice seeing Gyaru becoming more popular outside of hentai tags though. |
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MFrontier
Posts: 13677 |
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I really enjoyed this one.
I don't think it was perfect and I can kind of see where it felt like they dragged some of the drama on too long or didn't have the couple properly communicate but overall I found the leads very likeable and cute together, it actually did a good job exploring a couple being actually together instead of getting to that point, solid use of fanservice, and had them also deal with realistic relationship issues in a natural way. |
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JustMonika
Posts: 1144 |
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Definitely a favorite of 2023. Loved every second and want more.
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lossthief
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 1440 |
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I think you're massively misconstruing the dynamic in this show here. Runa isn't a "player" or even promiscuous. She's just dated a number of people and had sex with them while they were dating. There's nothing to suggest she was pursuing any of her exes, and certainly nothing mentioning she was pursuing them solely for sex, which is what being a "player" would entail. The gender-flipped version of this would be an inexperienced, nerdy girl who winds up dating a super popular and attractive guy, which is uh...incredibly common in Shojo romances. |
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Covnam
 Posts: 3818 |
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I enjoyed this one. It definitely could be improved, but I think what we got was good. The most glaring issue for me was, iirc, that occasionally Runa would bring up "nearly being ready" a few times like it was some sort of measuring stick or something. It just felt like an artificial way to check in for the audience on how far the relationship progress was. "Ok, we're 65% of the way there!"
Still, I wanted to continue the story in the manga, but so far the manga hasn't caught up to the anime :/ Hopefully we'll get a 2nd season then instead 
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Shay Guy
 Posts: 2296 |
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Though I think the "player" angle is more common there. If the guy had a history of being pressured into sex by girls, that'd be pretty novel. |
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LoriasGS
Posts: 91 |
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I liked this show at the start but the thing that started annoying me the most was the overwhelming "not like other guys" theming. The series constantly went out of its way to tell us how terrible all or Runa's previous boyfriends were so our protagonist looks good. There's even a bit where he says he's not going to be like those "other boyfriends". If she's dated every guy that's asked her out, and we're told there were a lot of them, it seems statistically unlikely that absolutely none of the guys who asked her out cared about her as a person.
It has Runa constantly be shocked when Ryuto did normal boyfriend things like offer to pay on a date or listen to her talk, at one point she's mentions that none of her other boyfriends cared about her interests. It was doing the things where if you can't make your protagonist look good make everyone else look bad. It also feeds into the "all nerds are nice and would make great boyfriends if girls would just give them a chance and stop going after jerks" trope which I've always hated because I've known far too many nerds. |
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shonenanimefan
Posts: 2 |
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Runa's bad romantic experiences are because she is a gyaru. This is common to the "average boy gets beautiful gyaru with captivating personality" romcom subgenre. However, the hated trope that you speak of has been a dead one in shonen anime for ages. In isekai the girl often has to be saved from the nerd. See the first episode of My Instant Death Ability Is So Overpowered, or the entire Rise of The Shield Hero series. Also Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki, Don't Bully Miss Nagatoro, My Romantic Comedy Snafu brutally skewers the sort of nebbish males depicted in this trope. Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai completely subverts it: one of Sakuta's only 2 friends is a handsome, popular and socially successful guy AND Sakuta has no romantic interest in the girl that he rescues from the jerk. Horimiya was similar: a popular guy with a girlfriend was one of Horimiya's few friends. And these days shonen anime romcom heroines don't need romantic rescue: they are more than capable of taking care of themselves. Shikimori Is More Than Just A Cutie and My Stepmom's Daughter Is My Ex both depict the girl saving the nerdy boy, and to a degree so does Tsuki ga Kirei (whose nerdy protagonist was also a real jerk at times, enough to make one wonder if the female lead would have been better off with her other romantic option the track star). So with shonen anime that trope is deader than a doornail and we are all better off for it. In this "gyaru girlfriend" genre, being a nerd isn't what makes the main character a good boyfriend. His not judging people based on their appearances, hobbies, social circles or romantic pasts is what makes him a good person and by extension a good boyfriend. Take More Than a Married Couple, But Not Lovers. The nerd main character starts out just prejudiced against gyaru just like everyone else. The show has him A. overcome his prejudice against gyaru (as well as his tendency to prejudge generally) and B. become less of a nerd - replace his video gaming escapism with empathy and as social skills - in order to become a better person and by extension a suitable romantic partner. |
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wolf10
 Posts: 928 |
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Having a nerdy MC get the girl, and having the MC be the one nice guy in the entire cast (because all the other guys are absurd villainous caricatures) should be treated as separate problems, though they can both happen at the same time, which is what the prior poster was suggesting happened here. |
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Gamen
Posts: 254 |
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Nah, sounds like a different one. My Instant Death Ability Is So Overpowered is the one where he can detect danger and automatically kills the people about to kill him first because he's otherwise defenseless, along with using his power on some people who mean to do him harm soon-but-not-right-now as an example. That, or the anime has badly communicated its entire premise. Like they do. Not a good example either way since the book series ends (for now) with spoiler[Yogiri asking Tomochika "Can we be friends?"] As for Runa and her exes... My first impression from the books was that they may not have all been jerks after a quick lay, since they did usually try to keep dating her for a month or two, but they may not have known what to do after all those early steps in the relationship were skipped over. spoiler[Given that they inevitably cheated on her though...] |
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