How His and Her Circumstances Breaks the #1 Writing Rule

The number one writing rule that I'm sure most people have heard of is “Show, don't tell.” What that means is that if you want to convey information to your audience, it's better to do so in a way that isn't just straight up telling them.

Let's say you want to tell your audience that your character is angry. You could just have them say “I'm angry.” But how often does a person in real life ever plainly announce their anger that way? Have you ever been able to tell someone was angry without them telling you? What if instead of having our character say “I'm angry,” you write them entering their house and slamming the door behind them so hard that picture frames fall off the wall and shatter on the floor. Air hisses out of their mouths as they huff and puff through gritted teeth. That's usually better writing. That's what “show, don't tell” means.

But what if I told you that Kare Kano breaks this golden rule of writing, and does so with incredible results?

His and Her Circumstances (also called Kare Kano for short) is a 1998 anime adaptation of the shoujo manga of the same name by Masami Tsuda. It was directed by Hideaki Anno, creator of Neon Genesis Evangelion. It tells the story of 10th grade Yukino Miyazawa and her boyfriend Soichiro Arima learning to love each other and themselves as they try to live as their authentic selves.

Kare Kano spends the first half of episode one explicitly telling you everything you need to know about Miyazawa. She's an extremely disciplined student at the top of her class. She's respected and revered by both her classmates and her family. She's beautiful and has a radiant personality. But her deep secret is that her entire public persona is a carefully constructed mask she wears in order to elicit as much praise as possible. When she's at home, she's lazy, slovenly, petty, and conniving. We know all of this because well, the show tells us. All of this info comes directly out of the mouths of Miyazawa's classmates, her family, and Miyazawa herself. At some points the characters even break the fourth wall by addressing the audience directly. “Now I know what you're all thinking,” Miyazawa says to us as she looks directly into the camera. It's such blatant exposition. But it's also what makes this show so charming.

The difference between this show and others that break the "show, don't tell" rule is how direct they're being with the audience. When they have an entire dinner scene of Miyazawa and all her family members describing her character in fine detail, there's no wiggling around it: they're exposition-dumping. Both the show's staff and the audience know that this is an incredibly unrealistic way for people to talk. But why do this? It's so the show can separate itself from the typical third-person narrative format of storytelling. The characters aren't just talking to each other, they're talking to you. Even when they aren't literally talking to the audience like Ferris Bueller. Kare Kano doesn't want you to feel like you're watching a story from afar. The show wants to recreate the feeling of a person sitting down with you personally and telling you their story. It breaks down the wall between you and the characters, creating a more intimate feeling.

When other shows attempt the same thing, however, it feels like they're trying and failing to trick us. Instead of closing the distance between the audience and the story, it feels like they're trying to trick us into thinking that it's characters talking to each other when really it's the writers talking to us. I contrast Kare Kano's approach to certain American animated shows like Bojack Horseman and Rick & Morty. As those shows went on, it seemed like they more and more often had characters break out into monologues about philosophy, social commentary, or their own characterization. This isn't any less realistic than the dinner scene in the first episode of Kare Kano. In fact, sometimes it's more realistic. But it's less genuine. Kare Kano is honest about what it's doing. Meanwhile Rick & Morty and Bojack Horseman try to disguise their intent by sticking their protagonist in a therapist's office while their character thesis is dictated to us.

This style of creating intimacy by speaking directly to the audience is one of Hideaki Anno's specialties. Kare Kano came out very soon after the release of The End of Evangelion. An apocalyptic sci-fi show about giant robots and aliens might sound like the farthest thing from a high school shoujo romcom, but watching both series back-to-back will reveal just how much of Evangelion's DNA is in this show. The way this show has characters soliloquy their emotions for minutes on end sometimes makes the show feel like a decompressed version of Evangelion's episodes 25 and 26. And over 20 years later in Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0, we can still see the evolution of this same style. In its ultimate form, Anno is able to make characters plainly explain why people hold hands and say “goodbye” in one of the best parts of the movie.

Any “rule” of art or storytelling is actually just a suggestion. Even though it may serve you well most of the time to follow them, nonconventional approaches can also be incredibly rewarding – with the right vision. Kare Kano is a sappy, sappy show about two high schoolers having their first love while dealing with their own inner turmoil. Characters will stare right into the audience's face and tell you about their feelings for minutes at a time. They tell, don't show, and I can't recommend it enough.