Anime Review: Myself; Yourself

Perhaps a rarity these days, Myself; Yourself, takes a serious spin on the normally comedic harem genre of anime. For those of you that already know the series well, consider this a review, but for those of you that do not, consider it a sneak-peek. Myself ; Yourself is very underrated, so you don't here a lot about people that have seen it.

For those of you that enjoyed Happy Lesson, the same person that worked on the character design for it also worked on Myself; Yourself. The story is set in Sakuranomori Japan, however that town is fictional and modeled after Wakayama Prefecture, Japan.

Basically the town is very quiet, but it holds a bit of a dark past. Sana Hidaka who is sixteen, grew up in this town with his friends, however he left the town when he was 11 years old. Just now returning to the town five years later, he discovers that things weren't better off without him, and a lot of very bad things happened to his friends while he was gone.

At first, upon returning he is greeted by his cousin and friend Aoi Oribe, who is very clumsy and slightly annoying (to me at least). Then he is greeted by his best friend Syusuke Wakatsuki, and Syuri Wakatsuki, who are twins. Aoi Oribe lets him stay at her parents apartment complex, and at first everything is very simple and quiet till he meets a girl that looks familiar.

Turns out when that girl approaches him, and he doesn't remember who she is, he gets slapped. The girl is Nanaka Yatsushiro, basically his old love interest from before he left the town.

Love tri-angles are formed when Sana meets and gets to know a girl named Asami Hoshino, since Nanaka still has feelings for him and remembers him, she of course gets very jealous.

As the story goes a long each characters gets his or her "moment," and we're able to learn more about them. It turns out that Nanakas parents died while Sana was away, and she wrote him letters and put them in their secret hiding spot hoping that he would one day return and see them. So as you can imagine, Myself: Yourself can get very emotional, but it also has comedic moments like any other harem.