An Actual Simple Love Story: Doukyuusei

Synopsis

Rihito Sajou is an honor student who got perfect scores in every subject on his high school entrance exam. Hikaru Kusakabe plays guitar in his band that performs at live events and is popular among the girls. The two are as different as can be, but one day when Kusakabe returns to the classroom to retrieve a forgotten bento he discovers Rihito practicing a song there are to perform by himself.

Before he knows it Kusakabe offers Rihito to meet and train with him until performance day and he agrees. This is a story of two boys who started off a simply classmates and a love that bloomed during the summer.

The Good

After all the shounen ai/yaoi works that have been released over the years, this by far is one of the most refreshing one to be released yet. What makes this film so different is on the way that its story was presented. While it did touch on certain clichés, the fact that it gave more exploration to the emotional journey of the two characters and strayed away from the usual dancing around and denial of feelings is highly refreshing.

The development of the character’s relationship and how simple it was is also an enjoyable aspect to watch. There were no elaborate love triangles, moments of jealousy leading to misunderstandings or any of the usual romantic tropes that shounen ai/yaoi works touch on. Just watching the two as they work out being a couple is highly sweet. Especially when it comes to Kusakabe’s side of things.

The art of the film is quite interesting as well, given how it was able to set a tone to the different emotional moments of the characters and present different symbolic scenes to mark their relationships. Generally, it is the little subtle moments and the visual story telling that the art gives that additional point to the film.

The Bad

For the most part, there are no highly negative moments to the film but it does have a number of cliche moments to note such as the whole teacher having some sort of feelings for the teacher or the groupie who ends up as the catalyst to a certain point of the two’s relationship. The development while nice, could have been explore more in terms of the two simply spending time together like in the first half.

While the presentation is highly enjoyable it doesn’t change the fact that the story of the two would be considered as a little too simple. The whole popular social butterfly and the loner nerd has been done before and the only difference here is how they ended up together. One factor that could have been fixed in the film is on how they presented the fear of the character over it mostly.

Conclusion

The series is highly enjoyable in terms of story flow and character presentation. The way that the characters were developed and how the relationship was portrayed was highly sweet and was one of the major points that made the film worked. Just the overall subtlety in certain parts and the way that film gives an emotional exploration to things makes for a highly refreshing work. The only way that the film could have been better was if the clichés were smooth out better.

Rating: 8.5/10