3ET: Kimi no Iru Machi

"Fuck you man, moving to Tokyo and stalking a girl is totally romantic!"

Studio: Gonzo

Director: Yamauchi Shigeyasu (Casshern Sins, Yumekui Merry)

Main Cast: Hosoya Yoshimasa as Kirishima Haruto, Nakajima Megumi as Yuzuki Eba

Writer: Yoshida Reiko (Tamako Market, Kimi to Boku)

Music: Oku Keiichi (Marmalade Boy, Yumekui Merry)


Romantic stories often bore me. To be more specific, a story where the sole point of the narrative is to get a couple to confess their love bores me. I enjoy romance when it is a subplot, something that emerges over the course of a larger tale and if the characters are being stupid about it, I can ignore it and focus on something else. This is compounded in anime, where the main couple is practically given to you in the opening credits, holding hands and nearly kissing and it's clear that the show will end when their relationship starts. But, I think the start of a romantic relationship should never be the end point of a story, but the beginning. And this is why I thought Kimi no Iru Machi could work, because it takes place well after the first confession of love, and starts somewhere interesting.

Our hero, Haruto, moved to Tokyo and into an apartment with his sister Aoi (Takahashi Chiaki). He is in the city trying to find a girl named Eba, who he had a brief fling back in the small town where he grew up. While he searches for Eba, he meets his next door neighbors, a brother and sister named Kyousuke (Ono Daisuke) and Nanami (Takao Yuki) who attend the same high school as he does. We see Haruto and Eba's relationship back in the small town in a series of flashbacks while Haruto gets closer to her in the present day, with their reunion being the climax of episode three.

"If I hide in my house, maybe he won't kill me and wear my skin."

There is a major problem though, which is that Haruto is an unsympathetic asshole. At first glance, Haruto's decision to go to Tokyo to chase after Eba can be seen as romantic. However, once we get to know him and see him do things like reject his new classmates' attempts to get to know him, we see another side to him. We see a single-minded obsession, to the detriment of everything and everyone else, to find Eba and find out why she dared to leave him. When a girl in his class says she has tickets to Eba's school's festival, Haruto practically forces her to take him along, and he doesn't even make an attempt to pay attention to her once they are there. And when he gets shot down by Eba, who is no nice girl herself, it's a delicious dish of schdenfreude.

One other thing I want to note is the visuals. Director Yamauchi Shigeyasu has always had a slightly different style of animation, and it works to some effect here. The faces are highly expressive, many emotions are expressed without a single word needing to be said. However, the low budget ways of Gonzo mean that some character movements are wonky and when I can see stuff like that, there has to be multiple instances where I completely missed it.

It's schadenfreude! People taking pleasure in your pain!

Now, if I thought Kimi no Iru Machi was going to continue to be about Haruto's suffering, I'd consider giving this show a shot. However, it is pretty clear that Nanami is his new love interest, and I have zero interest in watching them fumble their way through their feelings with nothing else to keep me interested. It's a fail. The first three episodes tell a complete story, one that I have no interest in following any further.