Kimi ni Todoke: From Me to You

Review time! There is a legend of a girl, with long black hair, who can sense ghosts and if you look into her eyes for more than 3 seconds, calamity will befall you in 7 days! She is known as Sadako, the same name as the girl from the Ring! The truth, however, is far more mundane: Her name is Sawako Kuronuma, she has no powers, and is actually a very sweet, caring person. The problem is, due to her uncanny resemblance to the horror character and her poor understanding of human interaction (due to her being shunned so much), her image doesn’t change, and she has grown accustomed to being an outsider. That is, until one day, she meets a young man named Shota Kazehaya, popular at school and friendly to everyone. He seems to take a liking to Sawako, who believes that he is just being nice to her. Besides, he couldn’t possibly like her. At least, not in the way that she is starting to like him. Right? With the help of her new found friends, tomboy crybaby Chizuru Yoshida and Gal with a heart of gold Ayane Yano, Sawako begins to grow and discover more about life, friendship and love. That is, if she and Kazehaya can break through the barriers they have put up and dodge the misunderstandings in their way. Kimi ni Todoke: From Me to You is a charming, humorous and heartwarming story of a girl trying to improve and find her worth. Sawako is often the source of a lot of humor, as her unintentionally creepy appearance is a shock to her classmates and her very innocent and often dense nature makes it so she misconstrues or does not notice fairly obvious things. But this is due mostly to her low self-esteem and lack of social interaction, as she has never had friends and believes herself to be a bother and a burden to others. Kazehaya, for his part, is always kind and helpful to Sawako, and was the first to see her for who she was: Not a creepy horror movie stand-in, but a kind, beautiful girl that was never given the chance to be known. The humor is consistent and decent, so you should get a few laughs per episode. It also takes a while for the two to even get to the point of admitting they like each other, due to both their shy natures and misunderstandings prevent them from getting there. But really, that is the point of the show: the title in Japanese means, “Until it reaches you”, refers to their feelings that, though blocked by shyness, insecurity and a schewed world view, will continue to try and try, until it finally reaches, from Me to You.