Bringing Yandere Down to Earth with "Koharu no Hibi"

The perfect mask of sanity here

A year back, I did a review for an interesting little romantic comedy manga called Koharu no Hibi.  You’re free to swing by and revisit that if you want, but it goes without saying that this queer story of an abominable suitor and the unlucky target of her affections was quite the pleasant surprise, despite the premise initially reeking of a rather stale plotline all-too familiar in the anime world.  Let's be honest - we all know who yandere is; she (and it's almost always a she) is the blank-eyed weirdo creeping outside the window of her unsuspecting target, keeping tabs on his every action and interaction.  Undeniably cute, she's as likely to be a "benign" stalker, as to start every sentence with "If I can't have you...!"  She's also, to be frank, a cheap character type, whose luster had long since worn off due to overuse.  But Koharu was different; what saved it from the bog-standard refuse bin stuffers was the way it sculpted its eponymous female lead. Though the “yandere in love” trope is practically a staple in many features, Koharu departed from the usual script in a number of ways - all of which chipped away at the walls around the archetype that serve to obscure and mystify it, bringing it a little closer to home.

Keeping it “Real”

For one, the series setting is kept low-key and firmly in the real world.  Harem comedies and pessimistic Sci-Fi thrillers are a yandere’s natural habitats - environments that don’t exactly gel with most people’s lived experiences.  Seeing a psycho love freak fire off a giant laser cannon, or dive head-first into a suitor dogpile, is clearly awesome to behold, but hardly stirs fond connections with everyday life.  But Koharu no Hibi’s blasé, after school groove convinced me that, despite its endemic situational weirdness, all of this really could happen; these people, exaggerated and fictionalized as they are, just might exist in some place, though the outcome of such a toxic relationship might pan out in a very different way.  The real clincher is how keeping the setting grounded helped narrow our focus on the characters, making Koharu's antics - humdrum compared to most anime yanderes - look more disturbing as a result.

Maybe Autism - Maybe Just Crazy

But it’s not just the setting - Koharu’s “condition” itself is treated in a rather banal fashion.  To really appreciate this, you have to examine how the anime yandere is usually approached.  Depending on the angle, she could be perfectly reasonable in the right contexts, or totally bat-guano insane at all times; her craziness can be understated and focused only on immediate challenges to her “love,” or blare out at full blast indiscriminately in every direction.  But rarely is the character played with any hint to an underlying disorder - a little reality injected in the psychosis.  True, her off-the-wall lunacy makes her a lot more bearable to the audience - just try to count all the fans who claim they’d “love” to have a yandere girlfriend.  But this suspension of disbelief can easily veer into the absurd, losing all connection to a real human being and morphing into a stock type of the most obnoxious variety.  Koharu largely avoids that; while the possible psychosis underlying her personality isn’t explored in depth, her generally obsessive behavior, among other traits, seem to place her somewhere along “the spectrum.”  That might be reaching beyond what the story’s giving us, but I don’t think it’s too farfetched, and even then, her lack of empathy and “handicapped” ability to connect with others is refreshingly down-to-earth.  

Wait - She Did WHAT!?

But the best thing about Koharu’s particular case of muted madness is the reaction it draws from everyone around her - especially her hapless “bae,” Akira.  I already sung (or hummed, in either case) this guy’s praises in the review for departing from the standard setting protagonist on a number of counts, but most relevant here is how he does NOT take Koharu’s shit lying down.  I don’t mean in the constantly scared-shitless way, like certain other characters around their demented love interests.  Akira isn’t afraid to confront Koharu on her weirdness when she gets out of hand, and constantly evaluates both the depth and extent of her possible threat to others.  Not that he doesn’t get a little terrified of her, mind you; any normal man in that situation should be checking over his shoulder every hour or so, just in case she decides to surprise him with another expression of her “love.”  But that’s exactly the point.  Akira is a normal man, in a relatively normal setting, dealing with a girl whom, while obviously one crow short of a murder, isn’t gaudy or exceptional in any way.  I still have a hard time joining this wonderfully mundane interpretation of the yandere romance with its hurried conclusion, but overall it presents a nice model for anyone trying to deconstruct the ”my crazy girlfriend” handle in a sane manner.

Manga review: Koharu no Hibi

(WARNING:  This review/analysis contains spoilers.  You have been warned)

Koharu no Hibi

Created by: OOSHIRO Youkou

Completed: 2012

Boredom can sometimes sprout into a pleasant serendipity.  I discovered this little gem over the weekend when my life raised objections to my desires to see, well, any movie I wanted, really.  Errands, car troubles, family visits, and general burnout put a beating on me for just about three weeks straight.  So in response, I hit the Internet, not searching for anything in particular - perhaps just my next review - when somehow, someway, I landed before this: Koharu no Hibi, what promised to be a highly unconventional romance.

Plot Synopsis

Torii Akira (your typical Ordinary High School Student protagonist) was heading home on the subway when he suddenly catches a young underclassman as she tripped.  He helped her with her books - to her profuse gratitude - and promptly went home, thinking nothing more of it.  The next day, said underclassman - a small, impossibly adorable girl named Mutsuki Koharu - was waiting for him by the school gate.  She continues to lavish praise and attention on him, to which he’s initially quite pleased...until he catches her after school having an intimate, spit-swapping make-out session - with his flute.  While he’s understandably freaked out, his abnormal admirer seems fully unperturbed; in fact, she uses this awkward moment as an opportunity to confess her feelings...all while Akira’s backed against the class wall with the look of a bleeding seal facing down a Great White.  Unfortunately, what should be an easy “No Deal!” for any normal guy gets complicated by Akira’s confusion/curiosity, and the meddling of Natsuki, a childhood friend who is hell bent on hooking the two of them up.  And so begins Akira’s long and troubling courtship with a most unusual - and enthusiastic - devotee.

Story

This manga is quite the strange egg, I must admit; much like its leading lady, you’re never quite sure how you’re supposed to feel, and often find yourself surprised even when you know, deep down, you shouldn’t be.  While in the end  there’s nothing exceptionally groundbreaking going on here, you get the feeling very early on that you’re reading something quite unlike both your typical rom-com manga, and your typical “crazy-stalker-girl-with-obsessive-crush” manga.  (Don’t believe that’s an expansive genre?  Scour the backwaters of the anime/manga torrent - trust me, it’ll leave you enlightened and terrified.)  The first half is mainly devoted to building on this odd couple’s “relationship,” which relies heavily on the likability of its two leads and the masochistic push and pull that binds them.  Akira is fairly typical as your romantic “hero” in this setting - not much in the way of back story, and his personality pretty much surmounts to “spastic reaction” to Koharu’s craziness.  Still, he’s likable enough, and has a bit more fire than you’d expect; I got a sick little thrill seeing him doll out the physical punishment to other characters, rather than the other way around as is the usual case.  But honestly, we’re not here for him; his purpose is to serve as audience proxy for the antics of the titular character, who is the real star of the show.  Koharu blends sweetness and an unshakable devotion to Akira, with a bizarre and downright creepy thought process that’s eerily close to how stalkers actually think.  She seems so oblivious to how her actions come across to others that it makes you wonder if there’s a real-life psychological condition underlying her obsessive behavior, which ranges from the mildly strange to beyond creepy.  This whole setup works because, unlike most protagonists in similar manga, Akira is aware of how totally not alright any of this is.  Whenever Koharu does something over the top - like making a bento lunch and informing him that she stuffed it full of her “love,” or trying to glue their hands together so as to make a special moment during a date last forever - Akira freaks out as any normal person would, and his fear is played completely straight.  Yet he, like us, keeps getting back up for another round - drawn in, perhaps, by curiosity, but more so (I suspect) by a sense of social duty; you get the feeling he’s doing society at large a favor by being the lightning rod for this wacko’s affections.  It’s all so hilariously creepy that you immediately feel bad the moment you catch yourself laughing out loud - which, for me at least, was more often than I’d care to admit.

Of course, the story does have its weaknesses; the rest of the cast, for instance, had little more than wire-frame personalities at best.  And while the second half of the series starts off with a bang by introducing Mika, another childhood friend of Akira’s/rival for his affection who eventually kicks Koharu’s previously mild displays of insanity into truly troubling depths, this particular storyline ends up going nowhere special.  While Mika herself is a fun, pleasant little addition, almost immediately deconstructing Koharu’s inane thinking behind her “love” at first sight, and steering the story towards what appeared to be a tense and nail-biting climax, the arc in which she appeared came to an astoundingly lame conclusion, one that smacked of an oddly enforced status quo.  It’s almost as if the mangaka ran out of steam or ideas towards the end, and while the last 5 or so chapters were no less enjoyable than, say, the ones in the first half, after the tense high point just a few chapters earlier, the manga ended in a tragically anticlimactic fashion.  Rating: 8/10

Art

While Koharu no Hibi’s story is fresh and interesting, its artwork is really nothing to write home about.  Much of the generic manga flare and techniques are on full display here, which to its credit grants it no disservice, but the only thing of note really is Koharu herself, whose huge, round eyes blotted with crystalline detail raise her a notch above the "generic cuteness" scale.  It’s a wonder what OOSHIRO Youkou accomplished with just her eyes alone; while her expressions generally don’t vary much over the course of the manga, watching her eyes lose their prismatic sheen and either dull out of unhappiness, or sharpen to monochromic intensity in the presence of Mika, opened a clear window to her disturbed psyche, and can be quite unsettling at the right moments.  Unfortunately, the remaining cast (skeletal as it is) share Koharu’s muted emotions, but possessed no vehicle to express them with; Akira, Natsuki, and even Mika are all generic and plain-looking, like they were pulled from a big list of manga visual archetypes with little or no embellishment, and in all honesty, Koharu sticks out like a sore, psychotic thumb whenever she's with them as a result.   Rather, OOSHIRO Youkou’s strength is in his reactions and emotion shots.  As mentioned above, most of this manga’s unsettling humor draws from Akira’s responses to Koharu’s craziness, and if the fear wasn’t written so vividly on his face whenever she had him cornered, it wouldn’t have been nearly as effective.  Mika really takes the cake and runs with it, though; she’s the only one besides Akira who sees Koharu for the disturbing nutcase she is, and the culmination of their conflict - which to me is the climax of the story, rest of the manga be damned - leaves Mika believably horrified when Koharu...well, you just have to read it to really understand.  Still, much like the story itself, the artwork slides into decay for the last few chapters, which is a sure sign yet again that the creator really let things go towards the end.  Rating: 6/10

Despite some last minute laziness, this short little series was fun, funny, and leaves you with quite a bit food for thought, if you’re willing to “go there” with its uncommon interpretation of a wacky yandere plot.  Total: 14/20 = C+