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His and Her Circumstances in an enjoyable and strange journey into the realm of Shojo.

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His and Her Circumstances

The Appearance of a Normal Life

Guest Review by: Elizabeth Kawecki-Wright

26 Episode TV Series

Company: Right Stuf International

Running Time: 180 Minutes

Region: 1

Rated: PG-13

EXTERNAL EXAM

Meet Miyazawa Yukino! With her perfect looks, brilliant mind, and athletic abilities, she appears to be the most mature of high school freshmen. But all is not as it seems. The glamorous, poised Yukino is nothing but a fake! All her life, Yukino has worked at polishing her image, seeking admiration and praise for her talents. Calling herself the “Queen of Vanity,” she wants nothing more than to appear perfect in the eyes of her teachers and peers.

That is, until she meets Arima Souichiro: the boy who beat Yukino’s score on the high school entrance exam and became class representative instead of her. Furious at this humiliation, Yukino vows to defeat Souichiro. However, the situation becomes more complex when Souichiro confesses his feelings of love towards Miyazawa!

Thinking only to protect her secret, Yukino rejects him. She works hard to achieve her revenge, and succeeds by scoring first on an important test. Her envisioned defeat of Souichiro doesn’t come. His generous reaction in losing makes her victory meaningless.

By sheer carelessness, Yukino’s true personality is discovered by Souichiro. Putting the information to good use, he blackmails Yukino to do his schoolwork for him. But things are compounded by the fact that feelings for Souichiro have begun to grow inside Yukino. Now what will she do?

All of this happens in just the first two episodes. Welcome to the wonderful world of shoujo on crack.

DVD VISION TEST

VIDEO: The video quality is pretty good. The colors are nice and bright without being over saturated. The video suffers from pixilation, especially in backgrounds. The disk also has its share of jittery frames in the later episodes. These problems are minor and did not hamper my enjoyment.

AUDIO: The audio here is consistent, with no noticeable dropouts. With only a basic stereo track, there is a good balance between dialogue and music. There’s not much directionality in the mix, but it sounds good. Flipping between the English and Japanese tracks, there’s no noticeable difference in volume or quality of the sound.

EDITS: Openings and endings are done with alternate angles, so you get either the original Japanese or the English overlay credits, depending on your language selection.

EXTRAS: This disk has a nice selection of extra features. One of the more unusual extras is a snippet of filmed storyboards from the middle of episode 6. The segment lasts a little over two minutes and is quite interesting to watch. There are also character bios, which contain a good amount of information about the characters. Translator and Producer notes are included, and provide a bit insight into the show. The extra that really stands out though is the Producer’s journal, a 3-month calendar depicting the creation process of the His and Her Circumstances disk. This last extra is quite enjoyable and informative, especially for those interested in the inner workings of DVD production.

The first volume of this series is also available with an art box. The box itself is sturdy, designed to hold all five volumes of the TV series. The box design plays off the title of “his and her circumstances” with half of the box colored in blue and the other half in pink. On the blue “his” side, there are images and bits of text placed to make the section look like Arima Souichiro’s locker, while the “her side” is done in pink for Yukino. Screenshots are scattered across the box, and the overall effect is very attractive.

WIDESCREEN REVIEW

STORY: Based on the manga series by Masami Tsuda, His and Her Circumstances is a well-written and memorable story. The characters are fun to watch, and capture interest quickly. Gainax’s touch can be clearly seen as well, especially in the show’s frequent wacky moments. The combination of heart-tearing emotional drama and sheer zaniness make a wonderful show.

ACTING: Being a sub fanatic, I watched the Japanese language version first. The acting is good, consistent in quality, and highly enjoyable. Enomoto Atsuko’s performance as Miyazawa Yukino is wonderful, considering this was her debut role. Her voice is feminine enough to portray the Japanese model high school student, but it also has the power needed to express the powerful feelings that Yukino encounters throughout the series. Suzuki Chihiro, who played Arima Souichiro, was also excellent in his role. I had no qualms with any of the Japanese acting in any of the six episodes presented.

At the beginning of the disk, I found myself being put off by the harsher vocal tones of the English acting (in comparison to the Japanese seiyuu). However the language track quickly grew on me and I found myself, surprisingly, enjoying the dub. While Veronica Taylor lacks the delicacy of the Japanese Yukino, she also displays a wider emotional range in the role. This gives the English Yukino a bit more personality and character than displayed by Enomoto. As a result, I was laughing along with the English track a lot more than I did with the Japanese. I thought that Christopher Nicholas’s Souichiro was voiced far too low to be an accurate portrayal (remember: high school freshman). However, outside of that issue, the role was filled admirably with a nice emotional depth. The rest of the cast was consistently good as well, though I found the frequent use of high-pitched yelling annoying in the younger sisters.

FAN SERVICE: Nothing noticeable, considering this is a shoujo title. A couple of close-ups of Yukino’s skirt, but the images aren’t sexual in any way. The series takes place at a high school, so there’s more than the usual dose of school-uniforms, but the outfits are neither gratuitous nor revealing.

FINAL EXAM

His and Her Circumstances is, at its most basic level, a love story. It tells the story of Yukino and Souichiro, their progression from bitter enemies to a lovey-lovey couple.

However, His and Hers goes much deeper that. The characters in this show are not static; instead, they are constantly changing, discovering themselves again through their interactions with others. Take the main characters. Miyazawa Yukino, a vanity-obsessed show off, has spent all her life hiding her true personality. Then she meets Arima Souichiro, a boy who plays the life of a model student in order to please his adopted parents. These two individuals discover that they share similar secrets: that they are both hiding their true selves, albeit for different reasons. Through the time they spend together, Souichiro’s real self becomes more and more exposed, drawn out by the force of Miyazawa’s personality. Yet because of this self-metamorphosis, Souichiro must now discover who he really is, and decide if he can afford to let that person out.

Such questions are ones that everyone must ask. The fact that these characters go through real-life struggles, and not improbable situations, make them much more endearing to the viewer. His and Her Circumstances is very much about the discovery one one’s self.

One of the most appealing characteristics of the series is its unpredictability. Yukino’s emotions can range from depression to frantic panic in under a minute. Arima’s moods are mercurial too, though not to the same degree. It is impossible to tell what the characters are going to do next, but it merely adds to the charm of the show. Often, I was crying one minute and laughing the next. His and Her Circumstances is a wonderful mastery of drama and humor.

Technically, the thing that really makes this disk stand out is the variety in which the subtitle options are presented. The direct translation can be watched with a choice of English or Spanish subtitles. There is also the option to turn on sign translations, though only in English. However, these characteristics are nothing special. What really deserves praise is the way the onscreen text is handled.

His and Her Circumstances has an insane amount of onscreen text, which makes for a difficult subtitling job. However, Right Stuf rose to the task magnificently by creating subtitle tracks that match the placement and appearance of Japanese text to an impressive degree. This disk uses more subtitle fonts and colors than I have ever seen, and it is truly remarkable. That is, it would be truly remarkable if it worked properly.

I encountered this problem at the very beginning of episode one. The onscreen text (and the translation subtitles, if they are turned on) freezes while the dialogue continues. The error can be remedied by fast-forwarding ahead, or by turning the titles subtitle function off. However, I played the disk on three different DVD players, and the same error occurred each time. This problem also comes up in a couple of other spots throughout the disk, but it is not common, and only occurs when there is a large amount of onscreen text.

His and Her Circumstances in an enjoyable and strange journey into the realm of Shojo. Minor technical issues aside, the combination of comedy and drama make this series an easy one to recommend.

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