Kare Kano, Vols. 8-21

By Masami Tsuda
Published by Tokyopop
Rating: 13+

The Kare Kano manga was serialized in Lala magazine from 1995 to 2005. The graphic novels were published in the U.S. by Tokyopop from 2003 up to the last volume, released in January of 2007. The anime aired in Japan in 1998 and came out on DVD in America in 2002.

For the uninitiated, Kare Kano (full title “Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou” or “His and Her Circumstances”) is a high school love story – although it’s far from fluffy shojo. Yukino and Soichiro hold the highest grades in their class, and Yukino, obsessed with her image, sets Soichiro in her sites as her archenemy. The pair fall in love, but the story doesn’t end there. The author, Masami Tsuda, explores the inner lives of Yukino and Soichiro, and we learn why both characters have a deep need to over-achieve in the classroom, rooted in their family histories and childhood, and how the two characters change each other on a deep level by dating.

Tsuda doesn’t stop there. She builds the world of Yukino and Soichiro’s high school experience, fleshing out their group of friends and even a few background characters. Every character has a backstory, a love story, dreams and ambitions, and all the wants and needs on Maslow’s hierarchy. Somehow the use of pictures maps out the heart of each character in a way that a prose novel could not.

At its best, Kare Kano is touching and brilliant, and the characters seem very real and very human. “Kare Kano is the bible of my heart!” one young fan writes in the last volume. Unfortunately, the series is inconsistent. At its worst, Kare Kano is over-the-top and melodramatic. At times, the characters who seemed so real one volume prior are suddenly fantastic soap opera characters, like something out of Dallas.

At its worst, Kare Kano raises some troubling questions. Although it tells a very touching story of love, it is an idealized story of high school life. For example, no one turns out to be gay. No one breaks up and recovers from their broken heart. All of the couples who get together in the first 20 volumes are still together 16 years later at the end of volume 21. No one broke up in college? No one got divorced? Only one character is not paired off with a significant other – the girl who is an author of award winning novels in high school. Could that character be representative of Tsuda herself, who I suspect is unmarried?

Sometimes the art of Kare Kano is amazing, but more than one volume has multiple two-page spreads of clouds and text – or even the occasional nearly-blank page. At times, reading Kare Kano is like watching a really smart kid sleep through class. It is painfully wasted potential. It is the flashes of brilliance that keep readers coming back and makes them fanatically devoted to this series. I am not immune to this fanaticism.

I first encountered Kare Kano as anime in 1999. A webcomic I was reading made the fansubs available as RealMedia files. Up to that point I was a fan of Sailor Moon, but not a real hardcore fan of manga or anime. Downloading Kare Kano and seeking out the rest of the series was the beginning of my fandom. It was like falling down the rabbit hole.

Eight years later, the final volume of the Kare Kano manga has finally been released. The anime series left off mid-story-arc, and I have been waiting eight years to read the ending of this story. Anything would be better than the anime’s non-ending… or so I thought.

Volume 21 has broken my mind. I made the following comic about it:

Click for full view (vague spoilers)

Weirdly enough, despite being metaphorically knifed in the face, I still love Kare Kano. Maybe it’s Stockholm syndrome.

I have reviewed volume 21 below, but if you haven’t finished reading the book it is filled with major spoilers.

If you are interested in reading the Kare Kano manga in order to feel closure from the anime (and not just the manga for manga’s sake), I have provided a handy guide below. It is not actually necessary to buy all 21 volumes just to find out what happens to Soichiro and Yukino – however, some volumes are so intense that you’ll need to buy them two or three at a time.

Your Definitive Guide to the End of Kare Kano continues! Report card and reviews for Volumes 8 – 21