Kimi ni Todoke – Chapter 60

Don't worry, she's kidding.

There’s only so long you can stay completely innocent for. You don’t have to become a worse person, but eventually, you do have to grow some maturity. Having been a Kimi ni Todoke fan for some time now, I’ve started to notice certain changes have been occurring in the series. Things have slowly been getting more dramatic and sad, and while the cuteness of the beginning is still around, it hasn’t been quite as grandiose. Even the humour has been getting more mature, as you can plainly see. I thought it was strange at first when Kazehaya’s little brother lamented that Sawako’s boobs weren’t bigger, but somehow that stopped being strange over time. It’s as though the series has started to show its age, and everyone in it has followed suit.

There was a question I always used to ask myself: has Sawako ever been given the sex talk? You would expect it to have happened at some point, but it’s hard to picture, isn’t it? I’m not saying she’s completely clueless about sex, but she never seems to think about it in any serious way. Nowadays, I wouldn’t be surprised if those sort of thoughts did enter her head, but she still seems to have a hard time relating them to her boyfriend. Remember that her idea of a dirty dream is merely kissing Kazehaya.

I didn’t mind the the fact that Sawako and Kazehaya hadn’t kissed before, but that was when the only shojo I’d read were this and Fruits Basket. Since then, I’ve gotten to know a few other shojo, and we’ve also got the infamous Almost Kiss scene that Yano rudely interrupted. I still don’t think it will be soon after this chapter, but I did get an interesting thought. There was a line or two about the weather getting colder, and then I remembered from the end of the anime that Sawako’s birthday was on New Year’s Eve. From that, I think I figured out the master plan: their first kiss is going to be at the stroke of midnight on New Years. After all this buildup, that kiss needs to be something unbelievably romantic, and a combination of a birthday present, a kiss at midnight, and the snow scenes anime seems to love are one possible way to do it. We’ll still have to wait for it, but it’s good to think that any sort of resolution may be coming up.

I suppose I can see why their relationship has progressed so slowly. The creator views the characters in a more wholesome light, as many of us do, which makes it very hard to imagine them physically intimate like that. That’s why it’s for the best that the series is starting to grow up, even if only a little. If you don’t mature, then there’s only so far you can develop the story. The other characters have been maturing just as much as the main couple, but enough has happened with them that I think I’ll save it for another discussion, when I can focus on them in more detail.

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Also, in case you didn’t see it, I picked Kimi ni Todoke as my next video review. After a harder review like the last one, I felt I’d go back to a series I knew well. I won’t be starting the writing for a few days for school-related reasons, so if there’s anything you’d like me to touch on in the review, please let me know.