Having watched Doukyuusei, or Classmates as it is known in English, I was rather let down by the overall execution of the romance. So, I went to Myanimaelist to see how many people agreed with me. There, I saw many people giving it a good, if nor great, score, which ultimately made it rank rather high on Mal, and calling it, uh, "realistic".
This led me to have a very specific reaction.
In this review I wish to outline why I disagreed with them and why this movie is overrated.
But before that, I will go into the positives. Firstly, the flick is a short watch, which makes it highly accessible. Secondly, it has really nice animation style and artwork. Thirdly, the romance is established early on, with little pussyfooting around and the film centers more on the issues the characters face after they get together rather than whether or not they will get together, which is rather unusual by anime standards.
And now for the negatives.
Firstly, the main two characters act in an exaggerated way, being overly emotional and reacting with high intensity to otherwise small things. It reminded me of a melodrama really, since there was little to no subtlety in the characters' actions. Though I would otherwise say this is a matter of teen angst and what not, we do not see many other teenager characters in the movie and the ones we do see are far more relaxed and comfortable in their situations. This leads me to believe that it was the writer's biases and, more specifically, her gender that bled into this work and corrupted this element.
In conjunction with this, the characters did not act like actual high school students. You see, the average high school student is an adrenaline-fueled, puberty-stricken jerk who only looks out for himself and wishes to get into as many blood-pumping situations much as he can and get laid as fast as possible. Yet the characters here, especially the main duo, act more like cultured women from the Victorian era than actual teenagers when it comes such matters. Some of the main questions I was left asking are the following: Why didn't they have sex? Why did they care so much about each other? Why did the blonde guy not act more seductive? Why didn't they have sex? Why was the black-haired guy so reluctant to go further? Why is kissing treated as such a big deal when they are in a relationship? Why didn't they have sex?
Okay, you get the point. What I'm trying to convey here is that as a result of their age and biological feelings, they should have little to no concern for social taboos or the necessary steps to go through before getting to that point. In fact, once they hook up, sex is all they should be thinking about, yet that's simply not there. And you can say a thousand different things to excuse this like "They are pure-minded" or "They aren't those sort of people" but such excuses are all null and void because of their age, since hardly anyone their age would possess those qualities. Besides, seeing them struggle with the potential repercussions of having sex would make the whole thing all the more interesting.
The next point has to do with the pandering of the whole movie. The character that best personifies this point would be teacher of the main duo who constantly makes gay remarks and even gets close to one of them at one point. In real life, that teacher wouldn't be so open about things even if he himself were gay since teachers having relationships with their students is no trivial matter nowadays. It just seemed to be there to increase shipping potential and get the female fans wet as they watched the story unfold. And that's not even mentioning how it's unrealistic for the main duo to keep blushing every time they kiss when they've done it so many times already.
The characters aren't particularly deep but that's hardly a fault of the story when it had less than an hour of runtime.
The last point I would like to touch on is that the conclusion is very weak. It has no sense of achievement and it doesn't feel ambiguous enough to be artistic. It simply fizzles out and dies.
So yeah. Overall, I would give this anime a 5/10.
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