My Love Story With Yamada-kun at Lv999

Episode 6

I feel like I should confirm that the anime version of My Love Story With Yamada-kun at Lv999 is my first experience with the material. I haven't read the manga, so I can't really comment on the anime's status as an adaptation of it. What I can do is laud the anime's production on its own merits, as seen in the likes of this episode where that direction continues to fire on all cylinders. Those shoujo adaptational sensibilities are readily apparent even if you aren't familiar with the source material. The show regularly reduces the characters to bobble-headed caricatures or shrimpy little starfish people for the sake of gag shorthand, or layers abstract patterns as backgrounds and filters around scenes as simple as folks sitting and talking. It's an approach that could have left this appearing like a mere motion comic, but instead properly feels like an animated manga thanks to the energy of how it cuts in those layers or renders the animation of the characters even when they're just a few circles and dots.

That's not to say Yamada-kun at Lv999 is all about making the most with minimalism. There are also bursts of fast, fluid animation, as in Akane's sequence of beelining for her bras before Yamada notices she's left them out in the open. But it all overall contributes to a sense of elevation, of the anime doing the most with whatever it has at any given moment, whether that's simply describing a character's backstory or depicting people communicating by phone or text message. It's amazing the energy that can turn something into a "comedy" not necessarily by firing out jokes every minute, but simply by committing to presenting things with a professionally realized air of silliness.

Not that Yamada-kun at Lv999 is all comedy this week. I had presumed that the story would treat the business with Runa as 100% resolved after the last episode's events and move on to something else, but it pleasantly surprised me by continuing with an arc about the character here. Runa may have accepted Akane as a new friend, but as the opening exposition about the younger girl makes clear, what "friends" are to Runa is something she's still very much figuring out. Like Akane retreating into online game busywork as an escape from the feelings of her breakup, Runa is happy to comfort herself with a cavalcade of internet followers to tune out her inability to gel with real-life people. Online "fans" are pointedly something of a one-way transactional relationship, and Runa's expectations clashes with Akane's own give-and-take nature tempered by her impulsiveness.

Arriving at this new dynamic between these characters at this point in the story is neat because rather than being a setup for some kind of connective clash, we know after last week's resolution that Runa genuinely wants to accept and enjoy Akane's friendship. Thus the whole relationship becomes a vehicle for Runa to try to get used to this sort of mutual rapport, and she might eventually expand that to the likes of her classmates or other potential IRL friends. As with the laid-out long-term goals of growth we've already glimpsed in Akane and Yamada, this is Runa's opportunity to "Level Up" and become a more well-rounded person thanks to the time spent with her online game guildmates.

The integration of these interactions with that growth demonstrates that, trying or not, Runa still has a lot of that growing to do. But at least it continues to move her out of the shadow of a potential love triangle with Akane and Yamada, even if that also comes alongside her, Eita, and the narrative shipping our heroes even harder than before. It does result in some fine comedy since Runa's only recently started attempts to surmount her own social ineptitude means she's not exactly experienced at properly engineering romantic comedy situations, as well as Akane and Yamada being such goobers that they're hardly the proper marks for such things, to begin with. And it also swirls things to a more dramatic take on such ill-suitings to end things on for our leads, foregrounding Yamada's struggles with women more than ever, specifically highlighting the issue for Akane herself. In that way, perhaps Runa's hapless attempts to push them together actually will wind up helping them grow closer.

For this episode though, that's a final push that comes out of this one's sweet primary focus on that developing Akane/Runa friendship, and that's perfectly nice to see rendered in the anime's confident presentational style. As much as the series has tacitly dunked on some of Akane's more immature foibles, the story certainly doesn't seem to be trying to position real-life friendships as stronger or more proper than online ones or anything. Rather, it's about the integration of interactions with other people and specifically making sure we're always learning and growing from others, regardless of the circumstances. You can see this in the way Momoko laments Akane spending all her time off playing online games with a middle schooler, where she might have a point, except that Momoko herself is stuck pondering the same self-pitying loneliness that Akane only started to get over by playing games with people like Runa and Yamada. Growing, and leveling up, is easier with party members to support you and guildmates to give you advice, after all.

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My Love Story With Yamada-kun at Lv999 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Chris is keeping busy keeping up with the new anime season and is excited to have you along. You can also find him writing about other stuff over on his blog, as well as spamming fanart retweets on his Twitter, for however much longer that lasts.