*If you want to know more about my thoughts on the show itself, check out my review on ‘The Dangers in My Heart‘ through this link. After you read this article, of course. Wink, wink.*
Happy Valentines Day, everyone! At least, I hear it’s supposed to be happy. I wouldn’t know, I usually spend the holiday reading shojo manga and wondering where it all went wrong.
Eternal loneliness aside, let’s talk about the kind of love I actually understand: the fictional kind. Writing love in fiction is more difficult than you may think. Get it wrong and it can feel slow, forced, unnatural, and frustrating. But get it right, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for fantastic character growth and drama!
Such is the case with the leads of ‘The Dangers in My Heart’: Ichikawa Kyotaro and Yamada Anna.
Upon first glance, this show is another example of opposites attracting. Ichikawa is a gloomy loner with a thing for murder books and a grim imagination. Meanwhile, Yamada is a popular model with a bubbly personality and a seemingly insatiable appetite. In terms of personality, they couldn’t be more different.
Even their designs are total opposites. Ichikawa is short, his long hair covering half his face almost at all times; outside of school, his wardrobe is almost entirely black. Yamada, on the other hand, is the tallest character in almost every scene, second only to her own father. Whereas Ichikawa hides his face behind his bangs, Yamada’s bangs are open. When she’s out of uniform, she often wears colorful and fashionable outfits.
There’s the first point: magnetism. Your classic opposites attract plot. But as the story goes on, you begin to realize more and more that the two aren’t so different after all. Namely in that they both share one crippling flaw: insecurity.
Being a nerd who reads gory books about murder, Ichikawa is no social butterfly. He believes that there is something wrong with him, so much so that he tries to construct a murderous personality for himself in his imagination. He hardly even speaks to his other classmates, because as far as he’s concerned, they’ve already written him off as a weird freak.
Ichikawa himself describes this at the end of season one. He has a bad habit of giving up on what he wants without even attempting to get it. He’s so scared of rejection, disappointment, and isolation that he behaves as though he doesn’t care about anything at all, and the things he wants are actually stupid. Those murder books he reads are his shield; a nice shelter that pushes anyone away before he could be hurt. If not for them, he’d skip school altogether, as we learn he does during certain events like outdoors day.
We can see a prime example of this insecurity partway through season one. Ichikawa convinces himself that Yamada only keeps him around so that other boys don’t pester her, so he tries to avoid her altogether. Being as sensitive as she is, the could shoulder hurts Yamada quite badly. Only when she’s brought to tears does he realize his assumption had been wrong.
Yamada shares similar feelings of insecurity. As she grew up, she tried a lot of things. Piano lessons, the basketball club, so on and so forth. But she always ended up quitting not long after joining. She’s never as good as she likes as fast as she wants to be, so she ends up giving up and jumping ship. Years of this have left her with deep feelings of anxiety and inadequacy.
A strong example of this happens early in the series. After taking a big hit to the nose, Yamada considers leaving the basketball club. She has adequate reason for this; her injury already effected her modeling career pretty badly and she doesn’t want that to happen again. Even so, she clearly has some regrets over this decision. More so later on, when we learn that she had met her best friend through the club.
Both Ichikawa and Yamada struggle over their own insecurities. Over time, the two begin to understand this in each other. More than that: they begin to encourage one another and help each other overcome these issues.
One of the strongest examples comes from their class trip to a manga studio. When offered the chance to see a Baki sketch, Ichikawa reigns himself in despite wanting to look really badly. Yamada figures this out straight away and clears the way for him. A good thing for everyone; Ichikawa’s excitement is so contagious it lifts the whole group’s spirits in an instant.
Going back to the basketball example: Ichikawa comforts Yamada in her decision to leave the club in praising her dedication to her modeling job. This ended up meaning a lot to her; in season two, she invites him to see her during a photo shoot to see for himself. To show him she’s trying her best and doing what she loves.
This is what makes their relationship so sweet and compelling. It’s two people who are opposites in almost every way helping each other overcome their insecurities. They forge a healthy, genuine trust you rarely see in romance anime.
It certainly helps that the two are both adorable dorks. It makes all their awkward little gestures that much more fun to watch.
‘The Dangers in My Heart’ is a masterful example of introspective character writing. It takes the core premise of two polar opposite characters developing feelings for each other and makes it a beautiful story of personal growth and triumph. All expertly delivered with two of the most likable and interesting protagonists in the genre.
To think. It all started with a bag of chips and a box cutter.
Happy Valentines, folks.
Jonah's Books & Rants 
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