YMMV / His and Her Circumstances

• Better on DVD: See Shout-Out and Freeze-Frame Bonus on the main page.
  • Right Stuf did their best to invoke this, putting so much effort into making their version a 1:1 adaptation of the Japanese (yes, even re-filming the live-action bits with the English voice actors). They also wanted to ensure the subtitles translated everything… which means the first DVD can actually overload older players due to how much information it has to process at once.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • "Whoever screwed up my beautiful (high school) entrance must be an ugly and depressing geek." Yukino got one part of that unflattering description right.
  • Yukino and Arima's relationship for most of the manga after a flashback during the worst of Arima's angst and anger period.
• Ho Yay:
  • Arima and Asaba have their moments...
  • Arima and Kazuma too. To the extent that sometimes they blush at each other.
• Superlative Dubbing: There are some dub aficionados who have named this series as among the greatest English dubs ever recorded. Whether one agrees with that or not, it's certainly some of the best acting Veronica Taylor has ever turned in.
• Unintentional Period Piece: While it usually works as a timeless love story, the series does occasionally date itself; one episode of the anime has the characters talk about Titanic (1997)'s iconic song "My Heart Will Go On" and Yukino says "Céline Dion is a modern-day diva", which very firmly dates this moment to the late 90s.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Yukino's fixation on having as perfect an image as possible at school, while treated as a sign of how self-centered she is at first before her Character Development, is still very much in line with the Japanese attitude of maintaining outward perfection in public.
  • The anime often references the fact that Yukino comes from a middle class background while Souichirou is from a rich family. This is explicitly used to say that Yukino is inferior, as though her family history is forever a stain on her value as a human.
  • Souichirou is alienated by the rest of his family (with the exception of his aunt and uncle, who genuinely love him and consider him their son) due to both of his parents being involved in criminal activity, with his father Reiji explicitly being the Black Sheep of the Arima family because of it. This is due to the Japanese belief that a child of a criminal will inevitably become a criminal themself; while having criminal parents may cause some problems in other countries, it wouldn't be such a huge cause of stigmatization as it would be in Japan.
• The Woobie:
  • Souichirou would be one of the best candidates for the Anime & Manga entry. See the Nightmare Fuel page for an insight into just how severe a case he is.
  • Tsubasa's backstory and the reason/s she was a Clingy Jealous Girl also make her this, at least until halfway through the manga (in a heartwarming way).

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