One thing that caught me off guard about You and I Are Polar Opposites was just how quickly our main couple got together. It’s very rare nowadays to have a slice of life comedy romance where the two main leads actually get together before the end of the first volume. Normally that’s reserved for when a series ends, and it happens so often that it does give an uncomfortable feeling that a lot of people just don’t know how to write romances DURING the relationship. I can understand that as every relationship dynamic is unique and when you throw in the complicated insecurities that often come with being a young adolescent, then what you are left with is a very difficult uphill battle. I preface all of this because I genuinely think this manga does an amazing job of displaying multiple different complicated adolescent relationships that most people either experience themselves firsthand or have seen in their peers.

The relationship between Miyu and Yusuke is the simplest one, but it’s not without its moments of relatability. The set up for the series was incredibly basic with Yusuke being a muted stoic character while Miyu is the bubbly airhead. The relationship is built off of that old trope of how opposites attract, and it’s such a simple trope that you wouldn’t expect that to be the dynamic that gets built upon which is why it was so surprising when the relationship formed so quickly in the series. The trials and tribulations that these to go through are incredibly understandable without betraying the nature of the trope itself, which I found impressive. Yusuke is incredibly stoic and withdrawn to the point where he is constantly worried about how he comes off or how he’s going to be able to communicate his feelings to Miyu while Miyu is insecure about her affection or whether or not she’s showing the affection in a way that Yusuke can understand. Seeing these two very slowly begin to change for the sake of making the relationship stronger in a way that doesn’t compromise the core facets of who they are was genuinely impressive. They also had the strongest comedy between them which left plenty of moments of levity.

Another dynamic that develops is the actual comic relief character Kentarou, who comes off as incredibly simple minded and goofy. However, what happens when a simple minded teenage boy starts taking an interest in a more quiet and reserved girl? What I like about this new relationship is that it doesn’t act as a perfect mirror to our main duo, even if it is slightly similar. Seeing Kentarou slowly start to understand his own feelings, while Natsumi slowly starts to come to terms with her own insecurities was incredibly interesting. Their relationship is definitely more of a side story than the main story, but it genuinely got interesting to the point where I honestly wanted to see their relationship develop more than our main couples. There are some moments where the self deprecating humor and logical leaps the characters will go through to justify their actions or prolong the status quo will drag on more than it needs to. But I think the story earned those moments because it eventually addresses them and builds them into the larger character arcs everybody is going through.

One common thing is that almost all of the characters in this story are constantly overthinking things about themselves, their lovers, their friends, school, etc. I feel like one thing that doesn’t get brought up a lot in a lot of romance stories is the anxiety. Teenagers, especially modern day teenagers, are anxiety-riddled messes who will overthink every step they take when their reputation or how they are perceived by another person is put on the line. That is one of the main overarching elements of this entire series based on these volumes, and there are some points where it gets so uncomfortably accurate with regards to how relatable I found some of the characters and their thought processes. It’s funny, but it’s also upsetting because some of these characters are just a hair’s breadth away from potentially missing out on a relationship that could make them happy. We also don’t know if a relationship would fix any of the insecurities that they have. It’s such a delicate balancing act that is so hard to maintain, and I wasn’t expecting this to go into it as deep as it did.

I think this is embodied the strongest in what the story does with Shino and Shuuji. I thought Shuuji was just a cynical douche who wanted everybody else to be unhappy while Shino was just there. There was even a part of me that was worried that Shuuji was trying to compromise the relationships of the other characters because he kept bringing things up like he was planting seeds of doubt in how they saw things. However, there wasn’t really any malicious intent behind his actions, that’s just who this character is. He is always looking on the negative side of things and when the story reveals a little bit more of how he was before coming to high school, I sort of got it. The story does a lot with setting up expectations, flipping them on their heads, but then making the reason for why they were flipped on its head different than what you would originally expect. Shino was just there as a side character but there’s a reason for why she’s so passive and when it’s brought to her attention, things begin to change in ways that even she didn’t expect. Nothing is as cut and dry with some of these characters as I was originally expecting and even if relationship dynamics didn’t go the direction I wanted them to, I still couldn’t argue with the characters because I bought into their self perceptions of themselves.

I think the simple character designs kind of helped sell that idea. There’s nothing overly flowery or detailed about them and even at their most detailed, a lot of the characters almost look like silly caricatures of themselves. But I like that kind of dichotomy between how the characters look and some of the things they’re thinking about. There’s a lot of moments throughout these volumes where there aren’t even any backgrounds to really emphasize how isolated and in their own heads a lot of these characters are. The dialogue is without a doubt the main bulk of these panels and sometimes they get cluttered to properly represent all of the overthinking that goes on in the story. It is a perfect example of simple yet effective.

I really wish I could read more than what was assigned for review. You can tell there’s a lot more that some of these characters need to go through by the time we reach the end of volume seven and I am in it for the long-haul. I don’t even know if some of these characters will end up getting happy endings, but I kind of really hope that they do. It’s safe to say that at this point, our main couple is safe, but what about everyone else? If the point of the story was to highlight that being a teenager isn’t all sunshine and rainbows then I think the author accomplished that in spades while still effectively writing a silly romantic comedy. Sometimes the joke doesn’t land and sometimes the relationships feel a bit drawn out because of those logical leaps but overall, I was pleasantly surprised with what I read here and I think you will be too.