Ashiya Mizuki is transferring into Osaka Private High School for a very specific reason—and his name is Sano Izumi, a star high jumper. It won’t be easy, since Ashiya is an American, and though she speaks the language well, she has to get used to the customs and culture. But there’s one more catch: Ashiya is a girl, and Osaka High is an all-boys school. But Ashiya knows as much, and has cut her hair, dressed like the other students, and otherwise prepared to live life as a boy to get near her “star.” But what will happen when some of the boys (and Yujiro the dog?!) begin to get suspicious? And can she even get near to the closed-off Sano? The hurdles may be high, but Ashiya is tough, determined, and up for the challenge!
It may be 2026, and the characters look contemporary, but Hana-Kimi will require you to leap back to the late 90s and early 00’s with this romance between a cross-dressing girl and a “cool guy” who surely has a heart of gold. I’m only familiar with the manga by name, so I can’t offer insights about how well the series is adapted, but I’ve read and enjoyed romance and shoujo manga from the period, so I was mostly able to step back into that time frame to watch the series (sadly, the much cooler character designs from twenty-five years ago didn’t make the trip to modern times with us!). Even so, I can’t say that I’m terribly impressed by the first two episodes that dropped together.
The issues here are mostly two-fold. The first is the writing, which literally just jumps from one random scenario to the next, leading from encounter to encounter that opens or deepens relationships with Ashiya and Sano or the other boys (Nakatsu, her new “bestie,” is my favorite so far). There are tropes aplenty in the first couple of episodes, with boys falling on girls, indirect kisses, shower walk-ins, and more! Trust me—this stuff tends to work better in manga, which has a more halting rhythm than anime. The jokes are sometimes funny (again, Nakatsu is the funniest for me), though I’m not a huge fan of comedy based on guys finding themselves attracted to a guy (who’s actually a girl). Also of note is that so much of the tension in this series seems like it’ll be based on attraction to Ashiya, and the changing boundaries based on her appearance as a boy.
The second issue is Ashiya herself. She resembles Chihaya (Chihayafuru) in appearance and somewhat in soul—she’s pretty flighty and does everything, it seems, without thinking. It’s kind of obnoxious. Like…why would you fly across the world and enter a school for a guy when you didn’t know the most basic things about him? She also pokes him, confesses to him, and tries to kiss him—all within about a ten-minute span. By the end of episode two, she was a little more likable, and I think that’s why we got two episodes: to establish her character and Sano’s. I don’t know if it’s enough. Fans of old-school manga romance will likely enjoy the series, but the presence of the good—which also includes a really lovely ED (“Baby” by Yoasobi)—doesn’t necessarily outweigh the bad (animation that’s average at best included among the above concerns). I want to support this old-school series (created by a mangaka, Hisaya Nakajo, who has since passed away) receiving the animated treatment, but I’ll have to give it another few episodes to see if the story is legitimately good—or if we’re looking back with rose-colored glasses.
Hana-Kimi can be streamed on Crunchyroll.
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This sounds exactly like the Kdrama To the Beautiful You. I remember watching that years ago, it was really cute. Is this an adaptation?
I don’t think so, unless that was an adaptation of this series. This is a classic shoujo manga!
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