You and Me. (Kimi to Boku.)

 

main information:

• genre: cute boys doing cute things, slice of life, iyashi-kei (healing-vibe), light comedy
  
• season: fall 2011 (s1), spring 2012 (s2)
• number of seasons & episodes: 2 seasons, 13 episodes each
• myanimelist / anilist
  

i have developed an obsession over the "cute boys doing cute things" genre in anime lately. i love rainbow days and play it cool, guys (cool doji danshi) after solely coming for the va cast of these 2, which then i asked for some similar recommendations that I got you and me. (i know a lot of people like daily life of highschool boys as well, while it was a fun watch to me, but i just didn't enjoy it as much as the 2 mentioned above) 

you and me goes through the daily lives of 4 high school boys, twin brothers asaba yuuta (cv uchiyama kouki) & asaba yuuki (cv kimura ryouhei), as well as tsukahara kaname (cv ono yuuki) and matsuoka shun (cv toyonaga toshiyuki) who have been friends since kindergarten. one day, japanese-german tachibana chizuru (cv irino miyu) admitted to the high school they go to, then the group of 4 became a group of 5.

so what makes you and me special? my answer would be its laid-back and chill atmosphere it gives out in the whole show. in the very first episode of you and me, i was still not used to its slow pace that i found it a bit hard to sit through, however the more episodes i went through, the more i felt used to its relatively slow pacing in order to simply "heal" our souls. as i watched this on my way home from a long day of work, something as chill as this definitely made me felt healed and relaxed.

the openings and endings of both seasons of you and me are all very immersive, as well as all the bgms used within the episodes. i felt like i was escaping from reality after facing all the stress from work while watching this on my way home, and the music did add a lot to the overall viewing experience. i love the ending theme in s1 (nakimushi by sawai miku) the most, mostly because of the melody almost made me cry when i first listened to it.

altho you and me is labelled as a comedy, i would say it is more of a wholesome kind of smile or sometimes seeing the characters being dumb that would make you go "heh", instead of the ones that would make you laugh out loud. there is no real plot to the story, all you see are just the characters' daily lives and their amazing chemistry between each other, that i wish i had a group of friends like them just to do dumb things and maybe go have ramen together after school.

there is also some romance involved in you and me, but the romance is not the main focus (there are some romance related segments, especially in s2 tho), the main genre of the show is still the daily lives of the boys, and of course, some romance is also a part of a high schooler's daily life, right? at least i didn't feel like the romance bits disrupted the regular story progression. 

the characters are all very likeable too, we have chizuru being the happy-go-lucky guy, shun being the "loved by everyone" guy and the asaba twins simply sitting and watch everything burn (lol), kaname's roasts towards all their dumb behaviours made me laugh the most. despite that, you still get to see the other sides of the group of 5 in different situation that the characters feel more real.

overall speaking, you and me is very much slice of life heavy, that you can sit back and put your brain aside while watching, especially after work. everything is executed very smoothly, and i am sure that it will make you smile after watching every episode. i rated a 7/10 and 8/10 for seasons 1 and 2 respectively on myanimelist, but honestly i would give the whole series a 8/10.