A HIDIVE rom-com anime series called The Dreaming Boy Is a Realist has crossed a rarely traversed line by incorporating a type of romance that is mostly only used in action and shonen anime. Specifically, it’s the one where the boy makes arguably too many love confessions to the girl he likes to her perpetual annoyance.
It’s obvious why most romance anime steer clear of this dynamic because it goes against one of the most tried and true tropes of the genre: the love interests being unable to confess to each other for whatever reason. In The Dreaming Boy Is a Realist, instead, the male lead repeated confessions are the setup for the true romance story of the series.
In romance anime, the confession normally leads to the two love interests officially becoming a couple. Action anime, instead, often play this as a comedy relief moment, and leave their actual romance in the background. Major examples include the love triangle of all participants in Naruto and Gurio Umino and Usagi Tsukino in Sailor Moon.
The Dreaming Boy Is a Realist Makes Shonen Love Confessions A Lot Better
Based on the light novel series by Okemaru and Saba Mizore; produced by Studio Gokumi and AXsiZ
The Dreaming Boy Is a Realist explores this dynamic from a unique perspective – the moment when the male lead, Wataru Sajō, stops asking Aika Natsukawa to be his girlfriend after an exorbitant amount of time. The whole focus of the show is how Wataru’s sudden shift starts to make Aika see her former tormentor more positively. This is unique because, in romance anime, the boy and girl usually like each other in secret. A more recent example is Our Dating Story: The Experienced You and The Inexperienced Me, which explored romance as a type of experiment.
Of course, the twist is that The Dreaming Boy Is a Realist quickly adopts another type of love dynamic that action anime also gravitate towards: the girl doesn’t want to admit that she likes the boy, like Noelle’s pining for Asta in Black Clover. It isn’t until later that The Dreaming Boy Is a Realist seems to emulate the usual type of love in anime romance when Aika finally comes to terms with her emotions but no longer knows where Wataru stands, especially as he gets swept into the orbits of other popular girls for various reasons.
Even though Wataru is completely oblivious to Aika’s suffering, like many shonen heroes are, he also adopts a very nuanced outlook on friendship, a strength that’s too oftentimes overlooked in romance anime. The Dreaming Boy Is a Realist stands out from other romance series by borrowing elements used by many action and shonen anime, so fans of both series should definitively check this one out.
The Dreaming Boy Is a Realistic is available on HIDIVE.
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