English Dub Season Review: Sasaki and Miyano Season One

Overview:

Yoshikazu Miyano’s troubles first start one hot summer day when Shuumei Sasaki steps into his life. Sasaki saves Miyano’s classmate from a group of bullies, and after that, Miyano cannot seem to shake off his eccentric upperclassman. His silent admiration for Sasaki gradually sours into annoyance each time the so-called delinquent refuses to leave him alone. Constantly being called cute nicknames and having his boundaries ignored, Miyano wonders why Sasaki wants to get close to him.

Our Take:

I didn’t have too much experience with the BL genre before I started reviewing anime. I knew about the tropes from other anime and how girls always seemed to love it. But now that I have experienced a couple I feel like I can comment on it a little better.

The BL shows I have watched might be from a different era because a lot of the issues I thought I would have with the genre haven’t been in the few shows I’ve reviewed. My biggest problem is there was always one guy in the couple that was always a little too forceful for my taste. To be fair it’s also my problem with some early shoujo anime as well. I really love Maid-sama but Usui was sometimes wayyyy too aggressive for my taste.

Fortunately, other than a small part in one episode none of that happens here. The dynamic between Sasaki and Miyano is really great because they are both dealing with the same issues when it comes to their sexuality. Sasaki knows he likes Miyano way earlier than Miyano does. He dealt with it a lot more calmly too, he was just like “Well, I guess I like guys. One guy at least” and I thought that was refreshing. Miyano had a more realistic struggle with everything in my opinion.

The voice actors chosen did fantastically. I really loved how Kellen Goff handled being Sasaki. I can’t think of any other way to put it than I loved the nuances he added to his voice as the character. Joshua Waters shined as Miyano, you could really feel the character’s uncertainty in his voice. The supporting cast in this did phenomenal as well. Brandon McInnis and Jonah Scott did well but I really liked Kayleigh McKee as Kuresawa. It was only the last couple of episodes that he got a lot of screentime but I felt he really left an impression.

One of the biggest positives I can say for this show is that as a romance anime it had a ton of actual progression. I feel like we romance fans are getting spoiled with shows that actually progress the romance in a timely manner. There are talks of another anime project for Sasaki and Miyano so I will be waiting for that one eagerly.