Review of Sasaki and Miyano
As a 26 year-old who thought she was past watching school-centric romance + slice of life, and whose goldfish-like attention span often makes her frustrated watching a media with slow pace and little to no major conflict, Sasaki to Miyano completely changed those assumptions I had about myself. But most importantly: it made me believe in love again. Romance is NOT dead. [Characters: 9 for great] Let's start with the best element of Sasaki to Miyano, okay? The characters. At first glance, our leads—Sasaki and Miyano—seem like your typical feminine-looking uke with tiny body and masculine-looking seme with tall height. Well, 50% of the time, those are what theyare. However, the anime seems to be self-aware of that, and actually makes it one of the conflicts: Miyano is insecure about his feminine face, and gets hurt when he thought that that's all Sasaki likes about him (spoiler: it's not).
That should give you a hint on how complex and "beyond stereotypes" our leads are. Because not only that, these two also deal with very realistic elements of falling in love: wanting to understand and get excited about the other person's hobby, giving yourself time to understand your own self before committing to someone (and, conversely, being patient in letting the other person do that), communicating your feelings and stance clearly (even if it means admitting that you're still figuring things out), and just generally being considerate and respectful to the person you like and/or who likes you as long as they don't push any boundary.
Like. Seriously, these two feel very real and relatable. They are also walking green flags. Together, they're probably one of the healthiest couple in not just BL animes, but romance animes in general. And whilst I'm in the boat of "toxic representations are fine as long as they're depicted as they are: toxic representations", we already have too much of them in the BL anime scene and thus, Sasaki and Miyano are SUCH a breath of fresh air.
But our two leads are not the only reasons I give the "characters" element a 9. The side-characters are ALL so well-written, too.
They don't feel like NPCs or characters who are only created to help our leads develop. They have their own conflicts, anecdotes, love life, etc. And they all interact with each other seamlessly, making the world of this anime feels so interconnected.
The character designs are all good, too. Everyone looks distinct and they all have personalized outfit style.
[Plot: 7 for good]
Picking up from what I said in the previous section about the anime being "self-aware": overall, this anime is pretty meta.
You probably already know from the MAL summary that Miyano is a fudanshi, or a man who likes reading the BL genre. Well, this anime points out and (sometimes) makes a commentary on a LOT of BL tropes and anecdotes of fudanshi and fujoshis (a woman who likes reading the BL genre). Sometimes, they also do the same to weeb culture in general.
However, despite some of the plot being meta, some of it (especially the ones in the beginning and middle) are also cliche and cringe-inducing (ie. Sasaki being overly jealous all the time (though he ultimately supported Miyano that one (1) time)).
Furthermore, even if the anime points out the good message of, "a man liking BL doesn't always mean he's looking for the same experience irl," I believe the anime brushes off toxic fujodan (and weeb) behavior such as projecting/superimposing fiction to reality. For example, Sasaki gets excited to see his guy friends reliving the tropes he often read in his BL. Now /this/ is fetishizing IMO. I understand that behavior coz I was like that, too, when I was a baby fujoshi. But now I know better.
But overall, the writing and pacing of the story are pretty good. I was genuinely surprised at how easy I binged all 12 episodes of this anime was, considering that it was—as I said in the beginning—a school-centric romance + slice of life. Coz tbh even watching 3 episodes of action-packed and plot-heavy anime can make me frustrated.
That means Sasaki to Miyano did a good job in keeping me entertained despite the lack of drama and major conflict.
[Sound: 6 for fine]
The Japanese VAs for everyone did a great job. The English VA for Miyano was surprisingly amazing. I didn't like the English VA for Sasaki much, though. But maybe it's only a preference thing. My preference also told me I don't like the OP nor ED much. They both felt too underwhelming to me.
[Animation & art: 6 for fine]
I don't think a school-centric slice of life and realistic anime can get above 8 for animation & art from me. This is simply because there isn't much room for the animators nor artists to experiment.
Even if they COULD experiment with whatever they had at hand, they didn't. Sasaki and Miyano's color palette is standard, there's no distinctive art style, and the filters during the "doki doki" moments are pretty standard.
But I didn't give Sasaki and Miyano a 5 for average because I think they did slightly better in portraying the beautiful sunset at the final episode and also Miyano during the cross-dressing competition.
[Overall enjoyment: 8 for very good]
Sasaki and Miyano is a breath of fresh air for me. It's also a huge surprise coz I didn't expect it to hold my interest throughout the show. All in all, the final rating is (9+7+6+6+8)/5 = 7.2 rounded to 7