Enter the Shoujo Manga Department of Males

Male editors working in the shoujo manga department. BL expected.  Sekaiichi Hatsukoi has become one of my favorite BL series.  Sekaiichi Hatsukoi is an anime that centers around three couples getting together. The three couples, or at least parts of them, all work in the shoujo manga department.  The couples are Ritsu Onodera and Masamune Takano, Chiaki Yoshino and Yoshiyuki Hatori, and Shouta Kisa and Kou Yukina. 

Masamune Takano(left) and Ritsu Onodera(right)

Ritsu Onodera and Masamune Takano are the main couple that the show focuses on. The two had gone out in high school, but after a misunderstanding Onodera breaks up with Takano. Years later, he quits his job as a literature editor at his father’s company to work at an unrelated one. Coincidentally he ends up working under Takano in the shoujo manga department. Takano decides then to make Onodera fall in love with him. 

Chiaki Yoshino(left) and Yoshiyuki Hatori(right)

One of the other couples, Chiaki Yoshino and Yoshiyuki Hatori, deal with a mangaka and his editor. Even though the two of them like each other, Hatori has a rival in Chiaki’s assistant, Yuu Yanase.  At first, Yoshino is confused who Hatori and Yanase both like. He originally thinks that they liked each other, instead of both liking him. He is soon corrected on both accounts.

Kou Yukina (the taller one) and Shouta Kisa(the shorter one)

The last couple to be introduced, Shouta Kisa and Kou Yukina, has a different story. Kisa is a sucker for males with a handsome face. So it isn’t a surprise that he goes to a certain bookstore to ogle shoujo clerk, Yukina. Kisa is formally introduced to Yukina by the sales representative, Takafumi Yokozawa. Yukina decides that he will use the face that Kisa likes, to get Kisa to be his.

Sekaiichi Hatsukoi is definitely one of the best BL series in the past few seasons. I have watched Togainu no Chi and Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru. The two can’t compare. It even beats out its predecessor, Junjou Romantica. There is just more plot and better characters than the others.  The characters in Sekaiichi Hatsukoi act like real people. Each character has their own personality that no one else has. Even the most emotionless characters show just the right emotion to seem like real people. They don’t hurry a relationship, but they don’t put it at a snail’s pace.  The season ended without Onodera and Takano getting together, but ended with Kisa and Yukina as a couple.  It’s nice that they didn’t force an ending for Onodera and Takano to be a couple. If they had, I really would have thought twice about what I think about the series. They even made it more confusing for Hatori and Yoshino instead of how it seemed to be going earlier in the series.   I even liked how it didn’t seem to focus on just one couple necessarily. We got to see how each couple interacted instead of just seeing the surface of the couples and there problems.

I wasn’t happy with the changes in which couple they were dealing with. The transitions between the couples seemed a little forced, but the depth of each story made up for it.  I’ll be looking forward to episode 12.5 which comes with the six volume of the manga and hope that a second season will soon be in planning.