What I watched in MAY: Digest Version, part 2 of 2

b Seikai Ichi Hatsukoi (World's Greatest First Love):  The main character disengaged from the world back in high school when the boy he loved laughed at him after they slept together.  I don't think I've ever seen an anime where this disengagement was quite so clearly and realistically shown.  He uses super-ultra polite language all the time to push people away.  No one is allowed to get close to him.  It's intriguing. 

Anyway, he's been like that for years.  Recently, he left his job at his father's publishing company where he was an editor with a string of hit books.  He wanted to work at a company where he would get some respect for his hard work instead of having to deal with all the snide comments about nepotism getting him the good authors.  He's surprised when instead of getting hired in the literary department, he ends up in the shojo manga division.  And his boss is . . . that guy who broke his heart a decade ago.  The thing is, his memory of the event and the actual event might not be very similar. 

I like the idea explored here of the way our emotional baggage can really cause us problems.  Each of the two boys saw the situation and its aftermath completely differently.  At its heart, it was a communication problem, and since it was never resolved, it left them both wounded.  Anyway, there was less creepiness in this series than in the author's other series I've read part of (Junjo Romantica), although the anime was a very cleaned up version of the manga there.  The consistent device of having a couple of minor stories running at the same time drives me somewhat crazy in this author's work because when the main story is moving, I don't want a stupid side episode about people I don't care about.   

Watching the two main characters try to cope with and define their relationship in the present as they try to figure out what happened in the past is an awkward good time.  Watching one character learn the ins and outs of editing shojo manga is kind of a hoot, too.