English Dub Review: The Dreaming Boy Is a Realist “Because, You Are Where I Belong!”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Aika finally works up the courage to ask Sajo over to her house, where he meets her mom and plays with her sister. When evening comes, she offers to walk him home, but their walk keeps going until the two are by themselves. Eventually, the two confess their feelings and cement their relationship, starting the new semester as a couple.

OUR TAKE

And so ends the series that tells young male high schoolers the most important tip to winning over your crush: Just act like you don’t care and work on yourself and she’ll come right to ya! I kid, that’s actually not the best advice, and I’m not sure that’s even what this show was trying to say. But this whole show has basically been overblowing a lot of what barely qualifies as high school drama through its whole run, with just about all of its supposed conflicts barely qualifying as conflicts. That is, of course, except for the main story between Sajo and Aika, as a chance encounter with a flying soccer ball somehow shook some screws loose and got him to focus on improving himself outside of Aika’s purview, while Aika herself becomes increasingly concerned that the guy who was previously following her around and asking her out to an absurd degree…suddenly wasn’t. Now, after an entire season of her ruminating on that and feeling his absence, she has come to the conclusion that the reason she feels like something’s wrong when he’s not around is…because he is where she belongs. Or to be more specific, that she’s in love with him.

Over the course of the series, we have seen Sajo keep his distance out of the sense that he may keep her from making new friends by being around, while instead what it has done is make her notice that his presence was something she had gotten used to and now wishes to be a permanent thing. And I guess my issue with that is…I’m really old. Well, not that old, I’m only turning 32 this year, but I think I’ve just grown out of these big emotional leaps in teenager relationships to the point that watching this series has just ended up making me FEEL like a grown adult watching real life teenagers doing teenager things. And not in the fun way that I would get from shows like Lucky Star, Nichijou, School Rumble, or the like. But clearly this portrayal of a high school blooming romance spoke to some people, as this series seems to be at least somewhat popular, and I’m also not really the demographic for it anyway. Still, I would bet real money that these two break up by the end of their freshman year in college. So help me, wait till the sequel series with a timeskip, and mark my words. Or maybe it’s just a fun high school story and I simply need to get that stick out of my butt hole. Either one is possible!