English Dub Season Review: From Me to You: Kimi ni Todoke Season 3

Not only does this season deal with the emotional pitfalls that can occur in someone’s first serious relationship (even when it’s a good fit), it also sets in motion the rest of the major cast to get together too. The ongoing subplot of Ryu and Chizu finally reaches a head, with Chizu’s longtime crush on Ryu’s older brother finally dissipating and making room for Ryu himself to finally make his feelings clear. This then leads to a genuinely moving flashback about the history between the two and how much they’ve come to mean to each other over their lives, and while it’s not much different than what you may find in other childhood friend romances, it does well enough you’d probably not notice most cliches. And lastly, Ayane, the more grown up and distant seeming girl of their trio, starts trying to explore love and dating more thoroughly and ends up with Kento the playboy of all people, so good luck there I guess. All of this gets basically sandwiched by Kazehaya and Sawako adjusting to their new normal as a couple and how a few misunderstandings can snowball without proper communication, and while it can get a little melodramatic (it is set at a high school after all), it never gets away from the heart of things.

If I had to pick any problems, it would probably be the odd way this season released its episodes. Not only was it all at once as per the Netflix model, but every episode is over an hour long, which is certainly odd considering the previous seasons only had episodes of 24 minutes. No clue what made them think they needed to package this season this way, especially when it was the first one after nearly a decade and a half, but that was what they decided to go with I suppose. Still, for old fans of the material, I doubt they’ll be disappointed with finally getting an animated follow up to the show, and maybe if this does well enough, they’ll get around to animating and adapting the rest of the manga. Yeah, that’s right, there’s still like a dozen more volumes they haven’t adapted yet, so they could put these out every fourteen years until the heat death of the universe! But hopefully they don’t wait that long because this season was honestly quite good.