With You Our Love Will Make It Through, produced by Millepensee, explores love in high school amidst social change through the lens of an average teenager, Mari Asaka (Manaka Iwami, Guilty Gear Strive: Dual Rulers).
After having a chance encounter with the new Beastfolk attending her school, Tsunagu Hidaka (Takuya Eguchi, The Rose of Versailles), she soon finds herself falling in love with the kindhearted young man. However, numerous obstacles lie ahead for the pair if they want to discover how far their feelings will take them.
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In its first three episodes, With You Our Love Will Make It Through wastes no time in establishing its pair of central focuses. Splitting its time between exploring the budding romance between Mari and Tsunagu as well as the various reactions to the new student’s presence at school, the series looks to buck the usual model of slow burn where high school stories are concerned.
Tsunagu’s experience stands out the most in With You Our Love Will Make It Through.
The series’ explorations into the various attitudes students take towards their noticeably different classmates are numerous and nuanced. Showcasing a range of responses to Beastfolk, a group long kept in isolation and the subject of many inaccurate rumors, the story sets up lots of clear paths for this side of the narrative to proceed down.
Some students are vehemently against Tsunagu from the outset. Others are cautious but open to learn. With You Our Love Will Make It Through looks at the social struggles that come with integrating long-segregated groups by showcasing lots of viewpoints.
While all the characters feel intricate in their personalities, it is Tsunagu who stands out the most. His choice to come to this school so he may one day become a doctor, something his people are deprived of unless in extreme need, drives him to face the bigoted opinions of many with an unwavering calm. Knowing how badly things will go for him if he fights, even if goaded, the young man cannot afford to slip up, even in ways others his age could get away with.
The romance only mostly lands in With You Our Love Will Make It Through.
This antagonism is handled extremely well. The writing does a great job of bringing the close-minded motivations of the more bigoted classmates to light. How their anger is born of selfish, petty reasons comes out clearly and organically.
Even as the social exploration aspects of With You Our Love Will Make It Through shine, the romance only mostly lands. How the series explores the building emotional tension and the growing desires of both Tsunagu and Mari is interesting, but some oddities feel like potential landmines the story could set off. The biggest is Tsunagu’s “male instincts.”
After an incident where he and Mari are locked in a storage closet together, Tsunagu discovers that being in proximity to Mari for extended periods of time can send him into heat. The girl’s emotions for her classmate spur his instincts into overdrive, causing him to nearly lose control. Luckily, he manages to recompse himself before anything truly unfortunate occurs.
Tsunagu’s uncrontrolled impulse is presented with mixed results.
These moments of uncontrolled impulse on the part of Tsunagu are presented with mixed results. When the first incident occurs, Mari barely knows her new classmate and is trapped in a small confined space with him. While there is some fear in the moment’s depiction, the animation, camera work, and voice acting feel more interested in making it feel intimate than anything else.
Given the massive size disparity between the two, and the fact that Mari herself acknowledges her complete helplessness, it feels like there should be nothing special about the moment. In fact, Tsunagu seems to walk away from the incident, far more concerned about his behavior than his near victim.
Thankfully, the moments where this part of Tsunagu’s biology is explored have yet to cross any hard lines. It nonetheless shows a willingness to flirt with some. Any scene that involves intimacy without proper consent needs to be handled delicately. The failure to show a proper reaction to this sort of event through Mari leaves a concerned note about what may yet come.
The brisk pace feels good compared to many other romance series.
Beyond these questionable moments, With You Our Love Will Make It Through does a good job of pushing the pair’s feelings forward. With each new episode, new progress is made. Despite this swift progression, the steps the pair makes feel largely earned. The brisk pace feels good in comparison to many other romance series, even if the level of boldness both students project sometimes clashes with the generally shy natures they exhibit much of the time.
With You Our Love Will Make It Through puts its foot on the gas and doesn’t let up. With its social exploration and its romance, the series aims to deliver meaningful exploration without dragging out scenarios over multiple episodes. While it stumbles at times in its exploration of Tsunagu’s unique nature, these early episodes show a lot of promise as its leading pair grapple with their feelings and the attitudes of those around them.
With You, Our Love Will Make It Through is streaming now on Crunchyroll.
