A couple times a month, the Fandom Post community suggests and votes on a new top five list about something in anime, most often from the current season. It’s our way of highlighting something fun or interesting or strange—or even meaningful—about what’s airing now, or about anime in general.
There are, it seems, just two types of love that anime concerns itself with: the fated kind, two people destined or determined to meet (no matter how naive one or more of the partners behaves); and the kind that swims always against the tide of fate—the hopeless, anxious, romantic pining and scheming of one lost soul for the contentedly oblivious target of his or her affection, with often only the audience as witness. There is love confessed, and there is love unrequited. In the highly evolved melodrama of anime it is rare to discover a romantic entanglement between these two poles. (Save, perhaps, for the obsessive who finds meaning in keeping the infatuation secret, the room full of dolls in her sempai’s likeness reason enough for being.)
Here are five of our favorite Unrequited Love Affairs in anime.
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#5: Mutta Nanba for Serika Itou (Space Brothers)
What keeps Nanba Mutta motivated in his quest to become an astronaut, at first, is simple sibling rivalry, trying to catch up and perhaps surpass his younger brother, Hibito, who already wears the jumpsuit. But the woman he meets, and progresses with, in the JAXA astronaut testing and training program, Serika Itou, quickly becomes his other lodestar. Yet throughout the anime’s scope of the story, while he sets, meets, and exceeds his personal goals, and follows his brother’s path, admitting his feelings to Serika remains beyond his reach. It is made all the harder by their naturally diverging missions and workloads in their new careers. But she remains the only mission-critical emergency he can’t solve.
#4: Nanami Aoyama for Sorata Kanda (Pet Girl of Sakurasou)
All of the arts school characters of Pet Girl of Sakurasou are trying to prove themselves, but none find it as difficult as Nanami, in voice acting, and Sorata, in game design. Sorata, however, has the peculiar prodigy, Mashiro, as a sort of muse and distraction, caring for the brilliant but emotionally stunted girl a project in which to direct his anxieties. Nanami, who carried an unspoken affection for Sorata before Mashiro came on the scene, is left, more on her own than others in the Sakurasou dormitory, to internalize her frustration and fear and growing jealousy for Sorata’s empathy, let alone his attention. She’s the third wheel of the deathless anime love triangle, the most classical victim of it in our list. But there is always hope, in a character like Nanami, as much for her hopeful career as an actor as for her finding a love returned, somewhere, sometime.
#3: Ukyo for Ranma (Ranma 1/2)
Love triangles are too simple, however, for Ranma 1/2. But Ukyo—a.k.a. Ucchan—is the only girl in Ranma’s orbit who has as much a say in being with him as Akane. For she is the prodigal childhood friend, long-ago promised to marriage but very literally left behind when Ranma and his father took the dowry of her father’s okonomiyaki cart but forgot the young girl it was attached to. While Ranma may be more strongly fated to Akane (whom, early on, he shows less affection towards than even the skilled okonomiyaki chef) Ukyo remains always in the wings, ready to give it all up for him, and bitterly fighting off other rivals. This being Ranma 1/2, she is, like most all the characters, the stubborn type. She’ll wait.
#2: Chiyo Sakura for Umetarou Nozaki (Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun)
It becomes so obscured so fast, as one eccentric character follows one oddball character after another, that it’s possible to forget that at the core of Monthly Girls Nozaki-kun is a simple schoolgirl’s one-sided infatuation with a popular boy. What makes it all tick, however, is that her—and our—journey into the Wonderland of Umetarou Nozaki’s world begins with Chiyo in fact confessing her love to him, only for Nozaki to misinterpret it for a love of his work as a (not exactly public) manga creator. The unrequited love affair begins after the confession, not before it, as she spends time meeting his friends and helping him with his manga, and slowly, painfully, trying to get closer to him. She is for much of the tale the ironic meta-narrative of Nozaki’s life, where he draws inspiration from his friends in his work but is oblivious to the Classic Shoujo Heroine right under his nose, pining hopelessly for her sempai who—say it together—does not notice her.
#1: Harunobu Madarame for Saki Kasukabe (Genshiken)
And then there is Madarame and Saki. Our runaway favorite in this list, and one of legendary, much analyzed reputation, this is the tragic story of lonely super-otaku Harunobu Madarame, who disavowed not only real (3D) women, but most certainly the “fashionable,” presumably stuck-up ones. He did not count on falling in love with one of his club member’s (childhood friend!) girlfriend, the otaku-hating fashionista, Saki Kasukabe (while her boyfriend, the aloof Makoto, is also an otaku, he is more attractive than all the others, and exhibits none of their insecurities). The divide between them is vast to begin with, but always apparent, respite almost never given until it is too late. The acclaim and sophistication of this relationship comes through in how painful it becomes for Madarame, as Saki, if sometimes against her will but true to her good nature, becomes a close and valued member of the Genshiken club, especially befriending and mentoring its female members, but becoming his friend as well. She is always there, but there is nothing Madarame can do. No other unrequited relationship in anime is as honest and unforgiving.
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And that’s Unrequited Love in Anime. Join us next time to see fish walk on land. To have a say in what makes it on that list, and the next list after that, check out the forum thread, read up on the rules, and join the Fandom Post Anime List Project today!