Cherry and Virgin Anime Movie Review

What was the last great romcom you've seen? For me, it was When Harry Met Sally. As a fan of Rob Reiner's Stand by Me, it was on my list of movies I'd get to eventually, knowing that I'd love it. I wish I did sooner, because then Rob Reiner passed away. I was amazed that, over 30 years later, its exploration of relationships between two imperfect adults stood head and shoulders above most romances I'd seen. It also left me wondering what it'd take to make a romcom of this caliber in the anime industry. Director Masanao Kojiri had his answer: to make it outside of the anime industry. After a successful crowdfunding campaign and five years of production (including COVID), the former Gainax talent has released a love story that feels grown-up without throwing away what they grew up with. This is the most honest depiction of otaku falling in love since Kio Shimoku's Genshiken.

It all starts with one question everyone in their thirties faces: When are you going to get married? Ryo is a professional gooner who's carved out his own independence at the cost of his social image. Ami is a working woman who's also a talented artist, but isn't ready to live off her passion. Between friends who died alone or announced they got hitched, both feel pressured to find someone before it's too late. The problem is neither has fostered a positive image of the opposite sex. It's not like they haven't tried: both have gone on several dates before eventually giving each other a shot. They're not naive about real-life relationships playing out differently than their fantasies. But it's hard to forget the shunning or unwanted attention that caused them to spend their high school years away from boys and girls.

This makes their first meeting feel kind of miraculous. At first they're afraid to reveal anything off-putting about themselves, but they start to find common ground as artists at heart and failures at love. He opens up about how his first hit work was motivated by bitterness over a university crush. Something he found to be shameful venting found an audience willing to support him. Meanwhile, she was shunned for not growing out of her interests and saw her father walk out on the family out of shame. Even when rediscovering her joy of drawing, she never gained the confidence to go pro and felt much safer pursuing men in fiction. She even reveals how she went into this date constantly screening him for red flags, but she never did. In fact, neither of them did. All their venting just made them want to know more. What started as a trip to an idol movie turns into a stop at an izakaya and then a walk in the park.

By the end of this first conversation, you get why these two are attracted to each other. For all their faults, they make an honest attempt to understand one another. They take an active interest in their differing tastes while finding shared struggles to bond over. Their dates become a safe space to trade embarrassing stories and art techniques. Titles the other might've just heard of in passing get fleshed out from the perspective of a fan. As fellow Comiket attendees, they aren't cagey about exploring degenerate topics: they straight-up ask each other if attending an all-boys and all-girls school led to some BL and yuri situations. The more they get to know each other, the gaps in their understanding of men and women start to get filled. Even their friends notice them entering conversations about love they were years late to joining. So when these two finally say they've loved each other since they first met, I knew they meant it.

Of course, every relationship gets tested when they get too comfortable. After seemingly passing their biggest hurdle together, the relationship grows sour after their worst traits come to light. Without spoiling what happens, it confronts how often the art that's produced is easier to excuse than the thought process that goes into making it. A common tip for artists is that you should take inspiration from lived experiences, but you have to actually live it instead of treating it like homework. We know that these two aren't the same people they were before meeting each other, but the movie acknowledges that part of proving that is by taking accountability for who they once were. This film shows what it takes for two dorks to stumble into a relationship without compromising who they are. Instead, they find ways to make each other better people.

Visually, this film makes up for a lower frame count with its sheer artistry. Made through a combination of rotoscoping and two different character designers, the divide between our lovers is shown by drawing them like the manga they create. Ryo Nakaharu's Ami is a graceful, pastel-colored beauty walking through a rose-colored life, while Katsuya Takanagi's Ryo is a scruffy, monochromatic boy-failure who is actually color-blind. Their differing backgrounds as a BL artist and Ero-mangaka then seep into how they used to draw as kids. We see their childhood spent as crayon scribbles, growing into rebellious how-to-draw-anime teens, and even what they look like as their ideal husbando and waifu during the most creative sex scene since Mind Game. And that's just regarding these two: every character with some artistic inclination is portrayed the way they want to be (animal mascots, handsome bishojo, Vtubers).

Something that truly impressed me as an anime fan was how deep the reference pool goes. Otaku romances aren't necessarily new: people are still requesting Wotakoi S2. But oftentimes these anime do a bit of trend-hopping, simply referencing titles that are popular at the moment so that everyone can recognize them. This is not the case for Cherry & Virgin. Because the two leads fell into different demographics, what they watched as kids and which creators they grew to idolize informs what the film references in their dialogue and the visuals. There's a mention of Banana Fish that felt more like how manga fans spoke about the main ship, and part of the show's visual gimmick is based on a quote from Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence.

The music also goes for the jazz club vibe present in many classic romcoms. While rather understated compared to something like The Big O due to a lack of saxophones, the rest of the band, like the drummer and cellist, are all here. Not only does it lend a sense of class to fairly degenerate topics, but it keeps the tempo of the conversation going while giving quiet moments a sense of intimacy. That said, don't think they forgot this movie was for nerds. It knows that our idea of a romantic song choice could not be more different than those films. There is a needle drop for Macross: Do You Remember Love? at a pivotal scene in Comiket that had my jaw on the floor.

In a Q&A with the director, he stated that romcom anime tend to capture the spirit of youth. It's a time when those feelings are fresh and intense, making it ripe for feels and angst. It's much harder to mine that out of a couple who's grown jaded over the years. But just because the flames of passion have faded doesn't mean it's burned out. If anything, you treasure it further by taking chances to keep it lit. That is the value of showing a grown-up romance anime, and I'm glad we got one with otaku just like us.