Warnings: Spoilers for The Dangers in My Heart episode 5The dark romance series The Dangers In My Heart is defying gender stereotypes by having the girl in a certain relationship play specific roles usually assigned to the guy while the same boy is put in situations that normally girls find themselves in.
The anime currently simulcasting on HiDive is an adaptation of The Dangers In My Heart manga by Norio Sakurai. The anime’s fifth episode first sees bubbly and popular girl Anna leverage her height advantage over aspiring murderer and macabre-enthusiast Kyotaro by using her arms as an umbrella to shield him from the rain. Later, she grabs his wrist and pulls the shocked boy in the direction of a manga display she rightfully concludes he would like to visit. And, finally, Anna uses her arm to brace herself against an elevator wall when she gets accidentally shoved into Kyotaro.
Dangers In My Heart Darkly Reinvents Romance Anime
Although none of these situations bear any resemblance to dark subject, the core of The Dangers In My Heart is unsettling. Kyotaro isn’t just an avid enthusiast of the macabre but fantasizes about doing horrible things to his classmates, impulses that he hasn’t acted on. The original appeal of the series was watching Kyotaro struggle with wanting to harm Anna and his romantic feelings for her. Seeing him spy on Anna and commentate her actions was deeply disturbing as a result. But now, as Kyotaro comes to terms with his emotions and eventually embraces them, his character is endearing. The result is a subversion of romance anime’s worst tropes.
In this particular genre, girls are normally submissive and, because of their smaller stature, are often swept away by the strong, masculine boy. But Kyotaro is quite short and frail, especially in comparison to the tall and athletic Anna. The scene where she drags Kyotaro around is a reinterpretation when the guy usually decides to assert his dominance like many of the cutest moments in Don’t Toy With Me, Miss Neagatoro. But in The Dangers In My Heart, Anna is using her height and strength to drag Kyotaro to a manga display that he was too shy to visit himself. The fact that Anna has to push her classmates out of the way and say out loud that Kyotaro can’t see over them naturally places him in a more submissive position instead of the girl.
Dangers in My Heart Reverses Classic Anime Tropes
The aforementioned elevator scene is undoubtedly the episode’s most impressive subversion of a popular trope in romance anime. It’s so well known that it was even recently satirized in A Galaxy Next Door when the series’ guy and girl act out the infamous situation themselves to explore their connection. In these instances, the guy normally asserts himself over the girl by backing her against a wall and leaning in. But a key gesture involves bracing himself against said wall with one of his arms, startling the girl. In The Dangers in My Heart, the girl is not only assuming the position instead of the guy, but does so involuntarily because someone else knocked into her. It’s a double inversion on a classic scene that still refreshingly makes the girl more dominant. Kyotaro is, in turn, trapped and forced to adapt in any way he can until Anna snaps out of it. The Dangers in My Heart might explore the surface of very dark subject matter, but the anime is more innovative in how it handles stereotypical and oftentimes unfortunate romance tropes.
The Dangers in My Heart is simulcasting on HiDive.
