I feel I need to give you a fair warning about Kare Kano (His And Her Circumstances) - you can read my full review here:
http://tiffanime.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/his-and-her-circumstances/I cut a couple paragraphs out just cause it shouldn't really be necessary for my warning:
Well, I’ll start off to say that this is a really good, cute, heartwarming series. There’s nothing sad in it, and it’s hilarious at times. You’ll absolutely fall in love with the characters and really get into the story. I have to say though, it’s absolutely excellent up till about episode 18 or so. After that, it kind’ve goes down hill. Not for the normal reasons one might expect though.
Towards the end it becomes pretty evident that the creators were running out of money. Over half of episode 24 was all recaps, episode 19 was stop-motion with terrible paper cut outs. Episodes 14 and 15 are both completely recaps. There were a few more big portions of episodes taken up by recaps… They even ran the title sequence again in episode 24 just to take up more time. The animation became considerably worse after episode 18 as well. It eventually improved a bit, but never really matched what it started as. The beginning third of episode 25 is yet another filler waste of time. The rest is about Yukinon’s little sister and some bizarre stalker thing. It’s cute and all, but has absolutely nothing to do with the story whatsoever. It doesn’t progress it at all. And with as few episodes left as the series had at that point, it was in serious need of some development to happen. It continued yet again on the very last episode. It starts off with real camera footage, and then goes on to stop animation and stills with little relevance to the story and it seems like their budget for voice acting was getting lower as well, since a good 90% of it you had to read. It continues on like that, for the rest of it you’re pretty much reading a manga, except with some annoying boy and girl narrator saying random things that have no relevance whatsoever to what’s written on the scene, so it just disrupts what you’re trying to read. To make it very clear: If you don’t pause the video constantly, you’re going to miss what’s going on completely. This goes on for the first 3/4th’s of the final episode. Then at which point, there’s a brief couple minutes of relevant animation that’s halfway decent, but then it goes back to the manga reading crap. It really pisses me off.
But, since so much time was wasted with silly nothingness, recaps and fillers, the series is left with a very unfinished unsatisfying feeling. There’s no clear ending and things are left undone. In other words, it really pissed me off. But, overall… It was a really good series, if you look past all the crap the creators pulled. It has really cute lovable characters, and for some reason I just love some of the expressions Yukinon makes.
Romances though...
Hatsukoi Limited - you'll fall in love with it and laugh your ass off too
NANA
Peach Girl
Candy Boy (it's a yuri, despite the name)
Kimi ga Nozomu Eien (and if you want the other route you can watch the alternate version, I prefer how the original went though)
Itazura na Kiss
Mai-HiME - not completely focused around the romance, but it's still a pretty big part of the plot.. more dedicated to the action & story than romance, but still an amazing anime
