Content Warning: Fan service, upskirting, partial underage nudity
What’s it about? Yonosuke “Eiyu” Sakai is obsessed with rom-coms, especially ones centering childhood friends and their happily-ever-after. But even though he has two childhood friends of his own, he’s given up on love ever entering his life. But little does Eiyu know Shio and Akari, his friends for life, have been harboring crushes on him all this time…
I’m going to be real: I chose You Can’t Be in a Rom-Com With Your Childhood Friends! because it has that exact level of teenage horny foolishness that I think is interesting to examine in its cultural and social complexities. But when I saw that Crunchyroll has marked this as being 18+ my interest when from positive to slightly anxious. Then the partially nude opening rolled and I realized that yeah, this show might be a fight for me. I’m fine with fan service when it’s adults: not so much when it’s like, a fifteen-year-old.
But this review is only getting started and I like to give everything a fair shake. So how did I like this?
Episode 1 makes one thing clear immediately: protagonist Yonosuke (frequently called Eiyu, so that’s what we’ll go with from here) is an absolute teen boy dummy who doesn’t realize that the girls in his life are absolutely hella into him. Like, he starts off this premiere episode with first childhood friend Shio tangled around him, body pressed to his, and apparently, this is JUST HOW IT ALWAYS IS? HOW IT’S ALWAYS BEEN? Of course the tension is immediately broken by a “comedic” upskirt that made me look away, which is a signifier of how this premiere is gonna go if there ever was one.
Because let me tell you, this show’s female characters are HORNY for Eiyu. Shio is constantly doing whatever she can to draw his eye intentionally, and so are the other girls in his orbit, much to their ongoing frustration. Of course, most of them are drawing it from tropes in media, including Akari, a classic tsundere (or is she?) who enters the picture as Childhood Friend 2.
What this establishes, of course, is a back-and-forth between two parties: Eiyu and Shio and Eiyu and Akari. Only Eiyu doesn’t quite realize that his childhood friends are desperate for him, leaving that gap of hilarity to form the conflict of the overarching plot.
Whew boy, where do I begin? This show has…something beneath its surface. Like, the premise is slapstick and funny, as is Shio and Akari’s increasingly antic-laden attempts to get Eiyu to even chance upon the fact that he’s the object of their affections. However, the show gets in the way of the show, leaving me feeling unsatisfied, and at times, just plain embarrassed and unable to look at the screen.
Why? Well, it’s because this show is rated 18+, which introduces a lot of unnecessary boobs and butts that take away from it actually being funny. Like, was it necessary to see Shio, a child because teenagers are children, pressed against Eiyu in bed and then standing on the window frame, panties on screen for like, five seconds? Like, no, it’s absolutely not. Mind you, that’s not even addressing Akari’s tsuntsun/deredere act, even if it does hide the more complex feelings and regrets she has inside her head. (Also, we see her underwear too.) Talking about teenagers going through puberty without exploiting them is always a tough line to walk, but this show falls off the high wire after exactly one step.
What I’m getting at is this show is messy, but it’s not messy in an enjoyable way. It feels out of step, out of time, like a relic of the 2010s that was hard to watch because I never knew when I’d see butt crack again. And I really hate that, because there’s so many good series that are shonen romances. But the description for this episode on Cruchyroll reigns supreme: these girls are trying to get Eiyu’s attention in the most twisted ways, turning their crush into a public spectacle as they literally grind on him in front of their classmates to give him an erection while copying his homework.
It is, safely put, a lot, and all of the rom-com sparkles in the world can’t hide how uncomfortable it makes me.
It’s rare that I come down so firmly on the side of not enjoying something, but I must admit, even though I recognize that there’s fans of this series, I didn’t like it. I don’t know if this is just the growing schism between myself and shonen romance: it likely is because I’ve seen excellent romantic comedies, especially in 2025. While You Can’t Be in a Rom-Com With Your Childhood Friends! is decidedly more slapstick, enjoyable and excellent it is not.
Yet I feel frighteningly compelled to continue, just to see which of the girls (the opening and ending feature four all together, so bring them on) wins Eiyu’s heart. Will this be the rare poly experience? Almost certainly not with a young man that’s missing the overt signals from the girls who are frequently and literally throwing themselves at him. I have to admit that while I’m firm on my dislike, I’m sitting on the fence on this one because of morbid curiosity: maybe I’ll find myself liking it in my ongoing quest for quality rom-coms each season.
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