Why Mysterious Girlfriend X Is Exactly The Romantic Story We Needed

Mysterious Girlfriend X (or Nazo no Kanojo X in Japanese) redefines how a romantic story can be depicted in anime. It strays miles away from your common love-comedy series, which is a good thing.

Oww, what’s with this show? It’s a romantic story about teenagers but every episode is filled with strange events, awkward situations and body fluids! Gross!
But wait a minute, isn’t this exactly what a real romantic relationship in high school is all about? Despite what other polished idealistic romantic anime would have you believe high school relationships are filled with uncomfortable dates, teenagers dreaming strange dreams about their romantic love interest and having to deal with varies issues of body fluids.
Mysterious Girlfriend X doesn’t strive to be too realistic either – it not only shows a (kind of) normal high school relationship, it’s also a parody about one. The parody elements in the series center around Urabe Mikoto, which is the mysterious girlfriend the series is titled about. Urabe isn’t a normal girl by any definition. However her personality isn’t that farfetched, and I can see how some women can identify with certain traits of her. Urabe doesn’t really have any mysterious past or something like that. She’s just weird, in a refreshing kind of way! Would you like to watch another romance where the lead female character is a sensitive girly girl who is totally devoted to her boyfriend? After watching four episodes of Mysterious Girlfriend X I think I’d rather not watch another such “convenient” love story. But more than that I feel that Mysterious Girlfriend X opened Pandora’s box for romantic anime series. It made me ponder how come the avant-garde medium that is anime has confounded itself for years to mundane love stories or completely-unbelievable fantasy love stories? Sometimes when I watch romantic anime I feel like I’m seeing the same series again and again with small variations at best. Isn’t it time for someone to come along and shake this rusy mold? Mysterious Girlfriend X managed to do just that for me.
Truth be told Mysterious Girlfriend X also has a bit of fiction mixed into it, specifically the “magical” attributes given to saliva and Urabe’s inhuman scissor skills. These manage to spice things up a little bit and arguably make Urabe more mysterious.The important thing here is really that these fictional things don’t derail the love story one bit, only augment it.

It’s far too early to say anything conclusive about Mysterious Girlfriend X as a whole, but I definitely believe it shows us just how much the romantic and romantic-comedy genres can evolve. Unconventional or twisted love stories might be just the thing that the romantic genre needed. Perhaps such series can even break the conventions that made most of the love stories depicted in anime fall into the comedy subcategory in the first place. I look forward to seeing more unconventional love stories with a gripping sense of reality and a sprinkle of parody.