Our Dating Story: The Experienced You and The Inexperienced Me is somehow both ambitious and completely lacking in ambition. It initially caught my attention because I have a soft spot for the dynamics of a heterosexual relationship where the girl is the more experienced of the two, rather than the reverse. It quickly became apparent that this is not a story where a girl takes a boy by the hand and shows him the ways of love, but an examination of consent and sex within the context of relationships and the emotions involved. This did not dissuade me; if anything, it interested me more, because that’s an incredibly important idea rarely discussed, either in fiction or in reality. However, as it turns out, even if the ideas behind it are nice, the execution lacks the necessary punch.
It’s a good concept on paper. Ryuto is a nerd with a crush on Runa, a gyaru in his class, despite the rumors about her promiscuity. Runa agrees to try out a relationship, takes him home, and offers to have sex with him that very afternoon. It turns out, Runa always thought of sex as an obligation to keep boyfriends interested, even though every single one has dumped her after a couple months. Even though Ryuto wants to take her up on her offer, the two decide to take their time and wait until both feel ready. The romance is gentle and slow as they feel their way through the relationship, exploring milestones like birthdays, taking trips together, and their first kiss before sex enters the equation.
I wanted to love their relationship, I really did, but I was never able to make it past appreciation. The conversation it wants to have about sex, relationships, and consent is an important one to be sure, and one worth having. Runa consents to sex with Ryuto right away, but it’s completely disconnected from her desire. He wants to have sex, but it’s important to him that she wants it just as much as he does. Meanwhile, Runa has a lot of internalized shame about her promiscuity, but Ryuto reassures her that her past doesn’t matter to him. Having a heroine who explicitly is not a virgin is remarkable, even more so because the story actively fights back against the idea that she has been sullied. Sex is never treated as dirty or disgraceful, but rather a natural part of dating and relationships. I’m a big believer in the potential of fiction to start important conversations, and Our Dating Story has a lot to say.
The problem? Ryuto and Runa both have the personality of wallpaper paste: slightly sweet, and perhaps important structurally, but far too bland and uninteresting to carry a series. This is not helped by how, over the years, the gyaru subculture has been neutered in popular media to mean “outgoing girl with big breasts who wears flashy clothes, follows trends, and uses a lot of slang.” Ryuto escapes description, not because words fail me but because there’s nothing to talk about. Runa’s best friend Nicola is more interesting than the rest of the cast combined. She’s protective of Runa, but, as it turns out, has her own messy romantic and sexual relationships. However, between school, her part-time job to save up for college, and her relationship, it would be too much to ask of her to carry the show along with all of those. Girl only has so much time in a day! Furthermore, my impression of Ryuto and Runa’s relationship was not helped when, in the middle of this show’s airing, I rewatched My Love Story!!, another series about a pair of nice kids in a healthy relationship that manages to stay consistently fun and engaging.
Part of the issue is that for a series that’s openly about sex, the protagonists have very little chemistry outside of a couple scenes. The emotional component of their relationship gets heavily emphasized, but that’s really only part of the equation when it comes to being ready for sex, isn’t it? There’s so much physical exploration that comes before full-on intercourse, from casual touch to forms of intimacy other than just sticking tab A into slot B. If Ryuto and Runa are doing any of that, it’s all happening off-screen without the audience being privy to it. The script and the visuals lack sizzle in equal measure, leaving everything just feeling limp.
Instead of allowing the character drama to play out naturally, the writers try to inject some tawdry drama via a love triangle between the main two and Runa’s estranged twin sister/Ryuto’s former crush, Maria. Maria tries to Single White Female her way into stealing Ryuto from Runa, but there’s no tension. The plot threads either get dropped or resolved far too quickly, and besides, there’s never any doubt about how things will play out. Ryuto would never dream of doing anything to hurt Runa, and Runa is just so good-hearted that Maria’s creepiness pales in comparison to Runa’s hopes that their family may one day be reunited. So, they hatch a plot to get their parents back together… and it’s The Parent Trap. They’re doing The Parent Trap as a subplot. Sure, fine.
Throughout all this, I felt like Runa’s perspective was lacking. There’s so much emphasis placed on her relationship with others, but what about the relationship between herself and her body? She’s seen sex as an obligation, something done for another’s pleasure and not her own, for a long time. How did she come to think of things that way? Was it a crappy ex-boyfriend, culture and society, or both? Or maybe she’s demisexual? There’s so much potential to the core idea for thoughtful character exploration, and in a time when the discourse about sex scenes in fiction feels endless, some genuine eroticism. Instead, we get the two most boring teenagers in the world limping their way toward the vague concept of feeling ready, without ever truly examining what that entails. On top of all that, the thesis of the show seems to be, “It’s totally fine to want to have sex… as long as you’re in a loving relationship.” What about the girls who have casual sex and are totally okay with that? Can’t they enjoy sex for its own sake? Or does that make them bad and dirty? It all comes back to the obsessive focus on the emotional rather than physical aspect.
Our Dating Story: The Experienced You and The Inexperienced Me is… fine. Had the story been more nuanced, the script more engaging, the direction more impactful, it could have been good, great even. Sticking with it for three months, waiting to see if it would finally give me what I wanted, was more frustrating than anything else.