A brilliant visual metaphor transforms an awkward romance into one of the year’s most heartfelt and emotionally resonant anime
Dating nowadays is hell, let alone if you’re a thirtysomething virgin manga artist. That’s the delightfully awkward premise at the heart of Masanao Kawajiri’s animated masterpiece, Cherry and Virgin.
The film just world premiered at the Fantasia Film Festival.
The film follows erotic manga artist Ryo, whose best friend dies alone and still a virgin. The tragedy forces Ryo to confront his own fears and finally download a dating app where he matches with Ami, a fellow manga artist desperate to escape her alcoholic mother and finally begin living life on her own terms. Together, the pair must overcome crippling social anxiety, years of emotional baggage, and the toxic influence of the online manosphere if they have any hope of finding genuine happiness with one another.
As compelling as the story is, the film’s greatest hook is its brilliantly surreal visual conceit. To reinforce its themes of perspective and self-image, every character appears as though they’ve drawn themselves. Ryo, who is colorblind, exists entirely in stark black and white, rendered with halftone shading like the pages of his erotic manga. Ami, meanwhile, bursts with vibrant color, reflecting the emotional expressiveness of the Boys’ Love manga she creates. It’s an ingenious device that does far more than establish personality—it literally invites us to experience the world through each character’s eyes.
In one particularly beautiful moment, Ami reaches out and touches Ryo’s hand during their first date, and the spot where she touches him blooms with color. It’s a simple gesture that says more about intimacy than pages of dialogue ever could.
Narratively, Cherry and Virgin is a thoroughly engaging romantic dramedy, alternating between Ryo and Ami’s perspectives as they awkwardly navigate the uncertain early stages of a relationship. Both carry years of insecurity and unhealthy assumptions about themselves and the opposite sex, with Ryo becoming increasingly susceptible to the poisonous rhetoric of incel and manosphere culture. Imagine Kare Kano, but today with adults, modern anxieties, and a sharper comedic edge. Kawajiri expertly balances the heavier subject matter with wonderfully timed humor, using the protagonists’ self-deprecating awkwardness to make them not only endearing to each other, but to the audience as well.
At its core, the film explores how perspective quite literally colors a relationship. If every person experiences the world differently, can we ever truly know another human being? It’s a fascinating question, and the way Kawajiri answers it—through Ryo and Ami’s emotional journey together—provides the film’s most satisfying and heartfelt conflict.
Ultimately, Cherry and Virgin is about two lonely outsiders learning to tear down the walls they’ve built around themselves in order to hopefully be able to embrace love and find comfort in another person. Making its protagonists adults rather than teenagers or twentysomethings lends the story an emotional maturity that’s refreshingly uncommon in anime. For viewers who grew up with the medium, it’s especially rewarding to see these kinds of romantic stories evolve alongside their audience. Funny, deeply empathetic, and visually inspired, Cherry and Virgin is the kind of animated film that will make you laugh, make you cry, and perhaps even change the way you see the world around you.
Check out the Q&A from Fantasia:
