Warning: The following contains spoilers for Whisper Me A Love Song episode #3 and A Condition Called Love episode #1
The series A Condition Called Love on Crunchyroll and Whisper Me A Love Song on HIDIVE are innovating a common romance anime trope this season, which is a rarity, let alone two series being so subversive simultaneously. The uncommon trope in question is when one party has been confessed to, and is trying to love the other party in return, because they are unfamiliar with the feeling, all to the confessor’s knowledge. This was clear in the debut episode of A Condition Called Love, but has just been confirmed in the third installment of Whisper Me A Love Song.
This subverted shared trope clearly deviates from most romance anime where either a misconception or an inability to confess persists throughout an entire season or up until the series finale, so that both parties are unaware of how the other feels about them. And even when they do acquire the knowledge, it’s unheard of to have a situation where one of the parties has never fallen in love with someone and enters a special type of relationship to the detriment of both, with this fully understood among everyone involved.
Of course, A Condition Called Love has already been exploring this dynamic for two weeks, as opposed to Whisper Me A Love Song, which just introduced it in episode #3. As a result, there is little to compare regarding how each couple deals with this potentially devastating type of agreement. The difference lies in how each built up to it and the preferences of those involved.
What’s truly exciting is that Whisper Me A Love Song could have easily explored this type of agreement through a completely different lens, since it follows a same-sex relationship. Like many other yuri series, usually one girl has more experience with dating, while the other love interest is initially hesitant because this would be her first time in a relationship, especially with another girl.
This isn’t the case, though. Himari Kino is unsure of getting in a relationship because she has never loved anyone romantically before and has struggled with the fact that her type of love is different. Meanwhile, Yori Asanagi is also new to love in general, and yet, she is clearly in love with Himari.
As a matter of fact, it’s in this way that Whisper Me A Love Song is similar to the popular boy’s love series Sasaki and Miyano, where both parties are new to this type of relationship and only one is sure of how they feel. However, Sasaki and Miyano doesn’t have any kind of potentially disastrous type of agreement, like in Whisper Me A Love Song and A Condition Called Love, since it relies on the trope where both parties are unable to communicate.
What’s currently unclear is if Whisper Me A Love Song will explore Himari’s unfamiliarity with love, similar to how A Condition Called Love does. In fact, the latter series implies that Hotaru Hinase hasn’t been able to fall in love because she might have another underlying condition that prevents her from expressing, tapping into or understanding how she feels. Aside from how Hotaru’s situation feels more extreme, A Condition Called Love has been both alluding to and just recently making direct references to an earlier point in Hotaru’s life when she lost a friend because of her inability to express herself, which suggests she might be autistic or have some other type of condition.
By comparison, Himari’s situation in Whisper Me A Love Song seems to be connected more with innocence or just being stuck in the mindset of a child, since the series has been showing how both she and her friends have progressed throughout the years. Of course, it’s much too soon to make a clearer judgment, since Whisper Me A Love Song just began exploring this dynamic, but what is clear is how both it and A Condition Called Love are unique in their unconventional shared commonality.