It's a romance that's happy, sweet and funny. It's also a bit different, thanks to a male lead who's the opposite of normal romantic leads.

Takeo Gouda is a gorilla. That's not literally true, but he might as well be. He's over two metres tall and still growing, he seems to be made of solid muscle and he'd probably be fine even if you dropped him out of airplanes. He can also sprint like a madman. The boys in his class practically worship him, but the girls give him a wide berth. A more sensitive person might take that to heart, but fortunately Takeo's the kind of lunk who thinks everything's okay with the world if the people around him are happy. He's a really nice guy, but he's a bit overwhelming in person (e.g. no sense of personal space) and his standard mode of conversation is a gravel-voiced roar.

Takeo's the source of most of the show's comedy. He's a bull looking for a china shop, albeit in a really altruistic, good-natured way.

Rinko Yamato is the same age as Takeo, but tiny. You half-expect him to eat her. When they hold hands, it's like throwing a tennis ball into a bulldozer's shovel. She also falls hard for Takeo when he saves her from a groper on the train in ep.1. She's squeaky-voiced and girly, she loves cooking and she has trouble understanding that other girls might not all be just as mad about Takeo as she is.

The show's about them. What's more, it doesn't mess around. They get together in ep.3 and everything thereafter is the two of them enjoying their relationship, helping people and not realising when other potential relationships are in the air. They'll both acquire at least one other admirer, but this always ends amicably since it's obvious to anyone with eyes that you'd need to kill them to prise them apart. They're perfect for each other, because they're both open books. There's nothing ironic, cool or distant about either of them. They wear their hearts on their sleeves and they give themselves completely at all times. Sometimes there are glowing sparkles in the air when they're being particularly lovey-dovey, which is entirely appropriate and even funny.

Under normal circumstances, this might have made us vomit. However Takeo's King Kong, Yamada's Fay Wray and neither is entirely in touch with reality, so in fact they're adorable.

Other characters include Takeo's suspiciously celibate but mega-hot best friend, Makoto Sunakawa. In any other romance, he'd have been the male lead. Sunakawa's older sister fancies Takeo and is amusingly gobsmacked on discovering in ep.5 that there's another woman in the world who goes for him. I want to list the whole cast, but half of what I want to say would be a spoiler. They're all nice.

Oh, and Takeo's pregnant mother is amusingly robust too. On her delivery day, she's carrying other people into the maternity ward.

It's not a plot-driven series, although more than you'd think happens if you include the stories of other characters. Instead it's driven mostly by charm and comedy. There are occasional mild misunderstandings between Takeo and Yamato, usually because Takeo has the over-protective instincts of a Victorian father while Yamato's more interested than he thinks in getting cuddly. However basically they're a perfect match and the story's neatly subverting all the usual relationship threats that get used by manga and anime to spin out this kind of storyline. We don't miss them. We're too busy laughing at Takeo being a goalkeeper or practicing kissing with a petrified Sunawara (which is hysterical). Yamato and Takeo very occasionally starting to resemble each other is funny too.

I almost never failed to enjoy watching this show. I'm looking forward to watching the live-action movie tomorrow. It's nice.