Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! - Reviews

My only school fight was over Pokemon cards. Middle school culture didn’t tolerate open displays of (at the time) niche interests. So, when two kids came over to harass my friend and me as we traded cards, two of us wound up wrestling on the ground. In elementary and middle schools I had dressed in large, billowy jackets and cargo pants and I knew what I was doing. Those heavy clothes, even in the hot California summers were a shield. A barrier between me and them. This was my Chunibyo phase (roughly translated to “eighth-grader syndrome”). In high school and college, I locked my geeky hobbies inside and actively avoided friendship with those uninhibited by the optics of a young adult living for RPGs, mysticism, and anime. 

“Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions” builds it’s co-protagonists, anxious Yuta and stunted Rikka, concerning teenage passion, embarrassment, and fear. The kids spend twelve episodes running away from their pain, until the weight of growing self-awareness contorts their behavior into knots, and run right back towards that pain. At first, they find themselves confined by “invisible boundaries” into strict roles. Yuta, like most teens, eagerly rushes to be seen as mature. He already shows responsibility in his chores at home and turns down classmate Makoto’s offer to join in a secret ranking of the cutest girls in class. Rikka, calling herself the possessor of the “Wicked Eye”, see’s nearly every task or social exchange as aggression in her imagined battle with supernatural forces, if not an outright challenge to her safety. She is always quick to hop into a battle stance.

Nothing unfamiliar here for a teen love anime, but there’s a degree of maturity in the storytelling that is leagues better than what I had expected. Let’s look at how Yuta’s and Rikka’s conflicts intertwine, their growth has both good and bad parallels in the supporting cast, and how the “invisible boundaries” brought up in the story are not about looking past appearances, but maturing on the whole. 

Season one spoilers follow.

An early example of Yuta roleplaying as an adult and Rikka floundering is in episode five. Rikka’s math grade has slipped and her academic counselor threatens to disband the club she founded with Yuta. While practicing on a worksheet Rikka is shown to be easily distracted and drawing in the margins. The show never says she has ADHD, but I would say it’s fair to interpret so. After the other club members’ methods for study prove incompatible with Rikka’s learning disability, she opts for sidestepping the problem. With the counselor’s permission, the club takes on a job as custodians to the gym as a way of cementing the club’s importance to the school. Rikka and BFF Dekomori immediately lose interest and waste the day fighting with frenemy Nibutani, thus blowing their chance. 

As Yuta is our POV, all this comes off as childish and he takes it upon himself to tutor Rikka. His approach is patronizing. He scolds her and eventually offers a reward (picking a new email address for her) for completing her worksheet. Rikka narrowly makes the grade but at the cost of Yuta’s grades suffering. It’s all very classic beleaguered hero saves the day tropes, but we get a glimpse of Yuta’s inner child still itching to get out. When Dekomori tries tutoring Rikka he briefly slips into Chunibyo as she spins a story out of math problems. It’s not that Yuta isn’t one of the adults holding the group together (Nibutani being the other); it’s that he is so close in step with Rikka’s world he can barely scrape ahead of her in his quest to be “normal”. 

When the legally mandated “Beach Episode” (episode seven) comes, the tropes are again in service to their relationship. Rikka’s trauma prevents the expected camp from taking over as simply being in her grandparents’ home triggers depression. “Adult Yuta” can’t break through to her as she shuts down. This is mirrored in her older sister Toka’s cold attempts to get her out of her room. Seeing this, and although it pains him, Yuta speaks Chunibyo to Rikka. To his surprise, this moves Rikka to almost talk plainly about her history and pain. 

Episodes seven and eight marks a turning point for their relationship. To the best of her ability, Rikka makes herself vulnerable to Yuta in a way no one else has experienced. She tells of how her grandparents’ home emotionally hurts her, shows him her childhood home, expresses that her heart is racing when they are alone together. And for all this, the best he can do is meet her halfway. On the plot of Rikka’s former home, Toka’s severe parenting explodes, culminating after many examples of corporal punishment. She beats Rikka until Yuta steps between, finally confronting Toka and the image of adulthood he had believed he personified. 

Following this high for Yuta is his stagnation while Rikka further explores ways to express herself. While home alone at Yuta’s apartment they bond over relics of his Chunibyo past and effectively playhouse. The intimacy of this night draws Rikka into fits of emotion. And at Makota’s suggestion that Yuta and Rikka are coupling up, Yuta dismisses the idea arguing that Rikka is too immature for those feelings. Like Rikka’s public Chunibyo displays, it’s downright cringe-inducing to watch Yuta blow her off. He reverts to his adult mode and demands she go to bed like a parent (or like Toka). As he does the same he comments, “a Chunibyo will always be a Chunibyo”. This exception he makes for himself, the OG Chunibyo of the story no less, is indicative of his performative masculinity; compartmentalizing his traits so that he is the one in the right no matter the context. 

It’s especially galling as Yuta does not recognize his privilege. Many rom-com anime struggles with depictions of class disparity often ignoring (Toradora) or making light of it (Hi-Score Girl). Chunibyo dodges this bullet by simply having both leads come from what appears to be middle class. They live in modest apartments and have a family with connections abroad. This is to say, Yuta and Rikka have equal economic access, but they differ majorly in their social access. Rikka lost not just her father, but her mother who it’s suggested skipped town and/or had a breakdown. She was left with her grandparents, the granddad particularly being of little comfort and judgmental of her interests. And then there’s Toka, forced to grow up fast and take over as primary caregiver. Rikka’s life is a lot like my own friends from school: isolated with a small social group to distract her from circumstances, but powerless to change them. The series recognizes this and while it does give us a fairy tale ending, with all the allies made along the way playing a part in Rikka’s emancipation, it’s engagement with the realities of childhood trauma helps it feel earned.

I flew through these twelve episodes in a couple of days. I was moved in a way no high school set anime has done for me before. On that first viewing I was so drawn into the co-leads drama I all but ignored the supporting character’s impact. The big ones being Makoto and Kumin. The former made himself the designated sex pest early with the aforementioned cute girl ranking and the latter exists almost entirely as either a one-joke character (napping as a hobby) or a sounding board for more interesting people. I’m pretty thin-skinned when it comes to overbearing shtick and they did not win my heart. 

It was upon rewatching episodes seven through twelve I noticed the parallel they had to Rikka and Yuta. Makoto never really gets to know Kumin, granted neither do we and thus never receive any more than her benign tolerance. Silly has Kumin’s defining characteristic may be, he never seeks to understand it and is even vocally embarrassed by her. The same goes for Yuta, but he, unlike many young men, actually makes the effort to listen to a young woman. He engages her instead of romanticizing her, which is a form of objectification. Makoto may have had a chance with Kumin if he spent more time talking to her and less building her up as his great white whale.  

Likewise, but in a similarly comic fashion to Kumin and Makoto, Nibutani and Dekomori serve as a sort of exaggerated version of the co-leads relationship. Nitbutani’s response to the violent Chunibyo Dekomori is to fight fire with fire. They offer most of the series’ slapstick. They, too, overstayed their welcome. Mercifully, by episode eleven when Rikka disbands the club there is a moment of reconciliation. Dekomori is distraught by Rikka’s change coaxed by her mother and Yuta. Nibutani straight up drags her out of the room and down the hall, kicking and screaming. Alone, Nibutani embraces Dekomori and speaks as her former Chunibyo self, Morisummer, a priestess of love and compassion. Nibutani’s simple arc is also learning to communicate in a meaningful way. 

Toka, by far, is the grimmest counter to the idealistic friendship at the center of everything. The closest she ever comes to Rikka’s fanciful world is in sparring with her in the show’s sakuga moments. At first, this is played for laughs no differently than how Yuta chops Rikka on the head occasionally (which is, also, not ok!), but by episode eight the cheery facade of their fights drops and we see it for what it is: physical abuse. Toka resents her sister’s fantasy world, a reminder of their father’s death. She’s had to juggle both her trauma and Rikka’s coupled with an absentee mother. 

In episode nine Yuta pouts instead of talking with Rikka. When Toka shows asking for an update on her sister’s mental health Yuta asks the same back. Toka dismisses the idea with, “It’s a matter of appearances.” This passing the buck between the two of them is childish and at odds with the maturity they project. To Toka, being an adult means solely directing her kid sister's life. Still, even though Toka participates in one of my least favorite anime rom-com tropes, comedic blackmail, I found her to be a deeply tragic character. She is the dark side of the mature person Yuta set out to be at the beginning of the school year. Toka wears a lot of hats but resorts to the same inelegant handling of Chunibyo as Yuta. 

The “invisible boundaries” Rikka talks of are literal in a sense. They are represented by the headlights on a highway visible from her grandparents’ neighborhood. Another love story, another tragic past. I do think how the old dead parent trope anime frequents is universally used for cheap digs at emotion, sometimes more wrong-headed than others. This is true for western media as well. The dead parent in J.J. Abrams’ blockbuster “Super 8” is meant as an obstacle to the teenage hero's growth and maturity, as if the reality of being forced to grow up fast comes even close to the rip-roaring adventure of the film. “Chunibyo” outclasses that interpretation by digging it’s pretty little Kyoto Animation nails into the emotional mess of losing a parent; that simply getting by isn’t the only accomplishment that should or can be achieved. 

At any given time in the series, Rikka can be taken as the kid living in a fantasy and Yuta as the one coming into age. Going only by that would suggest this is a story about appearances and how we can better ourselves by scratching below the surface. I’ve never cared for this moral. Every single day we make judgments based on appearance as a matter of convenience alone. As we grow up we learn (at different rates) telltale signs amongst behaviors, language, surroundings, and more. Learning more about your friends and loved ones is our greatest joy (or dread) in blossoming relationships. 

So, with no small amount of pleasure, I found Chunibyo’s message about the layers of coming of age is what makes it so grand and painful. Rikka’s lesson is learning how to process her grief healthily. In episode twelve she starts small by participating in the tradition of washing her father’s tombstone with her mother. Although it may please her family she takes to this task with the same detachment as Toka and it is only when Yuta arrives to whisk her off to the beach that she can actualize. On the sand, she embraces his Chunibyo powers to forge a connection with the lights out on the sea that stand-in for her father. At last, she can say goodbye while still retaining her personhood. 

Yuta’s lesson is to understand that honest communication, no matter how cringe, is the adult value he needs to embrace. He comes to this in the scene before the beach when he hears Rikka has returned to her strict grandparents for good. Realizing the veritable death sentence he helped orchestrate with Rikka’s mom he bikes all the way there. Once on the beach, he unleashes his “Dark Flame Master” persona in it’s fullest we’ve seen in the present, bridging the gap from suffocated feelings to an outburst of heart. It’s a beautiful moment of unity for these kids; their first steps into adulthood. 

My years of closeted geekiness were among my loneliest. I transferred to college with no friends and made exactly one while there who I lost touch with after they moved out of state. Of course, I still bristle at displays of unrepentant love for X fandom, but I try to suss out my feelings better than in the dark times. It’s impossibly rewarding to engage with others over shared passions even when aspects of them (gestures to all problematic anime) can be a little cringe. “Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions” breathes honesty into the painful experiences of teenagers. Kindness hurts, but that shouldn’t stop us from living for it. 

I found this anime very boring even if it was the first episode. I don't normally find animes boring but this really boring. The story is easy to guess and has no spark to go with it.

This is a review of both seasons of Chuunibyou Demo Koi ga Shitai

Winner 2016 JV Anime Award: Best Comedy Anime

Winner 2016 JV Anime Award: Best Romance Anime

WARNING: SLIGHT SPOILER! (look for the spoiler tags)

Positive

*My first positive point should be a giveaway since it’s my first positive point in every review of a KyoAni anime and that is the animation. Both the “normal” animation and the animation of the imaginary world were the quality that I’m used to from KyoAni. Super sharp, colorful and simply perfection. 

*Now Chuunibyou is a romance comedy and it did both right. Let’s start with the comedy. There were multiple sources of hilarious comedy in this anime. Rikka for starters, her chuunibyou complex and behavior were so funny. I’m not surprised that she’s used in so many vines on the internet. And on top of that, the feud between Dekomori and Nubutani just added to the hilarity of this anime. Honestely, one of the funniest anime’s of my year.

*The other part was the romance. When Rikka wasn’t being weird and therefor added to the comedy, she was cute as fuck. It had been a while since a female character made it into my top 5 of cutest female characters but Rikka definitely belongs there. Not only her appearance is cute but also her personality was adorable, quirks and all. So with that, of course I found the couple Togashi-Rikka cute as fuck as well. It was so beautiful to see how they slowly started to discover their feelings for each other and also how it would collide with their current personality, especially for Rikka.

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*And with that I get seamless to my last positive point which came in the second halve of the first season. This is where the anime made a transition from romance-comedy to romance-drama. This second halve of the first season gave us so much development for Rikka and her chuunibyou and that’s what I liked the most. In stead of using Rikka’s chuunibyou purely as a comical source for the anime, it gave us a very nice and deep cause for her chuunibyou. The fact that her chuunibyou came from a traumatic experience in her youth made it that more interesting. And a final thing was the message at the end of that arc in season 1. Indeed everyone has a bit of chuunibyou in their lives and that’s good. Otherwise life would be pretty boring I guess.

Negative

*My first negative point was that I had the feeling that 3 storylines that were introduced in the second season weren’t completely resolved by the end of the second season. The new character Satone plays a pretty important role in this season and in the relationship between Rikka and Togashi. But I felt that her story wasn’t resolved at the end. There was more to it, there were troubles inside of her that deserved more solving in my opinion. She was too important of a character to just act as a catalyst between Togashi and Rikka.

The second story was the feud between Dekomori and Nubutani. In the first season it was meant as pure comedy but in the second season it gets more meaning. However it didn’t reach the conclusion that I was hoping for. And finally also the possible relationship between Kumin and Makoto was never exploited. Yes Kumin does “reject” Makoto but I felt that wasn’t the end of that.

*And my second negative point is the small SPOILER so if you haven’t seen Chuunibyou yet, skip to conclusion.

I was a bit disappointed at the end of the anime that there wasn’t a kiss between Rikka and Togashi. That final scene I thought it was finally going to happen but then plot convenience decided to deny me that pleasure. But when I think about it it’s actually very typical for their relationship. They had some very romantical moments but most of the times their relationship was more cute and funny than adorable. The relationship developed very slowly so that there was no kiss at the end of the anime was quite typical.

Conclusion

So as a conclusion, it seems that the final anime that I review every year is a good one. Last year, the final anime that I reviewed was Puella Magi Madoka Magica and you all know what I thought of that anime. Chuunibyou was funny, romantic and dramatic with lots of development from time to time. It’s only so unfortunate that some storylines weren’t completely resolved and that the climax that I was waiting for, didn’t come. So the separate parts of comedy, romance and drama were very good but the overall picture missed some conclusions. And because of that I’m going to rate Chuunibyou demo koi ga shitai at 4 stars. With fully resolved storylines this would have been gold but even without it, this was another amazing anime by one of my favorite studios.

I've watched a fair bit of anime and this is actually the kind of stuff I wish to see more of. Normal movies always have their limitations when it comes to transitions from reality and morph it into fantasy but you simply don't have those kinds of restrictions in anime.

Kyoto Animation has a pretty great track record when it comes to characters with bubbling personalities and this show ain't no different. The art is gorgeous as always but Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! actually carries quite an important message that everybody deals with situations in different ways. Try to have patience with the people around you and enjoy being yourself.

It starts out playful but it does play with your emotions near the end, so make sure you have a box of tissues around.

STory:  I was drawn in with the attitude of this being just another brainless silly show- man was I wrong.  Certainly the first couple episodes set you up for it but as the series progresses we see actual progression of the storyline! not just almost character develpments that are saved for the finale. There's two ways of looking at this show. 1. the difficulties of that time between childhood and teenager where one isn't ready to let go and start growing up- the eventual acceptance and feeling of losing that special power of belief only truly felt as a child.  The second and more Apt for this show as I delved further in was what a person will do to cope with difficult situations we encounter in life. When something bad happens, sometimes we just can't cope or accept it yet, so we come up with fantasy worlds to escape the pain and shield us from reality. 

Animation- You can really tell in just normal scenes that alot of production value went into this series(well worth it too)  I haven't seen animation style like this since Hyouka(value/style) This really helped both in fleshing out the characters and adding to the "delusional fight scenes"(not sure how to describe them other than that)

the sound quality was good, but most shows have increased quality of animation and sound lately

overall, I gave this a high score cuz at first glance It's a show that really will make you laugh out loud not just once but repeatedly during the entire series. Chuuniybou also somehow makes one feel emotion for the characters progressivley(it really sneaks up on ya) and can be very poignant during the second half, it does get a little bit more serious but won't do a 180 like other series(SHUFFLe anyone?)  I think any who start this series and enjoy it will do so till the end and leave satisfied(but wanting more)