angelsreviews

So this is really cringe the anime for me. I like Romantic Comedy normally, but when its completely forced like this one is, it just gets old fast. This doesn’t make the show a bad anime as it does have good qualities to it if you can get passed the very cring painful start of the anime. Just the first Episode really wanted me to stop watching when they took away our main characters beloved pet because I don’t know about you, but if someone random tries to mess with your own beloved pet, you would completely hate that person too. I am glad I watched through the series to see how it turned out, but oh its hard to get through the first few episodes with how forced it feels.

Let’s start with our main character, Anzu. To be fair, I actually felt extremely connected with her being a main character as I also have a cat I adore, like video games, and like to have my chocolate plus the bonus that I am not actively looking for romance. I have had some rather BAD experiences that have pretty much set me off looking for any romance so I’m on the mindset that if it happens, it happens but I don’t really think I am supposed to be in a relationship. In this way, I understand a bit why Anzu just kind of wants to just play games and be with her cat at the moment plus she has time to run into someone she likes later on in life. I understand how they needed to have her get open to hanging out with more people and socialize, but I feel like they could have done this way differently then tried to force a romance. I think Komi Can’t Communicate did this a bit better with just having a certain number of friends rather then forcing romance and then maybe they could have had just randomly some could have romantic feelings? I don’t know, maybe its just me and the fact of my own relationship problems making me feel annoyed with that sort of storyline.

Then we have Riri… a character I despise to the letter. I absolutely hate this character for the most part. Now for those who watch a lot of romantic comedies, there are certain tropes that happen in them. They are in games, manga, anime, even live action shows sometimes. Sometimes they are called out, sometimes not, but eh, we know that they are common things that can show up. There are times that they are done really well and we can fall in love with them, then there are times that they are out of place or fall flat. Riri is the writer of the story who just decides to add things on the whim for romantic and sexual tension. He basically forces Anzu to be all alone, without any sort of support or love in order for her to be forced to find romance. And yes, this character ticked me off badly when he took away her cat from her! I may have a little bit of a bias when something like that happens… (No one mess with the kitty!) While he did seem to calm down a bit later on in the show, it was too little to late in some regard and it still was very annoying. I hear there is a season two maybe on the way, I wonder if he will be more palatable then.

Kazuki is a typical popular pretty boy who doesn’t want to be popular but is also good at a lot of things guy. Yes, that is a mouth full, but it’s true. All the girls want him except our main character, he lives alone because reasons, he can cook and clean and do what our main character can’t…Typical main romantic interest. Same for Junta who is a random childhood friend character who just so happens to pop into her life at this point in time. And while I wish I could talk about more, there really isn’t a reason to plus it would be spoilers since it feels like the show is slow bring up any more people. Also it feels random for some of it depending on what Riri feels like bringing in sometimes. Without spoiling anything though, I do have to give big props for making both Kazuki and Junta feel very real after a while. While it was pretty late in the anime, some of the things they bring up for both of them made the characters stand out as quite well written and I would dare say some of the better romantic interest characters in a romantic comedy. They broke free of just the cookie cutter when Riri was dialed back.

So ya, this show had way to much cringe in the beginning. Any time that Riri had to butt into the story felt way to forced and stupid to me. But you want to know what didn’t feel cringe? When the show decided to actually be a romantic comedy without Riri’s romantic input! The more and more they eased up on the pain against Anzu, which was when it actually started to make it much more interesting to me. Even the points when Riri was just calm seemed a lot better too when they weren’t forcing the romantic situations and calling them out. To the end, Riri had gotten some brownie points with me for a few small things that he did but that never ended up fixing the mass amount of problems I had with the character and in turn whatever sort of company he was situated with. Again, this may be fixed in season two, but we shall see.

The English dub is pretty good all things considered except for Riri’s voice, which I will get to that in a second. Most of the voice actors are pretty new to me with only a few standing out. With Kazuki’s voice, I didn’t pick it out fully at the time I was watching, but after seeing that Jason Griffith had also voiced Shadow the Hedgehog I can’t not hear that now. Especially when he is doing his little broody thing. When talking about Riri’s voice, I want to first bring up that I do not think this was a problem with Courtney Lin. If she is the same person who did Draculaura in the Monster High Trailer I saw, I am pretty sure she can do a good voice. I think the problem is either the direction or the decision to make the voice a few octaves higher then it should. The Japanese voice doesn’t sound that high pitched so not sure why they decided to make the dub that high pitched annoying squeak.

The animation is basic; I hate to say that but most anime has a similar look and feel lately in this genre. I do give props for having our main character not look like a very plain straight black haired Japanese student and instead gave her very bushy red hair which they even commented on so I know it wasn’t just for artistic liberty. We still do get characters with very random hair color and designs but its nice hearing someone comment on the design of the main character like that a little bit. What is most striking is the characters eyes, which while large, have a sort of glow about them whenever you see them which feels a bit like its own style. Also interesting is when Anzu is trying not to be sexy, she shows as a rather Trollish looking face with worked to show her suffering during what was happening.

Overall, I don’t feel like I was the main demographic for this anime, but I did enjoy the last part of it. I had to sit through a lot of pain in order to get to the good part but I did enjoy the good part that I got to. I find that my love for romantic comedies is more along with the ‘if it happens, it happens’ funny sort of thing rather then ‘you have to do this or you will never see your little cat again’ story. This sort of goes with my own life as I been pushed into a lot of things over the years and they have never worked out for me so now I just go at my own pace. Because of the last part of the show, I am interested in seeing the second season if it comes out.