So I've been watching a few romantic comedies and while not all of them are exactly new, I want to take some time to outline my thoughts on a lot of these. This is going to be divided into many smaller subjects because I don't think any of these is big enough to warrant a full post but I've got things I want to say.
The True Wife: Quitessential Quintuplets
So Quintessential Quintuplets is an interesting show that I think missed the mark in a number of ways. If I had to give a recommendation, I'd say the second season is a big improvement over the first and I'll be awaiting the third season, just so long as you can get through how painful the first season is. That said, this particular RomCom operates a lot like a suspense show where you start off with Futaro's marriage with one of the Quintuplets and it's up to the show to reveal which one it is. I don't have manga spoilers as I'm an anime only. So let's just jump into this.
Starting off with the first season, if you were to ask me who Futaro is most likely to end up with on a seasonal basis, in the first season it is most likely going to be Miku. Of the five girls, Itsuki and Nino treat him like utter garbage, and while Ichika and Yotsuba are kind enough, it's not in a way that implies deeper romantic feelings. For the most part, Miku acts the most like a girl with a crush, even if Futaro isn't able to see it because his social skills are so poor. By the way, that's part of the reason this show is so painful at the start, because the girls are all bitches, and Futaro kind of deserves it, even if the girls can go a bit far at times.
For context, Itsuki the red-head spends all her time avoiding Futaro, even if she seems to have an honor code, Nino the one with the long pink hair, basically drugged him and has been trying to throw him out ever since, Yotsuba the girl with the green ribbon, seems nice enough though that seems to be toward everybody, Ichika is kind enough as well though seemingly in a promiscuous sort of way. Miku on the other hand, Futaro met head on at her level and she opened up to him almost immediately after. Sure she does have her moments of coldness but with a guy like Futaro that's completely normal, you can't expect her to be happy with him all the time.
That said some changes occurred during the second season that muddy this up. Now three of the five girls have romantic feelings for him. Miku, Ichika, and bizarrely enough Nino all have feelings for him. And while Nino started off at the back she's really putting her best foot forward with the whole wife thing and Ichika really screwed up her own chances. Miku also sacrificed her lead right at the end of the season so it looks like Nino might be making the most strides.
That said, one thing that does bother me about this is that the series seems to want to make heavy associations between Futaro and Itsuki so as much as I think she will end up with him, I really hope she doesn't. While she has warmed up to him more recently she has stated that she can't believe somebody would develop feelings for a guy like Futaro and is seemingly on Yotsuba's side with all this.
We'll see how season 3 goes but I'm on this roller-coaster because, for all its faults, I'm way too invested.
Masamune-kun's Revenge: The Show about Narcissism
Masamune-kun's revenge is a series about a boy named Masamune Makabe who wants revenge on a girl named Aki Adagaki who treated him so poorly as a child that it motivated him to become hot so he can earn her affection and then dump her. Now what I like about this series is that it establishes its main theme really early on while establishing what kind of main character we're working with: the theme of this series is that appearances can be deceiving. I know that sounds weird given how this series starts but let me clarify: right away, we're introduced to Masamune whose entire philosophy since he started on this path is that it doesn't matter what kind of personality you have as long as you're hot. And for a good episode or so, this seems to hold true. Masamune gets away with things early on that other characters don't seemingly because he's hot: he and another boy were caught staring at a tennis club in episode one but where the girls called the other boy a stalker, seemingly because he's nerdy looking, Masamune gets off scot-free despite him not really knowing why. In addition for a good chunk of the early parts of season 1, he has an easier time making friends, he's assumed to have good intentions just because he's not super active in a lot of situations, and even Aki who normally rejects men by utterly humiliating them seems to treat Masamune with a greater degree of gentleness, even if it doesn't seem that way in broad strokes. But it quickly becomes apparent that Masamune, despite believing looks are the only thing that matters to other people, is insecure in himself. He believes that appearance is the only thing that matters and as a result he can sometimes slip into the mentality that nobody really cares about him, he's just a hot guy people like because he's hot.
Here we can see two different interpretations of this core theme: the first, in Masamune's view, being that you may be hot but people assume hot people are good when in fact they're not. This happens a lot with Masamune himself but it also happens a lot with Aki and Kojiro, they're both assumed to have certain traits just because of their appearances, with Aki appearing to be strong to most other girls because she rejects all men but really is just plain nasty, while Kojiro appears to have a lot of feminine characteristics that make people assume he's girly or even gay but it becomes apparent later that his lack of masculinity is actually a sore point for him. In addition, we find out later that Aki is not nasty for the most part: she tries to be nasty to a lot of men because she assumes men are awful but she really only feels this way because our main character, Masamune left her life. Not much is revealed in this season but what we can glean is that Masamune viewed her treatment of him as bullying while she interpreted her treatment of him as trying to make him stronger. In truth she wanted him to stop getting bullied and was trying to help. Meanwhile, Masamune ended up moving away to live with his grandfather to make himself strong and attractive enough to be able to dump Aki yet Aki viewed this as him abandoning her when she relied on him just as much as he relied on her. Again, the central theme, appearances are deceiving.
You get this a lot with other characters as well, with Koiwai seeming to be demure and obedient at first but later shows that she's actually quite cunning and intelligent, albeit in a deceitful and manipulative way. Fujinomiya pretends to be unphased by everything and comes off as a fake form of kind to cover up how ill she is. She gets better thanks to surgery but ultimately she's revealed to be a lot nicer than she normally comes off. At first it was a form of nice that appeared to be suspicious in some way but later turned out to be real kindness. Meanwhile, Gasou appears to be the nice little kid that Aki grew up with but is actually a faker trying to marry his way into her family to save his family from poverty. I understand that motivation, especially since it's his mother's but it's still a shitty thing to do. Characters that come off as mean or awful can often be thrown off their game to show that dishonesty isn't everything, where characters that appear nice and sympathetic are often the worst characters. The series makes a lot of use of appearance to deceive to set up this main theme. It's expressed very well through the choice in character types, and it's worth noting that characters like Futaba who have very little in the way of deception surrounding them also turn out to be the least engaging, almost like she counters the theme in some way.
So why is this all a problem for me? Well because while the series is well constructed thematically, the characters can often be difficult to deal with sometimes. There's a lot of conniving going on in this cast that can make for some cringy moments that are just not pleasant, and while there are some interesting choices here in terms of characters being engaging, there's also the problem of a lot of these characters just being awful people. Other than Fujinomiya and Koiwai who do seem to have more benevolence behind their motivations, nearly everyone else is selfish and spiteful in some way, with many of the boy side characters being awful people who want to use the girls and a lot of the girls being abrasive man haters because they equate that with being strong. These archetypes are fairly realistic, they're just not fun to watch.
That said, it does seem to be easier to be more critical of the girls in this case because we get to know many more girls than we do boys. The roster of main girls in the series, at least the ones that get an episode or two dedicated to them as of the end of season 1 are Aki, Koiwai, Fujinomiya, Futaba, Aki's Father's Secretary, the class rep of Class 1-A and the kendo girl all get a fair amount of development, and even the side character of Masamune's mother fits the theme by being a mother despite appearing to have some type of dwarfism manifested in this case in a loli body. Meanwhile, for the boys, we have the Masamunes and Kojiro. Other male characters are largely side characters that get no focus, and while several of them can get a dressing down by Aki or even Masamune Makabe, the only one of these characters we know definitively is an awful person is the glasses boy from episode 1. He tried to take his anger out on Aki by cutting off her hair and potentially harming her in other ways. And while Aki does go way too far in her humiliation in this early portion of the series, this boy took it way too far. However, he's the only one who does so. Other male characters that Aki turns down we either don't know enough about to form any notable guesses or our impressions are incredibly one sided, such as the boy who beat the Kendo girl in a flashback who may have cheated but we're not actually shown it and it's from a biased point of view so we don't know for certain. Or the stalker boy from episode 1 who gets accused of being a stalker since he watches the tennis club's practice but since we never see him outside this moment, who knows if it's even true.
Male characters just don't do enough in this series to be able to criticize them which is unfortunate because I think having a larger roster of male characters that are equally as awful as the female characters would help support the theme even further. And also make it seem less like the show is about women hating men just because that's strong or something.
That said my gripes are mainly because Masamune-kun's Revenge only has one season. When season 2 comes out I'll be checking it out but it's not because I enjoy it. One of my other criticisms of this series is that it has a strong goal for our main character, that being to get revenge on Aki by dumping her when she falls in love, something that seems to get a certain amount of support over the course of this season. However, the series gave it too much weight and now as I continue to watch the series I'm more interested in seeing how the series will end than I am in seeing how the series will progress. Because despite my compliments to the series writing and theme, I don't care about any of these characters.
I don't care about Aki and Masamune the way I care about Kaguya and Miyuki in Kaguya-sama Love is War. I don't care about the mind game elements of this series the way I do in Kaguya-sama Love is War. I don't care about the plight of any of these characters, and I don't have any stake in any of their arcs because ultimately they're all just the same awful person that just happens to have different things happen to them. I'm watching for the destination, not the journey, which is not how you want to write a series. The destination is important, you want it to matter but if the viewers are not enjoying the journey, they'll drop it, forget about it, or even hate it once they reach the destination.
The destination is important but the journey is too.
My Girlfriend is Shobitch: An Interesting Take on a Main Character
My Girlfriend is Shobitch is an anime about a young high school boy dating his class representative and the hi-jinks that ensue. One thing that separates this series from other RomCom anime is the fact that these characters are already together at the beginning of the series. Other RomCom anime usually have the getting together portion take place at the very end as a big pay off for the journey, whereas here it's the premise, these two are now together and the show is about their relationship. I can say I like that because I prefer seeing characters handle a relationship far more than characters trying to start one but if that were all I had to say this series wouldn't get its own section so here's the twist: the main heroine Akiho Kousaka may be autistic.
Speaking as someone with his own brand of Autism, I don't say this to be insulting to the character, I just think that's part of how this girl is written. She's incredibly blunt and honest, she has a hard time with facial expressions or social cues, she has a fairly high intellect outside of people, and she hyperfocuses on her interests to the exclusion of anything else. These are all traits of someone with a high functioning autism spectrum disorder.
What I like about Akiho though is not even really necessarily her character as much as it is the way the world around her tends to treat her. Even as early as episode 1 when she takes an innocent girl talk moment and turns it into a surprise sex ed course, even one of the girls notes that she doesn't seem to be a bad person, she's just somewhat off. She and her mother both receive this treatment in which Akiho is clearly very intelligent and dedicated but she's got a few issues that people are helping her with. When she goes out of her way to please her boyfriend, many of the people around her are worried that she's being taken advantage of, when she disrupts a student council meeting, she's shut down promptly but she's not treated like she's awful, she's treated like she needs to get back on topic. She even has a weird way of motivating her class to get things done and, despite that, it works. Even her father is very happy when he finds out that her boyfriend is just a normal guy and entrusts him to take care of her because she could get taken advantage of. It's a nice little display.
Ultimately it's just a really wholesome show and it's more believable to me than something like say Komi-san Can't Communicate, for example, where Komi-san is largely supported because she's pretty and isn't really active in her life, Akiho is supported mainly because everybody sees the good she can do, she just needs a helping hand every once in a while, which I think is a lot more wholesome.
That just has to come with the understanding that this show is very middle of the road generally, even if I really like it.
Side Note: This series is called My Girlfriend is Shobitch in English and if you ask me why, I honestly couldn't tell you. Shobitch sounds like one of those Japanese terms that is taking an English word or letter and using it for something entirely different. Like for example Gyaru is Japanese for Gal but refers specifically to the outgoing cheerleader types that may or may not be easy, and JK which as initial means Just Kidding in English but in Japanese is used to describe an archetype of a slut or prostitute which is very different from the Gyaru. And I bring up Hentai in this situation because Shobitch looks like a term you'd expect to only come across if you were actually viewing hentai so to see it here in an official English release of an otherwise standard Ecchi show is just kind of bizarre to me.
Spy x Family: The Most Popular Show that I Don't Care About
Spy x Family has been making the rounds as a popular anime for two major reasons, those being its general wholesomeness, and the second is its prime waifu Yor Forger. I'm currently 7 episodes into this series and I'm struggling to continue wanting to watch.
Don't misunderstand though, I do like elements of this show. I like the characters of Lloyd, Yor, and Anja and watching them is genuinely fun in a lot of places. Watching Yor try to be a mother, Lloyd in way over his head with parenting, and Anja using her mind reading ability very irresponsibly, is very delightful in places, and I loved the amusement park episode in particular where Lloyd is just a TV spy for Anja because that's what she wanted. The fist fight between Lloyd and Yor was just icing on the cake but it was particularly delicious icing.
So why I don't care about this show? Well, outside of everything I just said. . . Pretty much everything else. I don't like the situations where the private school is introduced because it has far too many characters I don't like and too many situations I deem cringeworthy, some events involving day to day stuff are very obviously contrived like Anja getting kidnapped right outside of a grocery store in broad daylight just so Yor would have an opportunity to be a mother bear. I like Yor in this scene, don't get me wrong, but actual kidnappers wouldn't behave this stupidly with a rich family especially. Granted, Lloyd isn't rich but they didn't know that. In fact, I don't even think Yor and Anja know that, to be fair.
Then the farm animals coasting through the interview site for no other reason than because it was an inconvenient time was especially painful to watch. I think it would've honestly been funnier if someone had done that as a test and that person got fired immediately because it was obviously excessive, rather than this just being a coincidence. If you're going to go all in on a crazy world where spies are everywhere and Lloyd is the best of them, steer into it, the series could be a lot more fun if you make a lot more use of crazy things that could only happen in a world filled with spies. Some believability is needed but for a setting like this, so is suspension of disbelief.
I'll compromise though. I'll continue watching up to Episode 10 and if nothing about it grabs me by then, I can say that I just don't care.
I did watch other shows during this time but none of them fit the description of RomCom and while I did watch other RomComs, I didn't bring those up because I just had nothing to say about them. Even Kaguya-sama Love is War, despite how much I love it, and believe me, I do love it, I was surprised by how little I actually had to say about it when it was all over. So this is where it'll end for now. Have a wonderful day.
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