(13 episodes)
What’s it about ?
High school harem romantic comedy.
(Adapted from light novels, as you can guess by the ridiculously long and plain title.)
Characters
Eita, our protagonist. He’s been badly burned by both his parents walking out of his life after finding love elsewhere, and thus doesn’t want to hear about any romance whatsoever. He’d rather concentrate on his studies, thank you.
Chiwa, his very annoying childhood friend. The kind that now stalks him relentlessly and regularly invites herself for meals. I get the notion that he mostly tolerates her because chasing her off would involve too much energy.
Natsukawa, the beautiful and ultra-popular girl in his class. Like him, she has no interest in romance, and she’s getting tired of getting proposed once a day ; her solution is to use him as a fake boyfriend so as to finally get some peace. She’s somehow got her hand on his embarrassing diary, so it’s not like she’s got any say in the matter…
There are two other girls featured prominently in the OP and preview artwork ; maybe it’s related to that club mentioned in the next-episode preview.
Production Values
Perfectly okay as far as visuals go ; the main distinguishing feature is very bright, pastel colours. The score is nearly entirely crap, always slightly out of place and emphasizing the artificiality of the scene breaks.
It’s telling that Eita is entirely absent from the OP sequence…
Overall Impression
Hum. The first half of the episode was very unengaging indeed, with haphazard storytelling (must Chiwa really be the one to exposit to Eita about Natsukawa ?) and the childhood friend character being obnoxiously annoying. However, it changes radically once the “girlfriend” finally gets to speak : it’s Yukari Tamura at her best, cynical, whimsical, and affecting various personae at will. She’s clearly this show’s most (if not only) entertaining character, and its main selling point.
Is this enough to make the series worth watching ? Er, I’ll get back to you about that in an episode or two, once we actually see her interacting with someone besides her beard, and the “plot” gets properly underway (so far, the two title characters have yet to even meet, let alone fight like the title suggests). I’m not too optimistic, but maybe the show will click together then.
In a busier season I wouldn’t have bothered with this one, but I’m willing to give it a bit of rope for now.
