Nisekoi

It's been a long time but with a recommendation from my lolita I've got a new rom-com anime to share. My favorite! Ichijo was born as the heir to a yakuza family when another yakuza gang moves into the same town it's his responsibility to stop the fighting. His fathers idea is to pretend that Ichijo is dating the daughter of the other family, Kirisaki. However, Ichijo isn't interested in Kirisaki's rude and violent manner, he prefers the company of Onodera his classmate and current love interest. Also, Ichijo is looking for the girl he met 10 years ago who holds the key to unlock his pendant, it could be Onodera but while he's being forced to play boyfriend to Kirisaki he has no hope of being together with Onodera.

I've never encountered a rom-com with such complicated love lines! There's only three main characters, it should be a simple love triangle, but the addition of the unidentifiable girl from Ichijos past things get pretty confusing! However, it does make this a bit more exciting than the standard love triangle. I also really like the pretending to be a couple thing, since Ichijo and Kirisaki don't really like each other so seeing them painfully play lovey-dovey is really funny.
Our main characters fill the necessary stereotypes. Ichijo is fiesty and loud but in the end he's really just charming and boring. Kirisaki is a hardcore tsundere with no other qualities worth mentioning. Onodera is just as boring, she plays the nice girl all the time and doesn't even try to be exciting.
The supporting characters, however, are much more exciting! Firstly, Miyamoto, Onodera's friend. Her appearance and behaviour can be very much likened to Yuki Nagato from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya; she's mostly very quiet but when she does talk it's quiet, controlled and emotionless. Where these two differ though, is in the fact that Miyamoto is a human and she really cares for her human friends! Even if she speaks a bit brashly it's always done because she cares. Seriously, everything she does is to help Onodera get a boyfriend, it's the cutest thing! Then there's Maiko, Ichijo's best friend, and I'm so sorry if you haven't watched The Melancholy of Suzumiya because I'm going to do another comparison. Maiko is just like Itsuki Koizumi. He's arrogant and rude but he pulls it all off with a big smile. He finds every thing amusing and you could almost slap him for it! Yet, he adds so much to the comedy value of this show!
The animation is really nice (obviously, it's got nothing on Garden of Words), I've missed the brightly-coloured-hair and big-eyes way of shoujo anime and this show is particularly lovely. Whilst they do sometimes cop out on backgrounds by using funky patterns they make up for it in character design and novel animation. Kirisaki's blonde and pink hair is adorable and Onodera's asymmetrical hair cut is something I've never seen before!
It must be said, the first episode promises more than the series can offer. The way they show Ichijo's memories in a silent movie style is adorable and is just cliched enough to not be annoying. The music in this scene is hauntingly beautiful and yet they don't seem to use it anywhere else. Also, I could be making it up, but the animation in this episode seemed a lot more detailed than the following episodes. The carefully textured pendant, the extravagant movement in Ichijo's cooking scene and the overly shoujo sparkles that cover every other scene; it all seems to lose a bit of it's magic as the series progresses!
Nevertheless, it's good to see a good old three-way love story, you can never go wrong with a rom-com as far as I'm concerned! And Nisekoi is a particularly good rom-com! It's got all the necessary cliches plus plenty of comedy but for the first time in forever I can't easily predict how the show's going to end (yet)! So I'm a bit disappointed that the show can't uphold the quality of the first episode, but it's still a really good series with no glaring flaws! Definitely worth the watch if (like me) you're a fan of the shoujo rom-com genre.

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