Forum - View topicFirst Love Monster (TV).
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15462 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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First Love Monster (TV) Genres: comedy, romance Plot Summary: Kaho Nikaidō finds herself head over heels for a mysterious stranger after he saves from being hit by a truck. Kaho has a few surprises in store for her when she discovers that her knight-in-shining-armor is her landlord's son — and in the fifth grade. ---------------------------------- Episode 1 Okay, the plot summary sounds pretty sketchy, and indeed it seems to be a sore point with reviewers, but if you don't take it too seriously I think it is actually pretty funny. I did not really know the twist from the beginning, and I was kind of eye rolling at some of the self demoting female lead, but it still had me thinking it was pretty cute. The OP itself had me kind of laughing at the visual gag of the bishies being dressed the certain way and having the primary school backpacks, and it actually seems to be one of the core gags in this series. Maybe lots of people won't agree with me, but the humour of the pure morality of a this type of male characters being put with the fact they act like the brats inline with their age, is actually pretty funny. It is kind of making fun of the general tropes, like the first love thing. At the moment I really don't see it taking the romance thing seriously, Kaho has really ended up in a situation where she does not want to hurt his feelings, plus she is a pretty silly character. Similarly the boys are silly too, Sugita as a voice actor works the best when he is in a role parodying like this. So far I had more of a problem with Shounen Maid, which played up the main character's youthful appearance and embarrassment in being made to wear a frilly uniform. This one is kind of making fun of that sort of thing. |
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4080 |
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I made it half way through the episode. If this show was meant as a satire then 1) They wouldn't literally slap labels on everyone... how did that even work anyway? The girl automatically knew what each person was except for the fifth grader? Even the "she only found out when it was funny" response doesn't work because... there are people like that and people like that so it's not funny.
Ugh. 2) Even taken it the way I think I was supposed to take it- blue haired shy guy was Fate's intended First Love for her but "Cupid's arrow" had other plans, it still doesn't work because I can't respect the shoujo heroine. She's a rational young teen girl in love... go with it but even I'm thinking "oxymoron" here...she needs to get over it and move on. This is... is....
This is not doing that. Isn't a young boy being put into a maid uniform like the backstory of the main character from Working!, how his sisters made him dress like a girl? But nobody here is making her fall in love with a 5th grader, nothing here is making him respond "seriously". I'm thinking of Kodomo no Jikan but the older party didn't pursue the younger party and the humor was watching him squirm because he couldn't run as being her teacher was his job. This is... I got nothing. 1 The younger party had to go after the older one. 2 Beauty may be skin deep but maturity is not. The younger party also has to be the more mature one. I want to call this a "disgrace" but I would have to watch the entire episode in order to do so. Wait, wait, Negima. But even there, Negi was the more mature one and he was there in order to find his magical partner in an all girl school. None of the girls were into young boys... I said none of them, Ayaka... but they did find "it" cute and by "it" I mean it. This series will obviously whistle past the elephant in the room and keep it a strictly "platonic" first love. Puppy love. Kind of like the boy... |
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15462 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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 Where did she fall in love? All she did was have a run in with some guy, she confused the feeling as love, and she loses the illusion of it soon after learning the truth. She spent the rest of the episode faced with the idea he so sensitive that "breaking up" might be toying with his feelings which might cause some emotional problems, and what the idea of being a couple is for that maturity level. It was made clear to the character that actually being a couple by her own age standards would be a crime, where is everyone getting the idea that the romance is anything more serious?
Just because people can really have hormonal problems, it is not like this is mocking them, their designs are ridiculous bishounen styled rather than simply looking older. |
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4080 |
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I stopped the episode at "I'll go out with him" so I'm going by what I saw. But part of what I saw is the opener, how they're trying to sell the series. The almost kiss, holding hands and loving looks between the two main characters seems to be more an indication of where the series goes rather than an outright lie. Or satire, I know what satire is but it shouldn't include a straight use of beefcake shots of the boys and their childish instruments; "Yeah, they're hot but they're kids. Now laugh because it's satire!" Purely visually, it's fan service but once you know more, it's boys in various states of undress. To what point, I don't know. To entice the audience but why? I'm trying to imagine moe shows that just have a small group that looks like kids while the rest of the high school age look like adults, shows like A Channel or even K-On but they all have to look the same because that's their world. If the show's producers didn't want to get the... I've already checked out a later manga volume synopsis by accident... actual point of the show across then they should have kept the tone of the opener apart from the rest of the episode? Which I gather shows how boyish the manboys with backpacks from the opener are? I do feel this could work if the kid was still visually the same but pursued the girl like he was the same age as her. But there'd be no fan service in the opener, have just one boy look older and have the high schoolers- and college boy, can't leave him out- hesistant rather than forcing the joke down Kona's throat. Now, if it was meant as a satire of the shoujo romance genre, she'd had failed "meet cutes" with the older, mature college guy and the shy but helpful guy her same age before being rescued by the kid. Also, she ultimately has to be in on the joke, not the butt of it. I suppose you could also have her trying to keep away from him but circumstances keep putting them in romantically tinged situations... that would work if the guy looked his age but not if you make him visually a hot high school aged guy. "If you just look at them, they're the perfect couple." Then he makes a couple of poop jokes, calls her an icky girl and runs away with his friends? Is it a joke on the audience. "You think these guys are attractive? Ha, joke's on you, they're kids." But it's the show that's presenting them as physically desirable out of context so... |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11348 |
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Episode 2
They are trying to kill me. I don't even... Where to begin? Really, I don't even... I think the creators of this don't grasp what a parody is. Or what a comedy is. Or what a romance is. Or what ever they think this is is. It's not edgy, it's not insightful, it's not funny, it's not charming, it's not romantic. There's nothing here but a constant stream of wtf. Takahiro Sakurai, Kenjiro Tsuda, Tomokazu Sugita, Nobuhiko Okamoto...guys, you know I love you, but I don't love anyone this much. Just tell me who blackmailed you all into this and I will take. them. out. ::goes to watch Ichi the Killer to bleach my brain of this:: |
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CrowLia
 Posts: 5504 Location: Mexico |
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Honestly, they have Sakurai for this trash and couldn't get him to reprise Kanda? Anime is ruining anime 
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Chiibi
 Posts: 4829 |
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Ah......huh.
Well, I predicted this would be a guilty pleasure for me since I'm so into 'age-gap forbidden love'....though as it stands, this series is.........bizarre. Ginza's right about the wtf factor. Kanade's two friends are really killing it because all three of them are so obnoxious together. I wish Kanade was the only abnormal one. That would fix my main problem with this weird show. I can buy into ONE boy hitting puberty super early but THREE? No. And those deep voices make it even WEIRDER. Ugh. I really didn't predict the college guy would turn on her like that in episode 02. o_o Some things I do like: Kaho is very cute. Kazu is shouta-LICIOUS. :p (looks like Ciel  )
Kota seems cute and is probably very hot once you see his face. I bet he likes Kaho. The animation for a show like this, is rather good. The music is good. Kanade may be in grade school....but aside from surprise hugs (which are just cute anyway), he seems to know what's right and what's wrong, at least when it comes to treating girls. All in all, the show is wtf and a little annoying but it's not enough to make me drop it, actually. I guess I have high tolerance. Or the things I like, I like too much?
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15462 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Episode 12 (finale)
The last episode was kind funny. After the dramatic sudden break up (again) at the end of last episode, we have a kind of cold open segment of this show as a standard no age gap romance anime, but with different parody elements of it being over the top. It was weird, but funny. Of course it was all shown to be her daydream, and we find out his reasoning of breaking up again was stupid, thinking he was going to turn into a dog, and the child characters are distraught in thinking it is true, before the truth coming out. What was awesome was next as the kids become relieved, Kaho explodes. Kaho goes off about all the ridiculous things she has had to put up with, showing that underneath naïve exterior she is all to aware of the stupid excuses for romantic twists, and character traits/designs. To me that was the correct way to watch this series. Many viewers complained the show was a travesty with how it was doing something like fetishizing say primary school aged children, but that is missing the point. The series is called "first love monster", this first love that Kaho having is not really that desirable. No, with culture that puts such a big focus on saying love is all important we are being shown such things as legendary "first loves" can terrible things. From the beginning we were kind of told that a lack of proper growth left Kaho needing some sort of relationship with other people so she could grow as a person, but unfortunately it was apparently love, but it was not love, it was her giving into first impressions, and various pressures never improved things. The show knew full well that these were bad things, but it used tricks from the genre to kind of make a statement against those things really being silly no the foundation of say a proper relationship. Kaho was meant to be kind of a stand in of a possible audience type, one being naïve and maybe get attachment to a character based on their character design, before seeing something like their supposed age does not meet up (maybe more teenage male character to older female viewer). All sorts of tricks and apparently romantic moments can happen to make him look like a desirable character, but despite how noble they might come across, they are actually kind of shallow, and it does not change that the character is supposed to be the other age. I would not say that it is a problem with just female viewers on male characters, but quite a lot of popular female characters are younger and fetishized, but this series was a focus on the shoujo genre. And despite being wrong, there is not really wrong to have a fun time, and Kaho could take lessons away. Apart from the main theme, my favourite character in the show was Renren, the feminie trap idol who appears randomly trough the show and makes Arashi act like a lunatic. It was more of a jab at stuff I am more familiar with and made me laugh at how silly or inappropriate it could be with both of them. I think that was it, I could laugh throughout the show at how inappropriate it all was, kind of similar to Osomatsu-san. Also, forgot to mention the cousin, a character who bares resemblance to Rin from Free, and would ridiculously walk around with an open jacket showing abs, while he had a second jacket draped over him and wearing swimming goggles. Overall, I had kind of fun with this show, not the best show but I think that it does not deserve the outright hostility that seems to have gotten. I give it a rating of Decent (6/10), I did not lose my time. |
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Merida
 Posts: 1945 |
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This was probably my favourite comedy of the season (and not even of the "guilty pleasure" type) and i only checked it out because i got curious after it got trashed so badly in the preview guide.
The final episode quite literally made me spit out my drink. That "roller skate duel" was priceless. 
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15462 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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And we can assume that it is the sort of thing that goes on in Kaho's head. Actually, it kind of reminded me of that one preview at the end of an episode where it was all sorts of random dramatic things that had no connection to the actual show. |
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