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Greed1914
Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 5360
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 Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2025 12:04 pm |
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I'm not even sure if Ai was a complication so much as an excuse to get the other three to do something. She doesn't do much else, and about the only complication she add is she is technically first girl for Nagi. Unfortunately, that doesn't count for much since she is the late comer for the audience.
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Glordit
Joined: 11 Sep 2020
Posts: 1188
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| Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2025 3:35 pm |
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Even less happens in the second season and just like the first, they sprinkle some developed in at the final few minutes of the last episode.
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scowler
Joined: 30 May 2009
Posts: 106
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| Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2025 4:00 pm |
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The visuals took a serious nosedive in Season 2, with the switch to a different studio. Stuff like facial expressions just looked a lot worse right from the start. I couldn't last more than a couple episodes.
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Daidan12
Joined: 13 Aug 2024
Posts: 170
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| Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2025 6:08 pm |
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| Greed1914 wrote: | | She doesn't do much else, and about the only complication she add is she is technically first girl for Nagi. |
ACKSHUALLY first girl is Erika because they were born on the same day and were incubator neighbors, that's how the switchero happened.
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Blaze_1013
Joined: 05 Nov 2024
Posts: 221
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| Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2025 8:13 pm |
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I think this is the sort of thing people except most harem anime to be. I was able to enjoy it well enough, but it really is just ok. Wild to think that this isn't even half of the content in the series and it's still ongoing.
I also want to call out this bit from the review. "In many harem anime, the various rival girls often hate each other, or at least actively try to sabotage one another's chances with the protagonist." Maybe it's just the harem stuff I watch, but I never see this. I wonder if this is more true of older harem series.
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JustMonika
Joined: 17 Jan 2022
Posts: 1573
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| Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2025 1:46 am |
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| scowler wrote: | | The visuals took a serious nosedive in Season 2, with the switch to a different studio. Stuff like facial expressions just looked a lot worse right from the start. I couldn't last more than a couple episodes. |
Actually quite the opposite. The first season looked like dog water with the character designs being horrendous. The studio switch has effectively saved this series in the visual department. I mean Hiro looked like a frog in the first season.
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Cryten
Joined: 19 Jan 2019
Posts: 1399
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| Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2025 4:25 am |
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| Blaze_1013 wrote: | | I also want to call out this bit from the review. "In many harem anime, the various rival girls often hate each other, or at least actively try to sabotage one another's chances with the protagonist." Maybe it's just the harem stuff I watch, but I never see this. I wonder if this is more true of older harem series. |
More the Harem comedies, which was the primary type in the early 2000's. Where often the protagonist was being harassed by the harem members. Though actual proper sabotage instead of rivalry style one upmanship was quite rare.
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Zhou-BR
Joined: 28 Feb 2008
Posts: 1582
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| Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2025 8:08 am |
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This second season made me regret watching the first one. I guess I only gave this show a chance because I mistakenly thought it would be about an unusual love triangle (I didn't even consider Sachi a contender because I thought they'd never really take that creepy route) rather than a slowly expanding harem, which is a genre I've gotten tired of over the past few decades.
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Greed1914
Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 5360
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| Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2025 9:23 am |
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| Zhou-BR wrote: | | This second season made me regret watching the first one. I guess I only gave this show a chance because I mistakenly thought it would be about an unusual love triangle (I didn't even consider Sachi a contender because I thought they'd never really take that creepy route) rather than a slowly expanding harem, which is a genre I've gotten tired of over the past few decades. |
Even though the older brother ended up not doing anything other than be in the background, I expect that we'll have this happen for Erika. Her older brother isn't biologically her brother, so now he will be like Sachi where it is technically ok for him. The difference would be that Erika does not feel the same, whereas Nagi is mixed.
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earl_of
Joined: 23 Sep 2025
Posts: 23
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| Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2025 10:45 am |
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| Cryten wrote: | | Blaze_1013 wrote: | | I also want to call out this bit from the review. "In many harem anime, the various rival girls often hate each other, or at least actively try to sabotage one another's chances with the protagonist." Maybe it's just the harem stuff I watch, but I never see this. I wonder if this is more true of older harem series. |
More the Harem comedies, which was the primary type in the early 2000's. Where often the protagonist was being harassed by the harem members. Though actual proper sabotage instead of rivalry style one upmanship was quite rare. |
It was most common when the haremettes already disliked each other and made the MC just another part of their pre-existing rivalry. There was Tenchi Muyo with Ayeka and Ryoko (with Mihoshi and the other haremettes being civil to each other) plus Familiar of Zero with Louise and Kirche (again all the other haremettes mostly got along, even Siesta). I call Evangelion an "accidental harem", but other than the infamous slap, Asuka generally took out her jealousy of Rei and Misako on Shinji and Kaiji. (Now Gendo's harem on the other hand was another matter, especially Ritsuko.) Sticking with the robot shows, Gundam Seed had a reverse one involving Flay Allster, Sai Argyle and Sai's former friend Kira Yamato (who himself had his own with Flay and Lacus, who herself had one with Kira and Kira's former best friend Athrun Zala ... yeesh!) where there was sabotage stuff going on, but it wasn't central to the plot I guess.
But the haremette conflict was added to the genre as it devolved. Especially when it went through its ecchi stage where the catfights could be mined for fanservice (clothing damage etc). But once the ecchi era ended - and when shonen romance started depicting female love interests as having goals and interests apart from the guy - there was no more reason to keep it going. Note how the some of the more heartwarming episodes of Kaguya-Sama: Love Is War are when Kaguya, Kei and Moeha bond over Miyuki, and the more tragic ones depict Maki, who chooses to maintain her hostility with Kaguya, gets left out even though she is friends with Miyuki too. Had Love Is War been a fanservice-driven work 20 years ago, it would have been more like what the author is describing.
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earl_of
Joined: 23 Sep 2025
Posts: 23
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| Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2025 12:09 pm |
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| Greed1914 wrote: | | Zhou-BR wrote: | | This second season made me regret watching the first one. I guess I only gave this show a chance because I mistakenly thought it would be about an unusual love triangle (I didn't even consider Sachi a contender because I thought they'd never really take that creepy route) rather than a slowly expanding harem, which is a genre I've gotten tired of over the past few decades. |
Even though the older brother ended up not doing anything other than be in the background, I expect that we'll have this happen for Erika. Her older brother isn't biologically her brother, so now he will be like Sachi where it is technically ok for him. The difference would be that Erika does not feel the same, whereas Nagi is mixed. |
Nah. Nagi isn't mixed. The show and source material are simply doing the obligatory pretending that he is for the usual reasons. Similarly, Sachi isn't in love with her brother; she just wants a better brother-sister relationship and is - for good reason - terrified of Nagi abandoning her before it happens. Author Miki Yoshikawa previously mined gender bender harem ecchi taboo stuff with Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches and is now just repeating it with incest subtext. (Note: she was inspired to enter the industry by Dragon Ball, which lest we forget was a somewhat raunchy comedic manga - female character names bloomers, bikinis, tights, bras and lunch - before evolving into a sci-fi battle shonen, and later worked as an understudy for Hiro Mashima on Fairy Tail. So yeah ...)
Plus, Erika's brother isn't Nagi. A key plot point that is badly communicated: Nagi is very socially and emotionally naive and stunted. Not only does he lack experience with romance or dating, he is utterly uninterested in male friends - as his terrible treatment of Shion, who is actually a good guy, shows - and his desire to marry Hiro as an escape from a family that he can't relate to and wants to "love from a distance", Sachi included. So when brotherly lovelorn Sachi out of desperation forces her way into the situation with him and (her long lost biological sister) Erika and effortlessly creates a better bond with Erika (his fiance) than Nagi has with either of them, it throws him for a bender that his arrested development makes him incapable of understanding or dealing with.
Sousuke, on the other hand, has all of the social and romantic experience and emotional development that Nagi lacks. His reasons for not wanting his father to manipulate his biological younger brother into marrying either his biological or adopted younger sister ... actually has nothing to do with Erika, Nagi or Sachi and most certainly has nothing to do with wanting Erika for himself.
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MFrontier
Joined: 13 Apr 2014
Posts: 20003
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| Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2025 11:32 pm |
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It's funny how this was airing the same day as Rent-a-Girlfriend season 4 which feels like another romcom mired in negative reception and a lack of plot development.
But I can't help but feel more satisfied with this. Maybe it was because the cast is more likeable, maybe it's because Erika actually realized she's in love with Nagi,, maybe I enjoyed what Ai brought to the table and all the fun moments...but I enjoyed this season even despite still having the same flaws the past season had. But I've seen worse Harem romcoms.
| Greed1914 wrote: | | I'm not even sure if Ai was a complication so much as an excuse to get the other three to do something. She doesn't do much else, and about the only complication she add is she is technically first girl for Nagi. Unfortunately, that doesn't count for much since she is the late comer for the audience. |
She's also the first girl who properly confesses to him. Ai is basically the "Spoiler" in the Harem, the one who is the most direct and obvious with her feelings that, yeah, helps incite the rest of the Harem.
Basically the Marika.
I personally found her entertaining for these exact reasons and for her flamboyant personality. Also whatever the heck Hina Yomiya was doing with her voice.
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