The Summer 2025 Anime Preview Guide - There's No Freaking Way I'll Be Your Lover! Unless...

Renako Amaori is leaving her awkward and lonely junior high school life behind, determined to become a normal girl with normal friends in high school. Glamorous, confident Mai Ouzuka is Renako's total opposite: wealthy, outgoing, and a literal fashion model. Against the odds, the two girls form an immediate connection. Renako thinks she may have found the best friend of her dreams…until Mai's romantic confession sends her into a tailspin. Renako wants to prove to Mai that being BFFs is better than being girlfriends, but Mai is dead set on convincing Renako that they're destined to be lovers.

There's No Freaking Way I'll Be Your Lover! Unless... is based on the light novel series by author Teren Mikami and illustrator Eku Takeshima. The anime series is streaming on YouTube on Mondays.

Am I watching an anime or a shampoo commercial? Because those girls' hair is SHINY. They look like they just walked out of the salon after getting a high-gloss treatment. The shading has highlights AND lowlights, people!

It's a pretty impressive-looking effort from a relatively Young Studio with only two major animation production credits under their belt. Never mind that when I looked a bit closer, I noticed the actual motion was a bit stiff; the storyboarding disguises that well enough, and the rapid-fire dialogue ensured I was too busy looking at the subtitles to study the fluidity of the motion in depth. Well, until I went back to get my screenshot. But seriously, the colors are bright in a pleasing way, rather than garish or clashy.

But at the same time, I really want these girls to stop and take a breath. The episode zooms by at a rapid clip—each story beat following the previous one without giving the audience time to process what the heck just happened. Everyone in Rena's friend group has their personality perfectly signified by their appearance, so no need for character introductions longer than a line or two! No wonder Rena has social anxiety if this is the world she lives in! Mai has such a forceful personality that I felt overwhelmed just watching her interact with Rena.

Overwhelmed and… not really having fun. I get that the absurd contentiousness of Rena and Mai's agreement to trade days they're dating and days they're just friends is the draw here—and it's meant to be a completely unfeasible idea. Still, Mai is a creep after the first scene of her and Rena sitting down and talking about how they felt pressured to fit a certain image. Falling in love after a moment of mutual vulnerability? Totally understandable. I've done it myself. But then she refuses to take no for an answer when Rena says she doesn't want to date her—getting into Rena's personal space and rebuffing her excuses. It would have set off massive alarm bells if Mai were a man, and I don't feel much better about it when they're both girls.

I know this series is popular, and I'm happy for its fans; they're guaranteed to be pleased with this bright, energetic adaptation of the manga. And if you're a fan, don't put off watching it weekly, because REMOW will only be leaving each episode up for a week on their YouTube channel! But as for me, I think I'll just let them pass by.

The good news is that, as I'd hoped, the second episode of There's No Freaking Way I'll Be Your Lover, Unless… does get around to exploring how Rena and Mai actually define friendship and romance in their relationships. The even better news is the reveal that they're both so catastrophically inexperienced, they have some less-than-reality-based understandings of that whole spectrum. That creates some appreciably clashing characteristic chaos as they debate their place in each other's lives while slowly coming to understand the reasons each of them want what they want. They're getting to know each other better and, friendship or romance, that's the core of any good relationship.

It is interesting to observe Mai's imposed idealizations on Rena when it comes to dating—and she comes to the same conclusion her reluctant pink-haired partner does: Mai might not be actually in love with Rena so much as she's in love with the idea of being in love with Rena. The thing is, while Mai's desires for getting down with Rena do come with a whole dirty laundry list of activities she probably picked up from unrealistic yuri doujins, Rena does start to contrarily suspect that Mai's affection for her might be the real deal. This isn't a frivolous fling to Mai (with Rena specifically bringing up and moving past the counter that Mai might even be "experimenting" with a girl-girl relationship as some sort of cover for other dating woes). The idea that Mai has the emotional fulfillment she's looking to get out of the connection, not unlike what Rena's hoping for from "friendship", is what presents the challenge—and crystalizes this situation where these two inexperienced girls can learn about the blurry lines of what defines any kind of "relationship" in the first place.

That might be more fun to explore were Mai not stepping over other kinds of blurred lines. I gave her the benefit of the doubt in last week's episode—but even acknowledging her previous just-barely respecting consent, Mai is now pushing things in ways that aren't going to be cool with those here for lighter, more playful yuri fare. Yes, it is kind of funny to have them get into the bath together while Mai is in "Friend Mode." It's normal for girls, after all. But her dropping her hair after the fact and forcing herself on Rena, despite protests, makes Mai come off more manipulative than she needs to after she so earnestly endeared herself to Rena and the audience with her genuine desires. That goes double when she pushes things as "friends" anyway—and triple when she and the narrative insinuate after everything that Rena secretly wanted it. There is a way to write and play up this kind of steamy tension without feeling frivolous about the characters' boundaries, but There's No Freaking Way doesn't come off like it grasps that.

I write all that knowing that this bit is still absolutely going to be a turn-on for some people, and the setup of this anime is certainly ripe for exploring boundaries—between friendship and romance and otherwise. The series just needs to work better at threading the needle that is Mai's misguided impulses. She is still funny when she's, as Rena puts it, a "horny weirdo." That genuineness spiked with Rena's desire to connect could make her an ideal (girl)friend—and that's worth exploring. I just hope and wish this anime could find a way to do that while playing up that boundary-pushing for something more substantial than the shifty fluff it feels like now.

We love a socially anxious pink-haired girl, folks. Unlike the immortal Bocchi, however, Rena here actually put in some of the social legwork to become more outgoing and ingratiate herself to a group of friends. It marks her with a unique, positive arrangement, and I'm happy for her. And I also recognize the issue apparent when a comedy of connective errors leads her to accidentally charm the pants off of the school's resident high-standards rich girl. It is honestly pretty funny that Rena's sincerity and affirming projection turn out to provide her with max-level rizz when applied to the distanced Mai. Mai is a girl who hasn't really experienced an emotional connection with anybody before; no wonder she's going to fall head-over-heels for the first cutie who gets her to open up even a little bit.

That madcap opening leading to the love confession is probably the strongest foot forward for There's No Freaking Way I'll Be Your Love, Unless. The scene from Rena's POV lets audiences live her anxious panic, and the miraculously lucky survival of the rooftop leap lends just the right amount of slapstick craziness an out-there series like this needs. It's all about conveying how fast-moving it feels to Rena, even if Mai confessing in a single day is hilariously accelerated by any standard. There's a joke to be made about high-school setting U-Haul lesbians moving super quickly, I'm sure.

Things do, admittedly, settle down and even get arguably repetitive after the dash to the premise in the first half. Part of Rena's requests to cram herself into the friendzone ring characteristically true—this is a girl who can barely handle the rigors of casual friendship, so the delicacies of romantic entanglement could probably actually kill her. On a more basic level she just doesn't have the energy for dating, and I feel like we've all been there at least a few times in our lives.

Mai's moves, meanwhile, can come off grating while also falling equally flat. She's all but pressuring Rena into her whole romantic A/B testing plan (Rena seemingly agreeing to it on some level) with a pushiness usually reserved for entitled rich guy love interests in straight reverse-harem shows. But Mai's methods of enacting "dating mode" on Rena seem to mostly be… to say that they're dating in private. There are a couple moments where she gets a little extra handsy, but she confirms by the episode's end that she has virtually no interest in actually pressuring Rena into anything without her consent. Maybe once she finally puts her hair up and we see what Rena's conceptions of comparative "friendship" look like in future episodes, this anime's thesis on the difference (or blurring) between the two sides will be more clear, but for now the entire exercise feels amorphous.

Still, there's enough chemistry between Rena and Mai to carry the basic tension a series like this needs for now. It is funny to see Mai realizing she's catching the hots for Rena in spite of herself. Perhaps the rapid-fire pace will pick up again as the other girls find their own reasons to get inadvertently rizzed up by Rena, if the OP is any indication. Otherwise this is a premiere that comes off as a bit of a one-trick pony, even if it didn't grate on me quite as much as I can see it doing for others.

Also, I am pretty sure the girl the subtitles were referring to as "Satuki" here is actually supposed to be named "Satsuki." REMOW, you know I want to root for any company to crack Crunchyroll's chokehold on the industry, but you gotta make sure you're acing the subs, to say nothing of leaving these episodes up for more than a week.

I think how much any given fan of romantic comedies will like There's No Freaking Way I'll Be Your Lover will come down to their tolerance of Mai and her sometimes pushy methods of trying to win Renako over to the “we should totally date and make out a bunch” side of their relationship. Obviously, consent is critical to any healthy relationship, and a lot of Mai's antics would be big red flags if you encountered them in the real world. I know people who would likely shut the TV off and never return to the show the minute they see the scene where Mai gets very enthusiastic about getting a kiss out of Renako in the bath. I couldn't blame them for thinking that Mai doesn't make for a very attractive partner, in that respect.

Personally, I am willing to give Mai and the anime she stars in some benefit of the doubt on account of the whole story operating on logic that makes much more sense when you live in the universe of a cartoon rom-com. Yes, Renako makes it clear that she is currently not interested in being Mai's lover, but this episode tries to make it clear that her reservations have less to do with not being attracted to Mai and more to do with worrying that a romantic relationship would inherently be lacking in all of the fun stuff she wants to do with her. In Renako's mind, you can't just spend the afternoon playing zombie games or goofing off at the mall with someone that you're trying to date—since you'd be too worried about looking cute, impressing your partner, getting physical, and so on.

Mai, for her part, wants Renako to know that she is enthusiastically down to do all of those things with Renako; it's just that she also, you know, wants to get naked and roll around the sheets a little bit, too. I actually like that the show has Renako acknowledge that Mai's unabashedly horny attitude towards her could easily be read as Mai just getting all hot and bothered over the idea of “trying out a girl” and satisfying her physical urges. It's a very understandable thing for Mai to be worried about—that Mai might just be the lesbian version of those guys who will only act friendly and agreeable to a girl as long as they think there's a chance of getting some.

I don't think we're supposed to doubt for a second that Mai definitely does have the hots for Renako, and that she'll figure out how to reconcile those feelings with her need for genuine friendship eventually. To be honest, that's the only way I've ever really understood romance, myself. Why wouldn't you want the person you are dating to also make for an incredible best friend? What makes this anime work so well for me is that, for as much as it requires us to not take the rather absurd and heightened framing of the girls “Friendship Vs. Dating” battle too seriously, Mai and Renako feel very fleshed out and likeable—especially when they're together. They've got chemistry and that means everything in a romance. There are reasons that “Unless…” is in the title, after all, and I think it will be fun to see how Mai discovers those reasons for herself this summer.

Here is a premiere that gets two crucial things right straight from the get-go. First of all, there's so much effort being put into the animation of that 1st-person POV opening scene that it's impossible not to be impressed. The fluid and vibrant artistry on display gives our characters an immediate sense of life, and it also sells the comedic timing of our protagonist Renako's freakout. Speaking of which, the second thing that this premiere does to win its audience over immediately is how it characterizes Renako's particular brand of social anxiety. Much like Bocchi the Rock! before it, There's No Freaking Way…gives us a heroine who suffers from some very relatable setbacks in her efforts to simply keep up with her extroverted classmates and get through the day without becoming overstimulated to the point of a full-on panic attack, but the show never gets maudlin or exhausting with it. That said, the show doesn't make Renako's behavior the butt of any mean-spirited jokes, either, which is a fine line for a comedy like this to walk.

Instead, Renako finds out that her personality is incredibly attractive to the queen bee that she's been trying to become besties with ever since she started high school. In fact, Renako's game might be too strong since it turns out that Mai, the Mega-Popular Mega-Hottie, like-likes her, and Renako only just started hanging out with her! Also, she is darned sure that she probably isn't even into girls like Mai. Maybe. Definitely! Possibly not? I mean, Renako sure does blush an awful lot when she's thinking about Mai in the bathtub…

It's a cute premise for an adorable show, one that lives or dies on the chemistry between its two leads. On the one hand, you don't want Mai to be reduced to that cheap stereotype of pushy, borderline-predatory lesbians that anime often fall back on. On the other hand, she and Renako would make a superstar couple, so you also want to see whether or not Renako can, in fact, find some freaking way that she will be Mai's lover. On the one hand, yes, Mai is basically acting like Lloyd Christmas from Dumb and Dumber with her “So you're telling me…there's a chance!” approach to brute-forcing a romantic connection with Renako. This could very well be your instant red flag for abandoning this 'ship entirely, and nobody would blame you for it. On the other hand, this is a goofy rom-com where we're not meant to take the psychological ramifications of the leading pair's dynamic too seriously, as long as it's making you laugh. If you can approach There's No Freaking Way… from that angle, then I think you will find a lot to enjoy about one of the more gorgeously animated and entertaining romantic comedies of the season.

Last week, my thoughts on the show were pretty split. The first half dealt with what I thought was a pretty under-discussed element of social interactions while the second half went into more typical territory. This week things are a little bit mixed. I think there's some great discussions and point of views that are discussed throughout the episode, but like a lot of other comedy romances, it feels like we're still pushing some lines here and there.

The major thing that the show seems to be playing with is the idea of that line between friendship and lovers. That line is in a different spot depending on who you are. Plus some people have it as a clear separation while other people would have things be a bit more malleable. I love the discussions that go on between Renako and Mai here when they're trying to describe what they want in a best friend or a lover. From Renako's perspective, she never had the opportunity to get a best friend, so she glorifies this idea of what she wanted to do with a friend. From Mai's perspective, she was always surrounded by people that were there for her, but was never treated in such a way where she felt valued and developed a strong infatuation towards that kind of relationship. Both are in love with an ideal relationship that they're never had.

Both are totally valid in what they are looking for and in the desires that they feel. How the show blurs the line between these two is also really good because there are a lot of moments where I can easily see some actions being reserved for friends while some actions could only be reserved for lovers. I would argue, however, the show goes into dangerous territory during the last five minutes when they're in the hotel together. I was not expecting a kissing scene in episode two—especially one shared between two naked people in a tub. You could argue that lines were crossed before we even got to that point but that's also tricky because it's very common in Japan for friends to bathe together under certain circumstances. My biggest question is, will the lines between these two get more defined or will they just get more blurry. What I'm worried about is whether or not the show will be able to maintain this reasonable character study and won't just sacrifice that for the sake of progressing a relationship that may function better as a friendship.

It's nice having a show that focuses on the distinct differences between a friendship and a relationship. Or at least, I think that's what I thought the overall premise of the show was supposed to be before this first episode started leaning very much more into the romantic teasing. That makes sense because it seems like the overall setup here is one we are not unfamiliar with: where one very forward person tries to break through to someone who is much more reserved. I'm always a bit conflicted about shows like this because I worry that they encourage a mentality that, as long as you keep pursuing someone, you'll eventually be able to win them over despite their regular rejections. I know we had a lot of romances like that in the past, where a guy would not leave a woman alone, and that would seem to encourage problematic behavior. This story doesn't make that better by making the two leads women, especially when the persistent party is someone who openly admits that she gets everything that she wants.

Honestly, I think I was more engaged with the show during its first half, when we got more introspective with our main characters' perspectives. The idea of someone being sick and tired of being an introvert, doing everything they can to be an extrovert, and then realizing just how hard it is to do that was very relatable. I would have liked the show to focus more on that aspect, and maybe we will still get shades of it as the show goes on, but that felt like a relatable premise that the show ended up turning away from in the second half.

I think I'm a bit forgiving with this premiere because of how fast-paced and full of energy it was. From the very first scene, there is nothing but movement. At first, the movement portrays our main character's sporadic mindset, but it eventually transitions well into very reactionary back-and-forth comedy. There is a lot to like here, and the potential is considerable for it to evolve in a more organic direction. I hope that all of this effort isn't being put into a potentially problematic or boring idea.