The Spring 2026 Anime Preview Guide

I Want to End This Love Game

After leaving behind his image as a quiet nerd, Yukiya's ready to break hearts and take names with the ultimate high school glow-up. Well, he's really just got one girl in his sights—his best friend, Miku. Using her favorite shojo manga as his weapon, he's prepared to pin her to the wall and gaze at her with the perfect smolder.

I Want to End This Love Game is based on the manga series by Yūki Dōmoto. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Tuesdays.

Ohhhh, so what we have here is the reverse of Kaguya-sama: Love is War. While Kaguya and Shirogane try to get the other to confess their love, Yukiya and Miku have been spending years trying to fluster one another by dropping, “I love you,” into their conversations. While Kaguya and Shirogane convince themselves they are vying for the power in their relationship, Yukiya and Miku are both well aware that they are obsessively in love with the other one. While I don't know if Kaguya-sama was a direct influence on I Want to End This Love Game, there are some interesting parallels between what the former does and the latter deliberately does not do.

But wait, there are more striking oppositions! For example, Kaguya-sama is beautiful and inventively directed, whereas I Want to End This Love Game looks like butt. Yukiya makes much of his sexy new haircut, which looks like every other shonen high school romance protagonist's haircut; the rest of the character designs are similarly forgettable. The animation is muddy and grayish, shot through with the aqua of their school uniforms. I will say that one similarity is that each series has technical achievement on par with the skill of the scriptwriting! Love Game's visual style is stilted, and the camera cuts to stiff, blocky CG models for every shot that is even slightly angled.

And in perhaps the cleverest move of all, Yukiya and Miku are conceptually the opposite of Kaguya and Shirogane. You see, while Kaguya and Shirogane had strong, distinctive personalities that were immediately clear right off the bat, Yukiya and Miku seem to have nothing but fluff between their ears. We hear a lot of their thoughts, this being a too-faithful light novel adaptation and all, and there's nothing interesting going on. They're just freaking out about how much they like the other one. It's the high school romance equivalent of a dog barking incessantly at squirrels out the window.

So really, I Want to End This Love Game is an incredible series. So daring, to be in conversation, nay, opposition to one of the best romantic comedies in the medium. If you want to see a series that is the opposite of Kaguya-sama: Love is War in every way, hurry up and watch this show!

I believe the accepted terminology for characters like Yukiya and Miku in this sort of story is “loveable idiots.” You must forgive me if I found absolutely nothing “lovable” about them. They're just idiots through and through. That could be appealing in its own right, of course, because the entire plot revolves around both of them being too stubborn to admit that they like each other while torturing themselves with their so-called “I Love You Game.” These two 100% brought this on themselves.

Basically, four years ago, Miku tried out telling Yukiya those three little words, possibly in hopes of it being reciprocated. When he looked at her like she was a monster, she quickly pivoted into saying it was a game – if he'd reacted with blushes, she'd have won. It all sounds very much like something made up on the spot to cover up embarrassment, and while there's no official confirmation that's the case, nothing in this episode convinces me otherwise. Yukiya then started “playing” Miku's game, and now, on the eve of high school, they're so deeply enmeshed in trying to make the other one react to their romantic words and actions that they've basically backed themselves into a corner. It's one of the most classic cases of cutting off your nose to spite your face I've ever seen.

That said, I could see it being part of the thrill. Sure, they can't bring themselves to lose by admitting feelings, but at least they get to say the words and do cliché things like kabedons and altering uniforms for titillation purposes. They're playacting something that's real, and I suppose there's an appeal to that, especially since this has been going on so long that neither of them can figure out how to get out of it. It doesn't make the whole thing less annoying, but I could see that being a me problem.

A more universal issue is how the animation switches to stiff CG every time there's an overhead shot. I'm honestly not sure what the point of that is. Were they hoping no one would notice? Does it save that much time and money? I can't imagine, but I can assure them that I did notice and am not a fan. Not that the rest of the episode has top-tier visuals, but it at least looks smoother than that. Between the weird CG and the annoying factor of the characters, this is emphatically not a show for me. But if romcoms are your preferred genre, you're likely to find it less irritating – and if nothing else, the final scene of the two of them giggling like increasingly mad scientists is pretty great.

When I first watched the Magical Girl Raising Project anime back in 2016, I remember loving it. It is a dark subversion of the magical girl genre where a classically pure magical girl has to survive in a world where the other magical girls—and the magical girl system overall—are anything but. It's got drama and pathos—moments of heroism and despair. There's just one problem with it: Madoka Magica came out in 2011. No matter how groundbreaking Magical Girl Raising Project would be in a vacuum, it will always be compared to the OG dark magical girl anime king—and found wanting.

This is the same issue facing I Want to End This Love Game. Kaguya-sama: Love is War exists. Both series are built around the idea that each of the high schoolers in the main couples wants the other to confess their love first—to “win” the game of love. Of course, they are too stubborn to do so and keep trying to find romantic ways to force the other into breaking—only to have the other turn it around on them.

Unfortunately, I Want to End This Love Game ends up feeling like the watered-down version of this premise. Yukiya and Miku are childhood friends who have fallen in love. They share the same hobbies and socio-economic status. Meanwhile, Kaguya-sama's Shirogane and Shinomiya are star-crossed lovers. One is rich, the other poor. One is worldly, the other sheltered. The story is about them overcoming their own insecurities and class divides as much as it is about the love games they play against each other.

Likewise, the romantic situations in I Want to End This Love Game are rather tame in comparison—defualting to simple things like the classic “Kabedon” or Miku rolling up her skirt to show some more leg. Miku's not going to have a surreal experience where the various facets of her personality battle for control of her body, nor is Yukiya going to end up doing a full rap number. Even the internal monologues that accompany the love games are a step down. As good as Miku Itō is at playing coquettish one moment and embarrassed the next, she's no Aoi Koga.

But all that said, Kaguya-sama: Love is War's biggest selling point—its over-the-top nature—could also be seen as its greatest weakness. If that turns you off—if you're looking for a far more grounded version of the “trying to force the other to confess first” setup—then I Want to End This Love Game is a perfectly serviceable anime. It looks good and is well-acted. But as for me, it's not what I am looking for.

I always try to avoid falling into the trap of judging an anime based on what I think it should be rather than what it is, but a show like I Want to End This Love Game makes that really difficult. What we have is a perfectly serviceable young-adult romance about two childhood friends who have always teased each other with declarations of love, until—wait until you get a load of this—they both realize that they really do have feelings for each other. It's all very… fine. Imagine, though, how much more interesting this whole premise would be if these kooky kids got the love confession out of the way early and the rest of the series was about exploring the potentially much more interesting trials and tribulations that are inevitable when two friends change their entire relationship dynamic to figure out how they work as a couple.

The problem, for me, comes from how I Want to End This Love Game is walking a path already well-trod by classics like Teasing Master Takagi-san and Kaguya-sama: Love is War!, except Yukiya and Miku don't provide the overflowing wellspring of charm and personality that blessed their forebears. Again, they're fine, but their teasing and prodding are not creative or interesting enough to carry the show on its own, and this isn't the kind of series that finds its comedy in animation-driven spectacle, either. This leaves the character writing to shoulder most of the entertainment burden, and whether or not you find it very satisfying will depend entirely on how tickled you are about seeing the usual bits about kids who obviously love each other, not having the courage to admit their feelings.

There are some moments in this premiere that definitely indicate a certain baseline chemistry that our two leads share, which is good, but I'm just not sure it's enough. When Yukiya gets himself all worked up to prove that he's finally man enough to let Miku know how he feels, it is sweet to see him completely buckle the instant he lays eyes on her, and Miku's personality has just enough zest to keep her from coming across as Generic Female Love Interest #27659. I can't tell you that any of the jokes in this premiere made me laugh out loud, though, and I'm already struggling to recall the specifics of most of the episode's scenes.

In the end, I Want to End This Love Game comes across as a perfect example of a romantic comedy anime that is “good enough.” We're getting dozens upon dozens of new anime every season these days, though, and this spring is especially stacked. “Good enough” might earn a show enough of an audience to just barely justify the cost of its production, but I Want to End This Love Game is going to have to work a whole lot harder if it wants to actually stand out and be remembered once the dust of the new season has finally settled.