This Week in Anime

How Did Love and Lies Become So Boring?

Jacob
Nick, I have a problem. :(

No, I don't think there's any saving this one

First Princess Principal, then Love and Lies...I just can't count on anime to be hilariously BAD this season!

Okay, it was a good surprise in the case of Princess Principal. I thought it was going to be a laugh-a-minute disaster, and it's just fine entertainment. But Love and Lies was like, I was rooting for you, we were all rooting for you, HOW DARE YOU. How did it drop the ball this hard, look at that gif, it could have been beautiful garbage.

Instead it's just garbage.

Please diagnose this illness I have given myself, sensei

I am not familiar with this show, but they seem to share the "pretentious yet innocuous title" thing.

Doesn't it also blaze through like 90 chapters of manga in 12 episodes or something, because that's a problem Love and Lies could actually stand to have.

It's especially odd because the first three episodes DO move quickly, and they fully indulge the ludicrous melodrama of the premise. Teens are forcibly engaged to a partner by the government at age 16. Our whitebread lead confesses to his childhood crush (who likes him back) minutes before getting his engagement notice. His new betrothed is sort of an odd duck who was sheltered from the outside world due to illness, so she promptly befriends her new fiancee's crush and wants the two of them to make out in front of her. AND THEN Whitebread-kun's best male friend starts being shitty to both women in his life so we find out that HE has a crush on Whitebread-kun too after he kisses him while he's sleeping.

Combine that with all the spit-string swapping and it was extremely promising trash. Then the morphine snailing began.

Yeah that soundtrack is hilariously overactive. They're talking about like missing the opportunity to spend lunch together or something while they organize test papers for the next class and THE ORCHESTRA DOTH SWELL...

I'm just like what happened to the insane love quadrangle we had going on, now these people barely talk and maybe one new emotion gets explored per episode. And yeah, the show's "grocery store brand Scum's Wish" aesthetic is truly shameless. I mean it's not like that was a big anime hit by any remote stretch of the imagination. And they're really not aimed at the same demographic. Scum's Wish is pretty firmly for older teen girls, while Love and Lies plays more to a male-leaning but gender-neutral-ish preteen crowd. I think.

Nonsense, the progression in this series is excellent.

Observe, Yukari in episode 1:

Yukari in episode 8:

SUCH PROGRESS! I think fully half of my screencaps from this show contain the words "love" or "lies".

like, we get it, WE GET IT, w e g e t i t

Oh yeah, that was fucking bizarre, but I was grateful for the brief moment of weirdness after so many weeks of shallow longing and narrative paste. The Government is Watching You Bone.

Even then nothing comes of it, and the government isn't REALLY watching anyone bone, but come on, Love and Lies, give us SOMEthing after all that build-up. It feels like the first three episodes gave us all the setup for a great joke, then just stopped for an extraordinarily dull audition monologue by a freshman drama student instead of ever delivering the punchline.

Strangely enough, the premise is so dumb and shlocky that this level of shallowness would be fine, maybe even wildly entertaining, if the show had a better handle on its own tone. It's not like the cast of Scum's Wish (it cannot be overstated how much L&L is biting that series directly) fell for each other based on deep romantic reasons. They absolutely didn't. But the screwed-up-ness was what made it feel like real behavior for 16-year olds (and a couple arrested development adults). They acted out in wildly inappropriate ways for their wildly irrational feelings.

Love and Lies on the other hand:

Ririna, have you read any other love stories ever? You were bedridden, you've had time.

Y'ALL SPLIT AN ERASER ONCE IN GRADE SCHOOL. And they both held on to that crummy eraser for five years. This is not relatable young love.

It's almost the polar opposite of Scum's Wish now that I think about it. That show had its characters doing truly insane things to one another based on extremely familiar and relatable feelings. Love and Lies gives everyone weird overblown fairytale emotions and then has them do nothing about those grandiose feelings for some reason?

Which makes the most likable character the most cartoonish one.

So it's a GOOD THING THE SHOW HAS SIDELINED HER FOR THE LAST FOUR+ EPISODES THEN!

Wait, Mysterious Girlfriend X? And you balked at spitswap.gif up there?

IS IT THOUGH???

But yeah, I'm in the same camp. I love me a tawdry sleazefest. Love and Lies is just a...yawny teasefest.

i'm sorry, look i came up with that on the spot, l&l doesn't deserve any better

Ambitious dumbness is an artform. It's transcendent. Lazy dumbness is the worst, and L&L is just so much lazier than I was expecting. Don't do what I did. Don't waste your time. Not since Eromanga-sensei have I felt like I was actively getting stupider watching a show, and at least Eromanga-sensei was entertaining in its badness.

Her romance is beyond saving, but at least I can offer Ririna one piece of advice, after we see her sniff and almost lick this condom wrapper :(.

Sorry Nisaka, this show's as meaningless as they come.