Ore wo Suki nano wa Omae dake ka yo

Have you ever had one of those moments in life where you feel as if a miracle is about to happen to you but then suddenly ends up being disappointed beyond disbelief? Someone by the name of Joro sure did. Just when he thought his life would turn into a miracle, he gets asked by two beauties to help them win their loves. Now that’s a slap to the face and reminder that life sometimes just isn’t fair. Ore wo Suki Nano wa Omae Dake Ka Yo (Oresuki) may be a romantic comedy but loves to flirt with the idea of manipulation. It’s almost like areal life version of a soap opera filled with drama but without the violence. Or is there? Physically, the show has limited amount of action unless you count Joro getting kicked or slapped on around on the occasions. But on a psychological level, Oresuki deals with manipulative love and drama that twists and turns until you see how deep the rabbit hole goes. Watching Oresuki has been a rather unusual but pleasant experience compared to some of the other rom-coms I’ve seen in recent years. In wasting no time, the first episode drops Joro into a drama angle with upperclassman Cosmos and Himawari. In a particular depressing incident, he finds out that both girls are in love with Taiyou Ooga (Sun-chan), his best friend and baseball club ace at school. What’s worse? Both girls wants him to help with their love problem. That’s only half the drama as we later learn that Pansy, a library girl at the same school, is actually in love with Joro himself. With this setup, Oresuki establishes a peculiar love story with Joro being forced to become a matchmaker. However, a twist reveals that Joro has a much more manipulative personality that he keeps hidden from others. Only Pansy is aware of his true personality and is why she is in love with him. Now you can imagine how this type of story may play out. It essentially becomes a labyrinth of mind games. Joro’s goal is live his life as a “Romantic Comedy Protagonist”. He invented his own character while masquerading as a typical protagonist with a gentle personality. It’s essentially what people call a “two-faced” person. Deep down, Joro has his own insecurities and often feels inferior to others around him. The reason he hides his true personality is often so that he can craft plans to make things go his way. Although some people see his role as an anti-hero with such a role, Joro is also fundamentally a decent person. He doesn’t truly try to harm others and show his true feelings when someone in his life is jeopardized. Does this type of protagonist appeal to you? This question can be answered if we take a look at how he develop relationships with the main cast. Starting with both Cosmos and Himawari, he reluctantly agrees to help them but also formulates plans of his own. Watching his moves carefully, the audience should take quickly why he interacts in his ways. Because let’s face it, Joro is actually quite a skilled actor who is able to change between his “nice guy” persona to his true nature very quickly and vice versa. On the other hand, both Cosmos and Himawari are dreadful liars. Their lies can easily be seen through by others and Cosmos even have absurd reactions whenever she gets nervous. Comparing their acting skills to Joro is like night and day. Joro’s goal of making his dream harem becomes a complicated plot for himself. Because Pansy is in love with his true personality, he has to accept such a fact despite still seeking to be the “romantic comedy protagonist” he hopes to be. Essentially, Joro becomes his own enemy and often times, his problems arises because of his own machinations. On individual levels, Cosmos and Himawari are clueless about his true visage. They still see him as an average classmate who doesn’t have a girlfriend but nonetheless, they spend time with him. But as the series progresses, they both seem to develop feelings of their own towards the boy. Is this perhaps true love? What happens is that love can change how people behave and in later portions of the show, it seems both characters show more affections towards Joro than they realize. On the other hand, Pansy constantly beats Joro at his own games. Whatever plans Joro crafts, she sees it through and actually makes him see his own mistakes. Between the two, they are the only pair in the show that doesn’t have a problem insulting each other. It’s a bit ironic since Pansy is in love with him and in a perfect world, couples are supposed to be loving with care. In Oresuki, we have this imperfect world where manipulation is part of the norm and almost everyone wants to be someone they’re not. While the series has its own antagonists, I believe the true enemy is human nature itself. As a skilled actor, Joro has his own human faults that he even realizes. In fact, every character in the show has flaws in some way or form. However, I don’t want to throw everyone under the bus. There’s characters who learn from their mistakes such as the case of Sun-chan. Even supporting characters such as Asunaro realizes the trouble she caused when manipulating others as a member of the newspaper club. Joro himself even realizes that he has to face with consequences in life. It’s in human nature that people commit sins and the show teaches about how characters needs to learn from their actions. The only character that seems immune to corruption is Pansy. Her position in the show is unique in that she is the one who can see through others, in particular their lies. When the show finished airing, I find that Pansy is perhaps the most real character in the show for not only her observation skills but also being a life coach to others. Someone such as Joro could learn a lot from her. Watching Oresuki may feel like an anime dosed with heavy amounts of drama. Every episode keeps the adrenaline going and there doesn’t seem to be a stop in the momentum. However, you have to remember that it’s also a romantic comedy. There are certainly a lot of comedic moments too such even including the physical aspects of the show. Whenever Joro gets hit, it’s portrayed comically. Many of his character reactions is often over exaggerated, almost like he’s acting. The anime also loves to throw in running gags associated with Joro’s matchmaker role and even occasionally moments of the fourth wall breaking. So take a breather and relax. Oresuki isn’t just a show with every square inch filled with drama. As a 1-cour show of 12 episodes, it seems Oresuki was able to fundamentally get the audience to know what the show is. Divided into arcs, the plot is formulated with mind games but I do wonder how much the producers really wanted to be animated. The light novels continues the drama so as it’s up management to decide if they want to animate more of the series. To my delight, Connect managed to make the characters look sharp similar to their manga designs. Every female character in the show stands out and is portrayed with feminine features and beauty. Cosmos and Himawari are prime examples of this as they have an attractive valley girl look. While Pansy normally looks plain with braids and glasses, her true appearance is that of a beautiful girl endowed with attractive appeal. Even supporting characters such as Sasanqua has their own appeal when they show their true appearance. All this is contrast to Joro, who is portrayed as normally as possible on the outside. However, the character expressions he shows in secret is a different story. As an anime with heavy amount of dialogues, I do commend on the voice actors on taking on their roles as dominantly as possible. This is especially true for Joro and Pansy, two voices who speak lines that often clashes against each other. Their character interactions is the most noticeable because Pansy knows the real Joro. Other times, Joro’s inner dialogues with himself speaks as his real character. On other technical standards, Oresuki’s theme songs adapts a more lighthearted tone with flashy images of character expressions. Oresuki is kind of like a taking a multiple choice test where you have to figure out what’s real and what’s not. The idea of manipulative characters in romantic comedies isn’t entirely new. But for Oresuki, this anime took it on a whole new level with Joro at the center. This is type of rom-com that will keep you at the edge of your seat to see what will happen with each progressing episode. And by the time it’s over, you won’t feel like a loser beyond disbelief.

This show took one of the biggest nosedives in quality that I've ever experienced in any media. The first 3 episodes were really fun and entertaining. I loved the constant 4th wall breaks by the main character, the jokes surrounding "bench-kun"were hilarious, it was a romcom with an interesting premise that imo was building up to be something comparable to in the best of cases Oregairu. And oh boi was I wrong because this became a painfully generic harem after that. After the first 3 eps, the show kept introducing more and more girls instead of making the viewers care about the already existing girlsby giving them any bit of characterization more than just being magically attracted to Joro. And of course like in any harem, almost all the girls the show introduces are immediately in love with the mc for some reason. I like my fair share of harems so that wouldn't a problem if I could care about any of these characters but I don't and most of them are really annoying. The animation was nothing special and the art while it wasn't horrible, it was mediocre as there were characters that looked very much identical but with different eyes and hair color. Don't have anything to say about the sound. Lastly I want to talk a little about the mc Joro. I found him to be such a bad character, he's a f***ing idiot with an inconsistent personality. He's mostly your typical dense harem protagonist, but he can also be a character with sass and kind of a douche bag but not really which is a type of character I like (example: Sakuta from Bunny Girl Senpai), and he can also be an actual douche bag on other times. I do like some of his monologues and his 4th wall breaks but yet I despise all of his actions and all of the decisions he makes. The only reason I don't give this show a 1/10 is because of those first 3 eps and there's a tiny amount of things that I enjoyed like the 4th wall breaks like I already mentioned. I'd say definitely skip this show, is just a subpar harem. If you want a good romcom from this year then watch Kaguya-Sama Love is War. If you want a harem from this year then watch 5-toubun no Hanayome.

“Amatsuyu “Joro” Kisaragi is your typical dense harem lead who is showered in affection by a cute childhood friend, a mature student council president, and many others as the series progresses” – this is the false pretense that Oresuki presents to cover its true premise: that Joro is aware of this trope and is actually a manipulative scumbag invoking it intentionally to pick up girls. However, one of these being true does not negate the other, and both are layers of the show’s narrative. Oresuki is a show that is about subtext and layered narratives. Basically every character in the show lies about what motivates theiractions at one point or another, and this is made extremely clear from the very beginning. In doing this, Oresuki is tasking the viewer to try to discern where their real intentions lay. Rather than the text itself, Oresuki prompts the audience to read the subtext. However, treating subtext as text does not erase the original text. As a better show once said, “People have several faces… and they’re all real.” Oresuki adopts a Kantian philosophy where the morality of an action can only be judged based on the intention behind it, and in doing so, it ignores the action itself. At one point, Joro is chastised for doing a good deed, because his motivations are deemed to be selfish. If one is committed to the idea that subtext is the only thing that’s real, then everything else must be fake. In training the audience to only read subtext, Oresuki demonstrates how dangerous this perspective can be. After the first few arcs, the viewer becomes unable to judge a good deed for itself. There was one character who ended up being completely benevolent in their actions, but I still was convinced that they couldn’t be trusted long after they were introduced. If all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail. With all of that said, I do think that the ideology of Oresuki is usually on the right track. Joro loses all of his friends as a result of his scheming in the first arc, and though he tries to scheme to regain them at first, he is only successful when he ultimately drops all façade and tells them directly that he wants to be friends again. There are no shortcuts or cheat codes when it comes to relationships, and if you want something real, then it has to start with you. I get the sense that Rakuda said everything they wanted to say in the first volume of the series, and didn’t really know how to follow it up. To a certain extent, Joro keeps making the same mistakes over and over again, although I’ll charitably read that as understanding that it would be difficult for a misanthrope like him to so easily change their ways. Fittingly, this season ends with another of Joro’s schemes backfiring, and him being backed into a corner as a result. His immediate impulse may be to devise a new scheme to escape this situation, but if he wants to show that he’s learned anything over the course of this season, then he’ll need to finally be honest about how he feels. We can only wait and see. So, is Oresuki good? No, absolutely not. It pretends to be a subversion of a genre, but ultimately doesn’t amount to more than just being the thing that it’s aping with a few more winks at the camera. But I had a lot of fun with it! There are a lot of ideas here that I thought were interesting to engage with, even if I disagreed them. Maybe my experience was mainly the product of my taking a philosophy class at the same time that this was airing, but if you like to play with your trash, then I think that Oresuki is worth a try.

Oresuki starts its first episode by presenting our black-haired, run-of-the-mill high school boy and his two love interests: airheaded childhood friend, and student council president. You'd assume this is another harem anime doing its thing, but that facade quickly shatters when the two love interests come up to our MC Jouro to confess. Because there's a catch; the person they like is his good-looking, baseball player of a best friend. Then there's another catch; Jouro isn't actually a run-of-the-mill high school boy. Deep down, he's a massive asshole who thinks he can get girls by playing up the harem-protagonist persona. As a concept, this isfunny. A dig at harem anime and their bland-ass protagonists getting girls for no reason is satisfying to see. Plus, it's presented in an entertaining, sassy manner, embellished by the greatest antagonist in anime, bench-kun, along with our MC Jouro calling everyone a "bitchii" in his head. It's all fun and games, but then fast forward a few episodes, and the show is doing exactly what it was making fun of in episode 1. The two girls who had confessed to liking baseball boy wake up one day and decide that, nah, Jouro's looking good now, and there's no real reason for this switch-up. Moreover, the second aspect that Oresuki was parodying, the protagonist himself, gets thrown out the window. Because ACTUALLY, Jouro has an alter-alter ego, so deep, deep down, he's a kind, run-of-the-mill harem protagonist. What was the point of making him an asshole then? The occasional comedy. That's it. This here is the entire show in a nutshell. It parodies the harem genre, but that's exactly what it is. The few jokes it makes every so often exist in a vacuum, and are only there to spice up an otherwise unapologetically trashy show. I didn't mind the comedy in this series, but Oresuki separates itself from the humor bit by bit, filling in that void with forced drama, while developing character relationships in the most ridiculous way possible. Nothing is dealt with properly, and by the end, you're left asking yourself, why? Why is Jouro amiable with the girl who purposely isolated him from his friends and ruined his reputation? Why is this girl having lunch with the guy who threatened to rape her last episode? All this does is make every character super unlikeable. They exist to act annoying and cause conflict when the plot wills it, only for them to be rewarded for their psychotic behavior. There's a limit to the absurdity I can tolerate because "it's trashy, comedy anime, the characters don't need to make sense 24/7", but when Oresuki's humor falters, it takes away any room for excuses. I did mention a lot already, but is any of this even a big deal? Maybe I went into this with unreasonable expectations. To that, I say, yes! I did expect more. What truly bothers me about Oresuki is that it had the potential to be a good, satirical rom-com with harem elements sprinkled in there for the fun of it. The first episode laid out everything well. It even introduced Pansy, who challenges everything Jouro wants and doesn't fit his idea of an ideal girl. Pansy is our bespectacled, disheveled-looking love interest who admits to stalking Jouro, and then admits her non-mutual feelings toward him, only to get immediately shut down. As far as their initial interactions/arguments go, they were entertaining to watch together, and dare I say, they had chemistry. All Oresuki had to do for the next 12 episodes was have Jouro continue his desperate harem protagonist act, have him fail in haha funny ways because the world doesn't work like that, and develop his hate-to-love relationship with Pansy as they both realize their flaws and become better people. But no, let's disregard the fact that the story writes itself because that would be too consistent, and god forbid this anime has any form of redeemable takeaway.

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