DrDrakestalker
January 7, 2024
Not Recommended
Charlotte is our generic pure-hearted naive main heroine who lives in a generic fantasy kingdom’s castle. Though she has some noble rank or other, being the daughter of a duke or something, she is the progeny of a mistress, so she is treated poorly by her parents. Think Cinderella and you’ll have the right idea. No, I mean it, the show explicitly tells you that she is Cinderella at one point. As it so happens, Charlotte is engaged to the prince... for some reason. Yet, the prince turns out to be a huge piece of shit and, out of nowhere, accuses Charlotte of all kinds offalse crimes and imprisons her... for some reason. Charlotte somehow escapes, runs away, and ends up fainting from exhaustion in a forest somewhere. There she is found by an ultrapowerful wizard who lives as a recluse in that forest... for some reason. This wizard, who has a self-evident dislike for people and socializing, decides to take her in and let her live with him... for some reason.
Upon learning of her plight and that she’s basically lived her whole life as a slave, he endeavors to teach her how to be “naughty”. There is much ado made about the innuendo of the word naughty, but in this particular case, it basically means that he wants to teach her that it’s okay to be selfish sometimes, that it’s okay for her to have her own wants and needs, and that there’s nothing wrong with living for one’s own sake.
Rom-com shenanigans ensue.
What can I say? In recent years, I’ve slowly warmed up to slice-of-life shows where “nothing happens”, as it were. I’ve come to be able to appreciate a pleasant time spent in the company of pleasant characters, even if the show isn’t plot-driven. The problem with Ikenaikyo is that it was just too sinfully boring for my taste.
As far as characters go, at least Charlotte adheres religiously to the conventions of her archetype, but therein lies much of her problem. She felt too derivative and identical to 100 other shy, pure-hearted heroines I can name off the top of my head. Her design did not help her stand out, either. Probably the worst thing about her is that this was perhaps the most high-pitched performance I’ve ever heard Saori Hayami give. I was not amused.
Allen, on the other hand, just made no sense as a character. The information we are given at the start about who he is and what kind of background he has is in no way whatsoever compatible with the way we actually see him behave and react to things throughout the show. For starters, he is completely overpowered and likely the strongest entity in the world... for some reason. This is not an action show, so it’s not like that was really necessary, but fine. However, that’s not his real issue. The problem with Allen is that his character writing has no internal logic.
We are told that he lives as a hermit in the woods, hidden away from the rest of society, because he is a misanthrope who hates people and hates socializing. Mind you, this isn’t some description given by a fallible narrator that the character in question then proves wrong. In so many words, he literally describes himself as such. Granted, this could lay the foundation for a reasonably interesting character arc where he learns to socialize from Charlotte, but that possibility faces mainly 2 challenges. First, Charlotte has no social skill in the first place. That’s the entire point of the show. Still, you could hand waive that away by saying that he doesn’t learn social skill per se, but rather he learns to like other people, that sort of thing. Ok, but that still doesn’t address the second challenge, which is that he is perfectly socially adequate from the very first time we see him on screen. To be sure, the series will concoct situations where other characters will state that he is socially awkward, but other than contrived scenes that simply create comic relief opportunities for the rest of the cast to point at him and laugh, he is a total normie – nowhere close to the edgelord the author would like you to think he is.
Point in case, he effectively adopts Charlotte no questions asked, and as soon as he finds out what happened to her, he immediately believes her and becomes incredibly angry on her behalf. Bro essentially resolves to dedicate his life to making her happy for no reason whatsoever – already in the first episode, we see him spend sleepless nights trying to figure out ways to improve the life of this total stranger. It’s not even the case that he’s portrayed as a horndog who is doing this for her because he thinks she’s hot. For the first couple of episodes, he’s pretty much asexual. He is just a bona fide good guy everyman, which is completely at odds with every detail of his set-up.
Also, he is the physical clone of Black Jack with that half-and-half B&W split hair color. I guess your mileage will vary with that aesthetic, but personally, I don't know, man. I'm just not about it.
As for the actual rom-com, I suppose it wasn’t bad, and you might have a decent time with it if you’re into this sort of thing, but there was just far too much “nothing going on” for my taste, in addition to a self-contradictory protagonist.
In a sense, I should say that Ikenaikyo feels outdated, because rather than a will-they-won’t-they-confess-to-each-other old faithful, this anime instead opts for the even more frustrating will-they-won’t-they-realize-they-have-feelings-for-each-other-in-the-first-place shpiel. I was under the impression that anime had graduated from that old trope – but even if it didn’t, at the very least, I have.
Unless you’re a hardcore fan of the genre and present tropes, there’s not much reason to spend your time on this series.
