HighWire: [Anime Review] Nisekoi

“Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl,
and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.”

― Nicole Krauss

Can we, just the two of us, have a little heart to heart? Come now. Let's sit down at the table, look each other in the eye, and speak without veiling what we both truly mean. Okay, I'll go first. I don't want you to hate me. Please don't. My self-esteem is low as it is, and I don't think I can handle having my own readers turn on me, so, please, hear me out.
What I need to say is this. Nisekoi is not a good anime. It's predictable. It's aimless. It is, by merely existing, the epitome of every single cliche school-life harem romance that the anime industry has been saddled with more for as long as I can remember. There's no innovation. It has no ambition to be, pretend, or fool the audience into thinking, it is anything more than self-regurgitated slop that it will be forced down our gullible throats, because it knows that it doesn't need to try to be more than that, as Nisekoi knows that its audience will come and make it popular no matter how bad it is. Now let me say a second thing. I love this anime.
Hello people of "The Wired", my name is Quan, and it's time to get out the flame-shields, waifu banners and shipping containers, because today, it is one of my guiltiest of guilty pleasures: Nisekoi. Now then, let's get started.

Before we start the debate of who "best girl" is, let's talk technical shall we? Nisekoi was animated by renown studio Shaft, who are famous for their work on the Monogatari franchise, Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei(which basically instantly puts them into the top tier of my favorite animation studios). The anime was directed by Akuyuki Shimbo, directer of the Monogatari franchise, Puella Magi Madoka, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei... huh. Okay, just to save time, let's just say this man has basically directed everything Shaft have animated in the last 10 years. Finally, it aired from January 10th to May 23rd of 2014, a span which gave it a total of 20 episodes. Now, the plot. Or whatever you should call it.

Story

Welcome to "Bland Generic Japanese Highschool That Is Located In A Suburban Town That Remains Nameless No. 8593#". Here, we meet "Generic Highschool-Age Harem Protagonist Who Lacks All Semblance of Personality But Still Somehow Attracts A Group of Waifu-Material Love-Interests Who Follow Him Around Like a Lost Puppy No. X#", in this case, who goes by the name of Raku Ichijou. "But wait!" yells Nisekoi, "we have something new... look! The plot of Love Hina!" Yes, as it would turn out, Raku has a couple of secrets. The first one is that he just happens to be the son of the leader of the Yakuza, which somehow doesn't interfere with his everyday life at all, and the second one concerns the key-hole shaped pendant that hangs around his neck. See, 10 years ago when he was still a child, Raku made a promise with a girl he met one faithful summer. They exchanged the locket and a key, and swore to each-other when they met again, the girl would unlock the pendant hanging around Raku's chest, and they would get married. Aw... how romantic. But unfortunately for this romance, Raku appears to have forgotten to ask the girl a few essential questions, like what her name is, or where she lives, or anything that may have been helpful in ever finding her again.
So, as Raku lives out his adolescence searching for his long-lost childhood sweet-heart, he has yet another faithful encounter with a girl, and by encounter I mean collision, as in her hurry to get to school on time, the girl: Chitoge Kirisaki slams directly into Raku. Needless to say, this starts their relationship on rocky footing, and it doesn't help when later that day, Chitoge is introduced to Raku's class as their new transfer student from America, and the following interaction fans the flames of conflict between the two even more. So, you can imagine Raku's reaction when his father informs him that Chitoge is actually the daughter of an enemy mafia faction. But since neither Chitoge or Raku's fathers really want to fight(and since they are apparently incapable of just, I don't know, calling their respective forces off from the turf war), they come up with, what I assume, is the next best possible way to quell the tension between their two sides. See, neither side will want to fight each-other... if the son and daughter of their leaders are boyfriend and girlfriend. You probably can see where this is going. Even though they only need to act like they are romantically involved, Raku and Chitoge are still at odds with one another, a situation not helped by the fact that Raku already has someone he likes: the shy and beautiful Kosaki Onodera, who unbeknownst to him, returns his feelings enthusiastically, but doesn't know that Raku's and Chitoge's relationship is a mere act. And, simply put, highschool high-jinks ensues.

The first meeting.

If you think I've sounded a little sarcastic during those last two paragraphs, congratulations, your sarcasm-detector is working just fine. This is my way of acknowledging that I know perfectly well how dumb this all is, how cliche and fulls of holes the plot is, and how superficial the whole anime is, so... why do I not care? Well, if I had to express it... I'd say Nisekoi is perfect. Okay, let me start over. I am not saying that Nisekoi is a perfect 10/10 masterpiece that deserves unrivaled recognition from the community and trumps such petty competition like The Tatami Galaxy, Kara no Kyoukai or Welcome to the NHK. No, I'm definitely not saying that. But what I am saying is that, as a romantic comedy meant to be easily digested and enjoyed, Nisekoi does its job and does it... kind of perfectly.

Probably the biggest piece of why lies in the comedy, namely, Nisekoi is freakin' hilarious. It's a perfect mixture of comedic timing, character interaction(which particularly shines between Raku and Chitoge), and self-aware ridiculousness, which all culminates in a final episode where the class holds a Romeo and Juliet play: an episode where I'm pretty sure I never stopped laughing once. And needless to say, you don't really have time to think about how stupid it all is if you're too busy laughing. Things happen in the series that are borderline fantasy, like when a cross-dressing assassin/bodyguard transfers into the class, or how seemingly every single girl Raku meets seems to have a mysterious key and vague memories of a childhood promise, but all anybody seems to know for sure is that they were all on top of a hill together and someone made a promise to someone at some point but we're not quite sure.
And for those of you seeking cute romance with no actual emotional connection involved, Nisekoi has you covered as well. To start, all the girls look like walking marshmallows with arms and legs, so f*cking "kawaii" that you just want to squeeze them till they concede to being your waifu. See, Nisekoi has more than an adept grasp on how the keep the shipping wars going. It throws in a couple adorable girls, gives them all one episode of development with the main character, an archetype of a personality, then gives all of them a few moments of absolute adorableness that make you just love them anyway despite how bland most of them are. Oh, is Chitoge a tsundere so run-of-mill it borders on aggravating? Just give her a moment where she apologizes for her actions in English which is so goddamn cute that it makes you want to keel over and die from moe-overload. Does Onodera have the personality of a chair with moe eyes on it that can't express other traits besides from shyness and a crush on the main character? Have Kana Hanazawa make the cutest squeaks ever from behind her micro-phone when she's embarrassed and watch the legion of fans defend her honor from the "evil team Chitoge". Then rinse and repeat this process until you have a perpetual "best girl war" that threatens to tear apart the fan-base, and simply watch the dreams be crushed underneath you as you sit upon your huge pile of money. And it works. Amazingly so.

Whoops, spoilers.

What you need to give Nisekoi credit for is that it wholeheartedly understands this concept, and also realizes that this anime will only work if it is kept in this limbo, and if anything as audacious as "plot-development" should become unavoidable, it's Nisekoi's solemn duty to prevent it at any cost. Is one of the harem members confessing? Have a baseball fly through the window to cut her off half-way. Is she trying again? Oh no, the main character fell asleep and missed it completely. Are we finally about to find out if one of the girl's key's fits Raku's locket? Oh how unfortunate, she got nervous and twisted it too hard, breaking it in the lock. Somehow.
It's times like that when Nisekoi does begin to try my patience. Usually, I'm enjoying it too much to mind the stupidity, but when things like that happen it's a harsh wake-up call for me, reminding me to once again put on my pretentious analytical glasses and stop having fun. But the series is so completely in love with itself, and so innocently fun, that I can't help but forgive it every time. Of course, this means that the anime will probably run out of novelty(for lack of a better word) soon, as the plot annoyances begin to overshadow the mindless fun, and, as it turns out, that's exactly what happened in the second season, but as for these first 20 episodes, viewing season 1 on its own, Nisekoi pulls it off, I think. 20 episodes, that unless you have the sense of humor of a rock, you should find more than entertaining enough.

The characters from left to right: Ruri, Onodera, Marika, Raku, Chitoge and Tsugumi.

Characters

I consider myself above the petty squabble of the "Best Girl Wars", because who is best girl and who is not matters not to the analytical lens of which I peer through to evaluate an anime on unbiased merits. Therefore, I shall not let any sort of embers from the flames of conflict throw off my completely objective summary of these characters, I shall trade no insults, and will take no cheap shots(because Chitoge is obviously girl and anyone is disagrees is clearly wrong). Seriously though, let's talk about characters.
If you've met the protagonist of nearly any harem anime ever made, you've probably already met our main character Raku Ichijou. He is the clueless nice guy that can, at random intervals do something epic for the sake of the plot, and that's all he really gives off as he wanders the school with a parade of attractive girls behind him. For whatever reason, I find I don't mind his lack of personality as much as I do with other main character's of this nature, and I think I can owe that to the comedy for mostly making his interactions with the other characters greatly enjoyable, especially with his friend Shu, or as I like to call him: The Best Wing-man in The World and MVP for the anime in general.
Chitoge Kirisaki is the main love interest, a blond and beautiful American transfer student that ebbs "tsundere" from every action she takes and word she says. And as tiring as that can get sometimes, her rare moments of clarity as a character surprisingly do a lot in the long run, and it also helps that she somewhat "drops the act" by the end of it. The only times the anime gets even remotely close to something tangible involves Chitoge, and that's enough to earn the "best girl" medal in my heart.
But of course, a harem would not be worth anything without a secondary love interest, so here we have Kosaki Onodera, the shy and eloquent girl who Raku has been crushing after ever since middle-school. While I don't mind her at all, she pretty much epitomizes the most frustrating element of Nisekoi: the aimless plot. The story literally could have ended at any point if Onodera got over her shyness and told Raku she liked him back, but since she doesn't have any sort of development in that that sense unlike Chitoge, that somewhat cute shyness is all she really has going for her. It helps that she has a no nonsense friend named Ruri who is basically there to call her and Raku out on just how tiring their current relationship is and one of them should just confess already, but unfortunately Nisekoi, just because you're aware of how stupid it is that this premise can be stretched for 20 episodes without any real progress being made, that doesn't make it any less stupid.

The beautiful scenery in Episode 1.

Presentation & Sound

I know a lot of people have a love-hate relationship with the eccentric art-style of studio Shaft's anime, but ever since I first saw it in Bakemonogatari, I will admit I fell completely in love with it, and Nisekoi has everything you'd expect from them: great backgrounds, cool aesthetic and character design, and a schizophrenic camera that can't seem to stop panning upwards or cutting around to eyes rapidly. So yeah, I personally think Nisekoi is top-notch in the animation department. The one complaint I will accept about it though, is that Shaft's quirks don't exactly gel very well with what is essentially just a romcom; this is no Monogatari or Zetsubou Sensei after all. If you're not well acquainted with Shaft's works in the past, the first episode of Nisekoi may take some getting used to, what with the unique cinematography and animation techniques. But... I do think an average viewer will get used to it relatively quickly; it by no means ruins the experience and becomes basically the norm a few episodes in. If you're worried about it, don't be, it's really nothing to be fussed about.

The OST for Nisekoi was handled in majority by Tomoki Kikuya, who has done previous Shaft soundtracks like Hidamari Sketch. To be honest, I don't think I ever really registered the background music of the anime, and copyright troubles have made finding the soundtrack in its entirety quite hard to do, but from what I scavenged and what I remember, it's not great. Far from bad of course, there's quite a variety of instruments and tones being expressed by Kikuya's music, but nothing is really worth listening to on its own. Which I suppose is expected for a harem anime, but what with Shaft's impressive OST collection, it does seem a little underwhelming. But there is a silver lining. I never really was found of either ED, but both OP's: "Click" and "step" are absolutely joys to listen to: 90 second jingles that worm into your ears and have you singing along after you've sat through them a number of times, and that shouldn't take long if you marathon this anime like I did.

"Click"(OP 1)

"Step"(OP 2)

Verdict

I realize there's no particularly substantial reason for me to put Nisekoi on this pedestal that no other anime of its genre will likely ever reach. Nisekoi is not special. There was anime similiar to it before and there will be anime similiar to it in the future, that did or could do what Nisekoi tried and better. So why do I love it so, and why will I be giving it such an, arguably undeservedly high score at the end of this review? How to put it... If I had to explain my feelings towards this show, it's the show I decided to fall in love with, despite its problems and despite its convention. It somehow managed to force its way into my heart despite so many shows similiar to it not being able to. And yes. I know that's naïve, and I know that's shallow. I know I'm just being fooled by the anime's enduring personality and pretty colors that hides the truth behind Nisekoi: that as an entry in the ever vast anime medium, it's a show that truly has no new ideas to offer. But for once, just in the case of this anime, I find that I'm perfectly happy to be fooled.

Final Verdict: 6/10

P.S: Ruru x Shu is OTP

Recommended Anime:

Student Council's Discretion

While it goes for more of a referential humor route than Nisekoi, Student Council's Discretion is every bit as funny and likable. True, it takes a couple hits when it comes to animation and the expressiveness of the characters and art, but with its touches of actually quite effective emotional beats, I think it will serve you just fine.

Golden Time

Though, if you want a more straight-laced romcom that actually takes itself and its characters seriously, Golden Time is an admirable choice. It's got good characters, good drama, and actually does the impossible by taking place during college instead of highschool. Imagine that.

Nisekoi and its second season are available for free to legally stream with commercial breaks on Hulu if that website is something you are able to access. For 20 episodes of pure happiness, follow this link here. Happy watching.

Goodbye for now guys

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