chuunibyou demo koi ga shitai!

Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions

"Blast the reality, burst into shreds, banishment... this world!" - Rikka Takanashi

||Chuunibyou - If I Had You | Leather and Skirt||

• ° • INTRODUCTION • ° •

(Love, Chuunibyou, and Other Delusions)

"What is a Chuunibyou? "

In my own understanding. Chuunibyou is a slang term that translates to "Middle School 2nd Year Sickness" or "8th Grade Syndrome", which is often referred to as "Chuuni." These are the type of people who are extremely delusional and always thought they had some kind of powers possessed inside of them. This is possibly caused by reading or watching too many mangas, animes, and other materials.

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Greetings everyone! My name is Milky, and welcome to my very first blog post and anime review!

today, based on what I explained above. I'll be reviewing "Chuunibyou Demo Koi Ga Shitai", or in translation... "Love, Chuunibyou, and Other Delusions."

this review will be summarized as a whole from both season 1 to season 2.

So Without further ado, let's roll~

(Warning: The following texts will contain spoilers. I recommend watching the anime first before proceeding with caution.)

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• ° • STORY • ° •

Togashi Yuuta is a high school freshman who is a reformed Chuunibyou. Having the title as the "Dark Flame Master" during his middle school years. He looks back at those times with extreme embarrassment. Because of this, he decided to shut his delusional lifestyle off and even moves to a different school for a fresh start. Yet, everything doesn't go according to plan when Rikka Takanashi crashes into Yuuta's life.

Rikka is the main heroine of the story: Yuuta's new classmate and also a Chuunibyou whom calls herself the "Wicked Eye". She is completely committed and offers her whole life into her own delusional world that only Rika could see. More or less, in this current situation. Yuuta is now trying his best to deal with her, and to prevent his shameless past from being exposed. After all, Rika is the only student in this school who knows about his past scars of being the "Dark Flame Master!" — Without a doubt, his dream of having a normal, healthy life is slowly disintegrating into ashes.

Reaching to the second episode, the show introduces us two characters. One named Kumin Tsuyuri and the other is Rikka's older sister, Touka Takanashi.

Kumin is a second year student who has a care-free attitude and mostly loves to sleep. She loves to sleep so much that she always brings a pillow with her almost everywhere she goes. Surprisingly, she is very friendly with everyone while usually going along with all of Rikka's antics.

Next we have Touka Takanashi, Rikka's older sister. Basically, she always carry a ladle to use against Rikka's crazy antics. It's actually awesome that we get to see the fighting scene between the sisters. Even though we only really witness it in Rikka's perspective.

Moving on to the third episode... Rikka wants to make her school their base for her magical practices. So she decided to make a club called "The Far East Magical Society". With that ridiculous name, obviously no one is interested in joining her club. (Which in Japan, they need five members in order for the club to be established) — Techinally, we get to see Kumin again, also creating a club for napping. Sounds hilarious but yeah, no one is interest in this club either. In the end, they come up with an idea to combine both clubs together, resulting in the club's name to change into "The Far East Napping Society" — This is worth mentioning because this is the episode where we can see the rest of the cast. Including Sanae Dekomori, and Shinka Nibutani.

Dekomori is a 15 years old middle school student who's also a Chuunibyou like Rikka and claims that she is Rikka's servant. On the other hand, Shinta is the popular girl in Yuuta's class and suddenly wants to join their club for a "good" reason. Well, I don't want to spoil it so I'll just leave it to your imagination — With that aside, the episodes continue to move forward as we can see the growth between the protagonist and the heroine developing feelings for each other.

First thing I could say, the settings are obviously generic but the anime has it's own strength points: Being at number one is the purpose of genre itself as a decent romance comedy show. It's quite fast paced and presents the rapid-fire jokes and slap sticks very well which are mostly referenced in fantasy and video games. The comedy was good, I did smile a lot but not entirely in season two. Despite that, the writing was genuinely funny and it successfully used the Chuunibyou factor and foundation from most of it's jokes producing a pleasant vibe for the audience. If you start to focus on these aspects, I admit that it's really an enjoyable anime. Again, it packs comedy, romance, and action into a small time-frame.

It keeps it's fast pace with cuts between imagination and reality, helping the comedy and the overall atmosphere. The progression between the characters makes sense and it was very well done. But the problem here is the sudden slow pace to a scene that isn't needed. Especially, when I encountered this a lot in season 2. When it comes to slow pacing, it's sole purpose is to grasp the viewer's attention in between the transition to understand the scene much better. So when there's multiple mistakes regarding this. It'll ruin most viewer's experience on a whole new level. Leading more misunderstanding results and displeasure.

While all of that being said, the anime is showing us a message saying:

"Love someone for whatever they are."

It means, even if they are Chuunibyou or not. You should accept them for who they are and respect them as a living person without discrimination, including yourself. But this bothers me; They try to present the theme and the message in the anime, but the way they express it was mediocre and lacking conviction. It feels like they shoved it here and there where it's not necessary to be placed. It leads to confusion more than convincing an audience to be affected by it's message. Yet, with due respect. I really did enjoy watching this anime. It has great elements to meet your expectations.

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• ° • CHARACTERS • ° •

The characters are fascinating to watch. But there are only two things that are worth discussing: First is the dynamic duo, Yuuta and Rikka.

Breaking down the parts; Yuuta is not a unique character like any other anime protagonists. Of course, if you could look at it. He's just a standard, generic nice guy which makes it bland and boring for me. But he does a great job in handling Rikka's Chuunibyou in a full form compassionate way. The comedy between him and Rikka is indeed, funny and adorable, which I ended up caring about him due to the relationship interaction and dynamic. Plus his additional scenes when the show flashbacks to his middle school years was very entertaining and relatable in some points — Rikka is the heroine of the show as her miscomedic moments accompanied by her input. In the anime, the most entertaining part you could ever see in the characters is her being a Chuunibyou which delivers unpredictable humor and fun. After all, she is a lovely and likable character.

Her relationship with Yuuta is one of the best parts of the anime as I could really see it happen and it developed a nice pace that it makes sense in the context of Rikka's Chuunibyou. They did a good job on conveying it's plausibility which helped the emotion and emotional impact. The show only focuses on the relationship between the two, but it was really fun nonetheless.

Second is the rest of the cast's contribution. All of them showed me a good time to analyze them during the show since their role on adding humor throughout the story was alright. However, the problem is, it doesn't help the growth between Yuuta and Rikka that much. As if these characters were only there to interact with the main characters but did not assist on the development (Well mostly). Especially when they get a chance to dedicate themselves for a whole episode. The reason behind why they did insert this episode was to develop the story. In all honesty, it was a failure. It lacks development, resulting in a waste of my time and it's like "You should care about these characters just because..."

Although, on the bright side. We did learn more about the side characters and their comical interaction between the main characters. I didn't say "I hate them" in fact, I enjoyed watching the relationship between the Takanashi sisters and the rivalry of Dekomori with Shinta. For my final thoughts on this segment, they're lovable and relatable despite the side character's flaws. Lastly, the dynamic of Yuuta and Rikka produce tons of laughter and fluffy moments which it's fun to watch.

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• ° • ANIMATION & SOUNDS • ° •

I want to put my hands down because the animation was the best feature in this show. Obviously, it was made by Kyoto Animation who produced the movie, "A Silent Voice." and the anime, "Musaigen no Phantom World", personally, it's one of my favorite studios when it comes to animation. It was very awesome — The stylization between the real world and the imaginative one was absolutely fantastic, they used wide color pallets and pleasant radiance to bloom nice amount of details.

The Background was detailed and flawless in my own perspective and the Character Design was pretty great and has moe-factors in it. But there's one that I really appreciate the most, which is the Character's movement. They express their emotions and reactions into one fine detail as the animation style compliments the humor and made it more funny and less static.

While heading on to the voice acting. They did an excellent job with the tone shifts depending on the atmosphere. Especially Rikka's voice actress, Maaya Uchida was marvelous to make her character quirky and alive. As for the soundtracks... No offense but, I did not remember any of it. After I listened to the opening again and the other soundtracks. I guess it was catchy? But it's not music that you want to hear everyday. It's just my opinion.

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• ° • FINAL THOUGHTS • ° •

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I really did enjoy watching "Chuunibyou" which they present with decent romance, laughs, and a couple of Chuunibyou factors. However, it does have errors and issues that could not be avoided.

Personally, Season 1 is better than season 2 unless you're more into the relationship of Yuuta and Rikka since it's only filled with chemistry and development. Overall, if you have some time. I recommend you add this to your watch queue if you want to try something more interesting and fun.

Once again, my name is Milky and this discussion has reached it's end. What do you think? Are you planning on watching it? Who is your favorite character in the show? Whatever answers you'll give to me, I say "Dekumori is bae "