Chuunibyou Demo Koi ga Shitai! Review — B+

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In eighth grade, Yuuta was the Dark Flame Master… but now that he’s entered high school, he wants to pretend that never happened. Unfortunately, Rikka decides to follow in his footsteps and he ends up joining the magic and naptime club.

I loved this show. The first half was hilarious. When someone goes into Chuuni mode, they have these hilarious battle animations which always turn out to be a spatula or a circle of Christmas lights. Great stuff.

In the final quarter  they notch up the drama and confront the problems of growing up. The show seems to have garnered a bad reputation for this. Usually I hate it when comedies turn to drama, but in this particular case I thought it was extremely successful. Typically when anime turns to stories of growing up, they end with someone saying “you’re you, you” and everything is magically resolved. This particular coming of age story didn’t take any of those cop-outs and ended up being a thoughtful reflection on what it means to grow up. I’ll admit it, I teared up a bit.

  • Storytelling – B – Transitions from comedy to drama remarkably well, and succeeds at both.
  • Voice – A – All the Chuuni delusions were very distinctive.
  • Characters – A – Great characterizations. Even the male leads side kick was great with his adorable puppy love for Kuumin. Dekomori and Rikka’s antics were hilarious, as was Nibutani playing the straight man.
  • Attention Grab – A – Never lost my interest.
  • Production – A – As expected of KyoAni, looks great.
  • Overall – B+

RecommendationsHyouka, Kokoro Connect

13 thoughts on “Chuunibyou Demo Koi ga Shitai! Review — B+

  1. Honestly, I really like the 11th episode. The episode shows the conflict between reality and and Chuunibyou so impressive.
    However I just think the last episode as a failure. What is the invisible horizon(i guess it translate in this way)? Why Yuuta “summons” it easily?
    And the history of Rikka have tailed Yuuta for two years because that looks cool? That is not scientific.
    The other stuff looks fine but the last episode is bad. It doesn’t give a viable solution, even though not”YOU ARE YOU, YOU”. Chuunibyou is still Chuunibyou, nothing changes. Not as good as Hyouka or Kokoro Connect.

    1. The normal horizon becomes the infinite horizon when you look for the infinite horizon. At least that’s how I see it. Since Yuuta decides to look at it with the sense of wonder and imagination he once did, it is easy to find.

      The thing about Rikka stalking him was silly. Totally unnecessary and distracting, in my opinion.

      I liked the solution at the end of Chuunibyou— it’s basically a message of retaining your sense of wonder and imagination, and not becoming a boring adult.

  2. Comedy that was neither bad nor significantly better than what’s out there, higher than average animation (even though KyoAni have done better, still very good), and poor drama at the end. The overarching experience was of a mediocre show that was neither bad/boring nor really good – fun to watch, but nothing to write home about.

    Except for the confession(s). I wasn’t into the drama, but the very fact that they actually went there is great. So few anime step beyond the “friendship border”, I was really glad when this one did. Though, now that I think back, KyoAni does it far more often than most.

    1. I liked the comedy. I mean, it’s not Nichijou, but the chuuni delusions were pretty hilarious.

      Passing the friendship border is rare. That’s probably because there’s nothing as boring as a successful romance, but Chuunibyou managed to throw a wrench in the works to keep it interesting.

  3. I really liked Chuunibyou too, I was surprised that they were able to switch from a comedy to drama/romance without making it feel awkward.

  4. i have a brand new anime or manga featuring a normal forty year old workaholic businessman named Adam lee he lives in Tokyo Japan his boss is quite mean and bad who is also a corrupt business executive named Thomas Kim who later retires and a more benevolent but clueless boss named Samuel Yang takes over he hires a inventor named Dr Robert Goldsboro he creates a robotic android assistant named Alyssa she has pink hair white skin blue eyes she is statuesque athletically built muscularly built she has big breasts and a big ass she has a built in non removable purple headband and a built in non removable choker she has superhuman speed strength reflexes senses and toughness but lacks intelligence and normal human social skills she would wear only a white sheet as a improvised dress to cover her naked human female like body she does have human like emotions she is nearly invulnerable she can create and control beams of energy from her eyes and she has x ray vision.

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