Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.
“You know when the Buddha initially like, lived in a life of decadence and luxury, closed off from the ailings of the world? And how once he saw the truth of things, that Suffering Exists, in the form of the sick man, the elderly man, and the dead man, he vowed himself to a life of ascetism and austerity? But even then, the extreme measures of such a life could not assist him? And it was only there, sitting under the bodhi tree, that he finally understood the true meaning of the Middle Path? Yeah, this anime is like that, sort of.”
-Imaginary Anodyne, a personal friend.
This is not a recommendation.
More than maybe anything I have ever written about; I must be very clear about one thing; do not watch LOVE FLOPS. Bare minimum; do not watch it yet. It has not earned it, and it probably won’t ever earn it. Indeed, this is one of the year’s crassest, unfunniest, and just downright most off-putting premieres. If this were a normal anime, I would not be writing about it at all.
Sadly, it is many things, few of them good, but one thing it definitely isn’t is normal.
The protagonist: Asashi Kashiwagi (Ryouta Oosaka), a walking lump of anti-charisma that makes his seasonal peer Ittoki from Shinobi no Ittoki—with whom he shares a voice actor—look like a movie star by comparison.
The setting: A near-future Japan, defined by nifty hologram cellphones, VTuber fortune tellers, and autonomous robots.
The plot: Perhaps the most obnoxious harem setup of the last decade. Asashi runs into a series of harem cliches-on-crack on his way to school, running through a solid five in less than ten minutes. Notably gross misadventures include one of the girls accidentally planting her ass on his face and then punching him between the legs for the trouble, and another being sexually assaulted by a dog. Yes. Really.
Its components are simultaneously so basic and so exaggerated that the series exists in a kind of hyperreality. This is what people who never watch these kinds of shows think all of them are like, and that impression then cranked to 11 and the knob ripped off. When something is this much, this loudly, in this in-your-face a fashion, the question naturally rises in the brains of a generation of anime fans raised on fakeout openings and genre-switch rug pulls; is there something else going on here? And if so, what?
Let me just say, I’m not sure I’m really convinced. The same friend quoted above semi-jokingly suggested this might be the protracted setup to a particularly gonzo strain of BL narrative. (Quote: “Also, its gonna be fuckin gay quote me on that shit.” They have a way with words.) That would certainly be something, and as someone unfamiliar with that area of that genre, which mostly to my understanding exists in VNs and the like, I can’t say this doesn’t look like that, since I wouldn’t know. But more to the point, I can see how some would get the impression that there must be something else happening here, even if what—or why it would need to open like this—isn’t yet clear. Let me lay it out of it’s not already obvious; this is less going to be a first impressions article in the traditional sense, and more me trying to galaxy brain myself into a convincing argument for why I didn’t just waste 30 minutes of my time (and then quite a bit more time writing all this). If you want a “should you pick this up?”-style takeaway, I will again say; no, you should not. There are too many good things airing this season for all but those most fascinated by bizarre garbage to waste their time with this.
And I do suspect I might well be wasting my time; I’ve gone broke assuming things like this of anime before. (See my Akebi’s Sailor Uniform writeup from earlier this year.) And eventually being Up To Something would not redeem how truly, truly awful the first episode is. (I really cannot stress enough how thoroughly and quickly it discards any kind of good taste.) But while it’s certainly not a sure thing, I do think there is definitely some credence to the idea that Love Flops is trying to pull something. Let’s take a look at the evidence.
First, the setting; as mentioned, Love Flops takes place in a near-future time period, with all the flashy technology that implies. On its own, that’s not really that weird for a harem anime. One of the genre’s foundational texts, Tenchi Muyo, mixes its setup with a bizarre space opera / fantasy saga, so from that point of view, just setting things in 2080 or whenever is pretty tame. But there’s a decidedly unreal vibe to the entire thing.
Asashi appears to live alone, has a notably strange breakfast consisting of toasted bananas, and watches an apparent VTuber on the television for his morning fortune. The VTuber thing comes up in a few places, usually subtly, but the fact that they’re animated differently from the rest of the show—in a noticeably shoujo-ish style, and seemingly with Live2D—makes them stand out in a way that feels intentional, and almost gives them the air of being a surveillance tool. In another spot—as part of a terribly unfunny gag about panties—a trashcan-shaped robot appears to be idly disposing of peoples’ clothing, marking them as “trash.” You could easily write that off as the ‘bot malfunctioning in-universe, for the sake of the joke, but in context it does make one wonder.
Later, when Asashi hops on a train, there is quite literally no one else in the entire car with him, other than a woman who turns out to be his teacher as part of one of the aforementioned harem cliches-on-speed. The presence of a specific sort of futuristic technology makes the series’ world feel decidedly digital, and one character outright brings up the idea of the world “secretly being a video game.” He references it offhandedly, as though discussing a cliche, but that particular setup isn’t terribly common and never has been. (You’re more likely to get a Sword Art Online situation of people being trapped in a game, or a more general “the world is a simulation” sort of thing. ‘Secretly in a video game’ is an oddly specific pull.)
Secondly, let’s talk about those cliche harem situations themselves. Love Flops runs through them with a truly stunning speed, exhausting five within its opening ten minutes, and its plot doesn’t make a whole lot of sense even by this genre’s standards. Asashi’s homeroom teacher, for instance, is both a standard Sexy Teacher and also, for some reason, the show’s obligate Chinese character. (And this is not a genre that treats its non-Japanese characters particularly well, so one can imagine how that will go as the show wears on.)
Now, being annoyingly self-aware would not make Love Flops unique on its own, in this regard. There are plenty of ecchi anime that try and fail to do a very frustrating nudge-nudge wink-wink kind of thing. (A terrible cliche in of itself at this point, I would note.) But the sheer rapidity that Love Flops goes through these motions, and how hormone-destroyingly unsexy any of it is, could certainly give some credence to the idea that it’s all setup for some grand reveal. Once again, it would have to be one hell of a reveal to salvage the show after this opening episode, but it would be something.
Third, there’s Asashi’s friend, Yoshio Ijuuin (Jun Fukuyama). There is just something weird about this guy. Asashi can’t remember his name when they first meet, despite Yoshio claiming that they’re longtime friends. And later—and I’ll admit that this is probably the weakest bit of actual textual evidence on display here—this happens.
Hide.
Yeah, Asashi asks him what he’s looking at. While he’s staring directly into the ‘camera.’ In isolation I wouldn’t think anything of it at all, and there is a reasonable in-universe explanation (he was looking at some girls who were off-screen) but in the context of everything else, it just feels weird. Here is also a pertinent place to note that almost none of the camerawork is from Asashi’s perspective. So, it often feels more like we’re monitoring him than having some kind of adventure alongside him.
Lastly, and perhaps most damningly, there’s the bizarre dream from the very beginning of the episode. There is a very brief scene that provides a cold open before the anime itself starts, and it is perhaps the strongest evidence of all that something is up, here. Asashi sees an unknown girl who might also be Aoi Izumisawa (Miku Itou), the first girl he runs into on his way to school and is the one who gets her panties stolen by a robot. (The episode closes with her confessing to Asashi, for whatever reason. While still not wearing any panties. Yeah.) The dream is vanishingly short; consisting of the girl mouthing something to Asashi, and then turning away, before vanishing into a yawning void as both she and the entire world dissolve into neon green bits of code.
Let’s turn away from the evidence pile for a moment and let me bring up another series. Have you heard of Rengoku no Toshi? I would guess not, as the series is obscure even by weird seinen manga standards. But! It’s a useful comparison here. That manga, known variously as Prison City of Love, City of Imprisoned Love, or similar in English (it never got an official release over here), is also an ecchi series that takes place in a constructed false reality. It too spends some opening time setting up a fake romcom situation, only to reveal not long later that, surprise, it’s actually a thriller manga. Now, Rengoku no Toshi A) never exactly got good, I would say, and B) did still have that ecchi element even after the genre pivot. But still, this is a thing that’s been done before. I never quite loved Rengoku no Toshi, and I didn’t finish it, but it did go to some truly strange places eventually.
If you want to imagine what this manga was like without having to read it; just imagine this scene, played out over and over again, but sometimes one of the characters is an anime gyaru and is naked.
Would a similar turn maybe redeem at least some part of the terrible, terrible things that have happened in this anime’s first episode?
….Maybe?
Certainly, the answer is not “yes.” That would be a ridiculous thing to say, it really is quite difficult to fully bounce back from “two different characters are sexually assaulted by a dog” (yeah, that happens twice) as a development in episode one, yeah? But it might at least make me not entirely regret having started this in the first place. To the friend who steered me away from this show “even if I was paid to watch it,” you know who you are, and I am sorry for not listening to you.
As for everyone else, if you never see Love Flops on this site again, you can safely assume that it spiraled off into a kind of insanity that did not interest me. But, if it makes a grim return, knocking on your window like a creature from a horror manga, just know that I am only the messenger of this particular dark god, not a devotee of it.
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