Monday, February 17, 2014

This Is Me #9

Nisekoi Anime Review

Nisekoi is another show that has emerged in the Winter 2014 season. The story revolves around the heirs to two rival gangs, one being a guy and the other being a girl. The gangs are about to go into an all out war when the bosses decide to create a fake relationship between their children, the two heirs, and create peace between the gangs who would've otherwise fought to the death and destroyed the city. The day is saved, but this plot point is mainly a distraction as the main goal is to create a situation where a guy and a girl (who have extreme disdain for each other) are forced to get to know each other better and will probably turn a 180 and fall in love.

I find each episode entertaining enough, though I can't help but think it's a show full of distractions. The most obvious distraction is their artsy fartsy art style that they kind of shuffle in and out of different scenes. It reminds me a lot of the style that Nisemonogatari uses, involving a lot of unusual spacing, contrasting visual patterns, and close ups of character's faces (or even just parts of their face). It works in Nisemonogatari because the writers have also scripted the dialogue and music to be just as disjointed and unusual as the art style. You can see what they're trying to do and everything adds up to be one big ball of art fart. However, in Nisekoi, I feel the frames with unusual spacing clashes with the rest of the scene. It looks pretty but I feel that it's mainly a gimmick to try to be different. They don't let the characters carry the load of the entertainment like a show like Toradora! would. And I do feel that's important because it's a romantic comedy. If I don't find the characters appealing, why do I care if they fall in love?

That being said, they make great use of the close-ups to accentuate emotional responses. And even if it's a gimmick, there is entertainment value in an unusual art style purely because it's a novelty. I can nitpick at Nisekoi a lot, but at the end of the day, it delivers in entertainment, which is the biggest factor of them all.

8/10 a very watchable show but nothing innovative here just yet

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