Suki na Mono wa Suki Dakara Shou ga Nai!!

Warning: spoilers.

The yaoi fangirls are going to hate me for this. Back when this series came out, it was a runaway smash hit with American fans, especially on the internet. I had never bothered watching the series, but did so on the recommendation of a friend while looking for something to fill my yaoi needs.

I am a pretty dedicated fan of yaoi, but Sukisho is the genre done wrong. Ordinary I am fairly forgiving when it comes to yaoi anime because I understand that the prime focus isn't much different than that of a soft core pornography. The idea behind most shounen ai/yaoi series ... is to give the girls (and boys) something to gush over. I believe my main problem with Sukisho is that it attempted an actual plot line only to fail miserably.

So what make Sukisho's intriguing sounding plot line so horrible? The fact that most of it was so out of the realm of possibility. The two main characters grew up as test subjects. Where exactly was child services? Why are they so ruthlessly testing kids?

While these kids are being tested, one develops an alternate personality after seeing the other one walking into the room after a test. His personality develops instantly, and evidently, he teaches the other boy how to have an alternate personality of his own. So thus, ran and Yoru are born. To be fair, this kind of hollywood psychology is acceptable. What strikes me as odd is that the alternates not only have totally different voices than the characters themselves, but when Yoru (alternate 1) appears, he also comes sporting bandages that fly elegantly through the wind after coming out of nowhere.

This kind of overdramatic device is common through out the entire series and used mindlessly.

The characters are likable enough, but lack substance of any kind. [Characters] got my highest rating of 4. i am mainly talking about the two main characters, as the rest were not much more than empty token side characters used for the purpose of goofy antics and "developing" the plot. Despite my distain for the story, I was at least looking forward to some emotional man X man scenes, only to find that whenever one of these scenes came, they were very stereotypical.


To be blunt, half of the cast is so cliche gay that she should have just changed them into women. Suano (lead) Matsuri (the dorm leader) and Kai(the school nurse) all look unquestionably female. This might be making up for the fact that there are literally no women pictured in the show. Sukisho takes the idea of a seme and an uke to an extreme in which i have never seen before, and the romances between these feminine men and their masculine counterparts more resemble a strange sexual fantasy rather than real homosexual relationships. Adding on to this weirdness...apparently every man in the show is gay. No exceptions.

The positive points to these characters all go to the main character Sora. He doesn't take a stereotypical role in any sense. He is just an average, decent guy who happens to caught up in this strange gay fantasy land. Sunao also has his moments, and I liked that despite him being the clear submissive, he was still cheeky and didn't always act like a delicate lady flower.

The worst aspects of these series were the art and sound. If you are an art junkie, Sukisho will drive you crazy. The main complaint I hear even from Sukisho fans is that all of the characters have absolutely wild hair and are in despite need of a haircut. I can't think of a word to use better than "puffy". Most of these guys looked like they belonged in an 80's rock band rather than an anime. It was bad even by anime standards.

Beyond even that, the art was just amateurish and made far too many attempts to be cute. Topping that off with our "so feminine they are androgynous" cast and you have a recipe for disaster.

The background score reminded me a lot of a American television shows from the 1980's. It wasn't very diverse and sounded like it popped off a midi keyboard. Considering almost all anime these days has at least a decent instrumental/j music soundtrack, I would put Sukisho's background score at the bottom of the barrel.

Overall, I would recommend this series to only the most hardcore of yaoi/boys love fans...especially those who like pretty boys. For those of you looking for a series with a developed and realistic plot line, I would look further than Sukisho.

Okay Sukisho does have some faults. The strangest thing about it is the absence of any female character in the entire series, although there is no shortage of males looking like females. The plot is not particularly original and the uke REALLY needs a haircut.

But overlooking this there is a lot more positive in this series than negative. The seme/uke stereotypes are not as predictable and the story (shock horror) is actually told from the seme's perspective! The dynamics between the characters are really cute too.

Comedy wise, although some of the jokes were predictable, I still had to pause and go back because I ... was laughing so hard. The art was pretty in my opinion and I am very fussy when it comes to art, it can make or break an anime for me.

So all in all I loved it and I have already re-watched it. If you are into shonen ai/yaoi, romance or comedy, then I would recommend it.

Sukisho -

Story:

The summary may sound good, but what really lies beneath is a typical, overused plotline with no real comedy to back it up. Hey who cares? Were in it for the shoujo-ai, that itself was somewhat disappointing but enough to appease the people, however this story really lacked so much, not only failing to be remotely funny, it fails in the drama department aswell, the drama is so weak that you just want to laugh. However what really saved this anime from turning to complete boredom was Ran and Yoru (you'll see :P).

Art:

The art wasn't amazing stuff. but ... just mediocre art like most animes out there.

Sound:

The voice actors did a good job; it must've been hard being a guy and trying to keep a feminist voice... The music was okay... It played some really dramatic music where it just wasn't dramatic at all. Then again the drama really sucked all together.

Character(s):

Two names, these two people let alone saved the anime for me; Ran and Yoru, everyone else is either okay or just bothersome.

Why did I like this anime?

I really didnt like it, it was okay... There are some parts where you are just wondering, "why didnt he get up and run himself", there are some very very frustrating parts to this anime but what more can I say? Watch yourself and find out, if you catch the meaning of the quote in the later half of the series I hope you get the same reaction I did.

This is one of the few anime I have bought and I was totally satisfied with it. The story is not the best, it seems not planned at all. The artwork could been done better time to time. In other hand I like the background music (especially Matsuris) and I love the humor and the characters! I don't hate a single character, even if one of them is evil.
Sukisho made me laugh like crazy and because of the enormous enjoyment I got from watching it I give it "10" as an overall score. I was very touched in the end of the anime, it was ... all sweet! I'm not going to tell spoilers.
For me this is a masterpiece and is one of best anime I ever seen. I have watched it over and over again, I don't know how many times actually. The OST is very, very great to me too. I listened to it until I grew tired of it, and now I can sing every song.
The leight of this series is good to, not too short or too long.
I highly recommend this, especially to people who like funny animes with shounen-ai!

Have a feeling that the whole Suskisho series was shown mostly for concetrating on contradictory relations of the 2 main heroes including some fanservice (mostly for girls - some relatively intimate but not hentai scenes). What else? I remember only a lot of nice mediocre comedy and a strange confusing story of main heroes' past (what was it there for?).

I've watched it mainly due to high rates and to get acquaintanced with shounen-ai trend... But as for me Loveless is much much more touching though there is relatively little shounen-ai there and a lot of mystery and story twists.

Alright, first of all, I really enjoyed this anime, mostly the characters
But something here is bugging me and it's that the anime seems really lame compared to the original story. Im not gonna make any spoilers but here are my points

when I started watching it, it really caugh my eye. I thought it was going to be awesome but I was wrong. 6 of the 13 episodes didn't focus on the main story but in adding episodes to make it funny. I really liked Sunao so I started to search more information about him and then I discovered the novel and the game, where everything ... is more dramatic and interesting, it's not something to laugh to be honest. Again, we're talking about the anime but it still dissapoints me.

The art It's not bad but neither a masterpiece. Take in mind that this is an anime from 2004 so I think its normal all of the character look that femenine. But the animation was another thing, I didnt like it that much. Some of the movements were a bit weird.

The characters were the reason because I loved this anime. As I said, Sunao is my favorite and I liked the whole story behind him, including Ran. It's strange but in this series every character has main protagonism and thats something I really liked.

If you watched this anime and didn't enjoyed that much I recommend you to go and play the games or read about the original story, they're really good.

This is a great anime. Although it starts a little slow, but got a lot of humor in the first episodes, although episode 6 is kinda boring. Later on it gets more serious and darker, and every episode few more details about an event in the past will be shown. Every episode a few more details on the situation will be discovered, and not until the end the truth gets uncovered.

This is a story about love and hate. True love. Cause no matter what Fujimori did, how mean he was to Hashiba and made him to something terrible, Hashiba will face his worst fears ... to save him. That's what true love should be about.

Score 10. Why? Only because of the psychological part of this anime.

Art definately isn't brilliant, though the music makes it up.

Very interesting an unusual

The story plot and setting for Sukisho is, to me, very fresh. I would say that it is one of a kind. However, despite having such a interesting plot, it is not being built on. I feel that there are some parts of the story where it could still be elaborated on, so as to create a better story.

The art for Sukisho is excellent, and the characters are all very intriguing. Character developments for the main leads are done in a very smooth way, even when there are a few filter episodes. One can clearly see the process in which the main characters changed, ... in which the psychological changes are more emphasised.

The only complaint i have is that there are not enough man x man scenes in the anime. It is very shounen-ai, but not yaoi enough.

Overall, in my opinion, this is a extremely enjoyable anime, even though i had thought of dropping Sukisho a couple of times. There are a lot of suspense, comedy and, of course, love. Sukisho is the anime that has something (specifically the story plot) that i would really want every anime to have, in order to enjoy myself to the maximum...

Overall, I thought Sukisho was ok. I loved the storyline. It was more interesting than some of the other yaoi's I've seen. BUT! It could have used a bit more work! They made it VERY CLEAR who the uke's and the seme's were, but I liked that it was finally done from a seme's point of view for once (WHAT A COMPLETE SHOCKER! 8O)! I liked that the hair colors of the characters were vivid, but it kinda started reminding me of Yugioh after a while and for some reason I kept thinking of Sora kind of like Sonic, honestly. The kids were cute and ... I thought they were kinda like the mini versions of Sora and Nao and that blonde guy (I didn't really pay attention to him very much X3). It was very strange that everyone in the show was gay, and male. Not EVERYONE can be gay! And I absoulutely HATED the last episode! It was totally a killer for Sukisho! All it seemed like was some fun filler episode! They didn't have Nao and Sora do anything at all! You see all these other couples gettin' it on and then you look at them and its just like... -.-
Overall I give Sukisho a 6. The anime tried but...it just didn't quite make it into my favorites. If they polished it up a bit, then many more people would have rated it much higher than they did.

This is mostly gonna be short because I watched this way back in the day when I had to watch anime on Youtube in 3 parts! Wow, that was so long ago.

Anyways, this review is mostly from memory (I might rewatch it) but I remember liking this anime. I thought it was fun. Yes, the plot is really...out there, like if you really think about it it doesn't make such sense. But 12 year old me thought it was fun.

The 'seme' and 'uke' dynamic is played pretty straight here and while I'm pretty...over that whole thing nowadays (I'm 23) at the time it was new ... and rather interesting.

Anyways, this anime is probably a 4 or 5 but I would have to re-watch it to be sure.

I thought the story was really intersing, but this anime didn't flesh it out enough. The majority of the episodes were fillers, and just random humour, which is fine for a show, but if you're going to have a story you should not waste most of your episodes on nothingness.

I enjoyed this show, but I wouldn't watch it again, the opening song was nice, and I thought the characters were really likable, the art turned me off at first, but after a few episodes it was pretty cute.

As I said, most of the episodes, in my opinion, we're pointless to the story, the show ... introduced things, but then covered them up with random goofyness, there were multiple episodes that had nothing to do with the central story at all, and it was pretty disappointing. I think I the writer's spent more time on the story the show would've been a lot better.

I've noticed, that as I read the reviews, that a lot of people seemed to dis and look for the faults in this anime. I am still new to the yaoi anime department, but seeing that I am, I thought I should at least give my opinion on this.

As I said, I'm new to Yaoi, and this was a great way to ease me into the themes. It's not overly detailed and somewhat cute in a way. Though, this may not be a good anime for hard-core and people who like yaoi to a major, this is great for those who have just been introduced ... to the anime.

Though, I did question why there were only GUYS in this anime. I never saw one girl and obviously, in this an all boy school, everyone has strange interests (though that doesn't bug me entirely). But I did think, since it is an all boy school, strange interests are bound to happen.

The humor in the anime always had me laughing and I chuckled through-out the anime (I owuld have just laughed...but my parents would have then looked at me funny). When I first started watching, I was a tad confused in the beginning but then everyone became Chibis...I have a sorta weakness to chibis so I kinda just squealed upon seeing them.

Again, I state that to yaoi otakus, I agree that this anime may be bad to all of you, but to those girls (or boys) who are just introduced to yaoi and are just easing into likin it, it's a great anime to start.

I was looking up some decent yaoi/BL series to watch when this was suggested to me. The person who recommended this genuinely thought it was good, so I thought, why not watch it ?

The huge probem with BL/Yaoi type series is that it is generally low budget and low quality anime, with close to no plot, often bad art/animation, bad music and mediocre characters. Also, the more it gets close to something that looks like a plot, the worse it tends to become, and that's what happened with Sukisho.

***Contains unimportant spoilers***

THE PLOT

I wasn't expecting much from it to be honest. Also, note that I wanted ... to ease up on the rating because in my experience, games don't really translate well into anime series. (Just look at Togainu no Chi, DRAMAtical Murder...) But in this case, it was a confusing mess, it was trying to be something unique, but it never really came to any conclusion and kept adding elements to it, so that you don't know what it's supposed to be anymore. Oh, and of course, LOTS of plot holes, which I don't really mind too much if they aren't appearing that often. It happened a LOT during Sukisho.

Not even one "arc" had a decent conclusion. I don't know if the authors honestly believed that constantly making open ends made the show deeper or if they just didn't care enough. I didn't know how the hell they've served to advance the plot, what they even were supposed to be about or how they're interacting with each other.

A lot of scenes were very out of place. Also, this anime shows some moments without explaining what just happened. For instance, in one of the last episodes, Sora is holding a knife and is getting brainwashed, but 3 seconds later we see Sora's brother dying. It took one episode to learn that Sora's brother sacrificed himself by walking into Sora's knife, because... Okay, there's no explanation for that.

Also, in the dialogue, art etc., you sense an intend to make it sound/look very cutesy, very feminine... and it's very unnatural and cringeworthy.

I do agree however that the main characters have a dynamic that's rather refreshing (the uke doesn't act like the stereotypical uke you'd find in most series for instance), and the fact that the protagonist is for once NOT the uke is also pretty nice.

ART

I personally didn't enjoy it that much. Those who like older manga styles of art might like it, so that just comes down to personal preferences. But what really bothered me was was what it trying to be and how it tried to make some characters look "handsome" or uber-femininely "kawaii", and I cringed so hard at that. The hair of the characters threw me off, besides for a minority of characters who looked ok. The backgrounds weren't special either, just normal.

SOUND

I just finished the anime yet can't remember any soundtrack, let alone one that stood out. It was just as bland as the rest, but I didn't perceive it as being that bad either.

CHARACTERS

To be honest, even after watching the series in one go, I still couldn't remember most of the characters' names.

Now, Sora and Sunao were the least bland characters in the whole story, and even then, they were too uninteresting to care about. Yoru however, looks and acts like a 10 year-old weeaboo's OC. Ran's personnality also enters that territory at times. Most other characters were very forgettable and average as hell.

ENJOYMENT

I gave it a 2 because it's just so... boring. It was definitely a bad anime, but not the kind of bad as in "so bad it becomes funny". It was just very bland. Hell, even the rare kissing/sex/fanservice scenes weren't that entertaining. If they weren't heavily censored, they didn't spark any fujoshi desire in me (except for one scene, but even that was short-lived), and to me, that's a pretty bad sign if an anime who caters to the fujoshi demography allows itself to be half-a**ed while minimizing everything BL related, because apparently, yaoi fangirls like bad anime so it's okay. (It doesn't make it better that most Otome/Fujoshi catered animes are pretty bad as well.



TL;DR

Do not watch this if you mind the quality of your anime.
Do watch if you really like yaoi and are able to overlook bad anime.

If you want to watch a boring, very bad anime to make fun of, I'm not sure you can enjoy it that way either.

The sad thing about this show... is that I really wanted to like it. I actually rated the story quite highly, because I did find the premise to be absolutely fascinating.

Unfortunately, more than half of this series is taken up by filler. Dumb little side plots that really took away from their story. In fact, I considered dropping it about halfway through.

I am not one of those people who is automatically opposed to filler. I think it can fit into some shows really well and add to the world the writers were trying to create. But seriously? A 13 episode show does not ... have time for 6 or 7 episodes of filler!

Because of this, my enjoyment of this show was severely stunted. This is one of those shows I would love to see redone with a little more focus, because the whole alternate personality, dark past premise here was really interesting. All in all, I was very disappointed.

I loved this SO much. I loved the main characters and I thought Yoru and Ran were a great touch. It really made this anime unique for me and I loved how there was so much action, yet romance, and suspense all at the same time.
The artwork was of a typical anime and for that I give it a 10 since it's the style I like and the characters and story was a definite 10 for me as well! I don't understand why so many people rate this so low cuz some parts weren't as dramatic as they made it seem but i completely ... disagree.

Honestly you can say that for so many other animes I can name at least 5 right now that had overly dramatic parts, so get over it, it happens. I can see where people would get frustrated at some certain scenes (not going to spoil it), but those scenes had to do with what happened in their past so it was bringing back that from their childhood. Overall, I loved this story, I was obsessed with it, and would TOTALLY watch it again. I recommend it for sure, these other people are just being negative because honestly those complaints are very common and can be said about every other anime. Loved the anime, loved the story, LOVED the characters (Yoru's a babe), and loved everything about this anime. Hope this helps ^-^

Sukisho started out with potential to be deep and emotional... I was expecting some sad medical drama ?? I guess that's the best way to describe my expectations.
It took so long to get to the point; it was overly drawn out. I kept groaning my way through the silly episodes because the plot developed ever so slowly. It was silly forever, and then the plot jumped off the cliff into the darkness.
The characters were a little confusing, but probably the best part of the anime. A part of me loved the strange yaoi dystopia where women don't exist. There wasn't a lot ... of development though, it took too long to even get to know the characters.

The dissociative counterparts were a bit unrealistic, but heaps better than a lot of media about DID. It bothered me how different the voices and looks of the counterparts were though. Ran's voice made me die inside a bit every time he popped out. That alone made my give such an awful rating for sound... I guess this anime is 13 years old now, but the art was pretty bad. Early 2000's weren't exactly good years for anime, but still. Many others released around the 2005 era weren't so bad about art and sound.

Overall a good idea I guess? But poorly executed.

Story: 1/10 My first grip about this show is the story. Now Sukisho does get a story, but it gets it FIVE hours into the six you will be watching it. The story, and background comes so late into the show that I think it would be better to not have it at all.

Art: 5/10 The art is average nothing amazing, not bad. The only good thing out of the show is the fanservice. Other than that average.

Sound: 3/10 I didn't even notice it in the show at all.

Character: 2/10 Are they're characters? Yes, is there development yes? Yet when a show has ... us wait over 80% to get the story, it might as well be absent.

Enjoyment: 6/10 The art, and cheesy humor, and fanservice is enough to make my yaoi fangirl like the show.

Overall: 4/10 Because the enjoyment is good the show is slightly less than good. If you want something with shonen-ai and story this is not the show for you. If you just want fanservice this show is easily enough to satisfy you. So if you want story and shonen-ai I would go look somewhere else.

This anime piqued my interest. I watched this because of a recommendation and I'm really glad I followed it.

The anime itself is funny but there are some scenes that are quite mature I will not spoil anything just watch it.

The storyline is rather interesting and unique for me it's new, we do not get hunted everyday by some wierdo hehe.

Overall this anime is great some bad points and really not perfect but its really good to watch if just want to get your spirits up.

Sukisho was a ride from start to finish. Not necessarily a good ride, but a ride nonetheless. To compare it to a true ride (IE carnival) it would be the merry go round. Slow, boring, and tame, but if it's the last day of the carnival and you have one or two tickets left--Sukisho will make due.

TL;DR - Sukisho was a good enough anime and I would recommend it to a BL fan who's seen everything else the genre has to offer. However, to someone who likes more exciting BL anime, I wouldn't give this one a recommendation.

The story of Sukisho was definitely ... an interesting one and held some pretty good potential, but the developers didn't seemingly know how to pace it. With awkward filler and strange flashbacks, Sukisho was what I'd assume to be the "poorly made salad" of anime, tossed together with an end goal in mind but no idea how to reach that goal. It's like adding fruit to a potato salad. Both are good on their own in the eyes of some, but not necessarily good when mixed together. Also fruit was a metaphor for gay if you didn't catch on.

The art, sound, and characters were...okay I suppose. For the time that Sukisho aired, it was normal for everything to look uguu so I can't REALLY hate on it too much. The sound was okay I guess (I skipped the op and end but the OST throughout the show was enjoyable by itself).

However, there wasn't a single character in this show that I actually enjoyed. Don't get me wrong, they all started out strong and I was rooting for them each. By episode 12 I wanted them all to die horribly just so that I wouldn't have to put up with them anymore.

Overall, the show was enjoyable for a lazy break. I'd recommend watching this casually because if you try to watch this intensely you probably will get frustrated and drop the show. Watch Sukisho as background noise when you start out, (play a video game, sew, write) but keep the tab open so you can pay attention when it is necessary, but don't take it too seriously or you probably will drop the show before the mystery is revealed.