Apr 11, 2024
It was difficult to figure out how to rate this anime. It could have been rated an 8, and it could have been rated a 2, and it would have deserved either rating wholeheartedly for different reasons. I settled on a 5, not because I thought it deserved that, but because I couldn't decide how far down or up to go.
There are spoilers to this review, because they're necessary for an honest review. They will be kept to a minimum.
(since it's my understanding that they're pretty strict about that, let me repeat: this is NOT a spoiler free review. We
...
good?)
Let's start with the good things to get them out of the way: All of the technical aspects were fine. I have no complaints. Voice acting was decent, character design was okay, sound and music were okay - nothing really to write home about, but nothing to complain about either. It wasn't great, but it wasn't awful. And these days, that's about par for the course for an anime, so that's good. It was a well produced anime.
Also, it seemed to have a rather strong message, and taken by itself, it was a rather nice message about relationships and dealing with relational trauma. There was also no egregious or unnecessary fanservice, so that was welcome.
If all of that were the only things to take into consideration, I could have scored it a lot higher.
It's the plot and the characters that were, well... troublesome is a nice word for it.
The plot was, to be frank, annoying. At its core, it made no sense. There's a "school lore" of sorts which says that there are, at any given time, seven "witches" which have their own powers, and these powers are transferred with a kiss. It was just nonsensical. The whole plot, from beginning to end, was just inscrutable. It was basically like the mangaka (or whoever) took the notion of a crack-fic and turned it into anime. By which I mean, they found the most absurd, inscrutable, and nonsensical plot point possible and sent a whole production team after it. I am still not entirely sure, after watching the whole thing, whether the whole thing was just an excuse to have high school students kissing each other in as many permutations as possible. In fact, I'm pretty sure that was the case. There were boys kissing girls, girls kissing boys, boys kissing boys, and girls kissing girls, all absolutely necessary to the plot, and it still somehow managed to feel like the plot was only there to facilitate that, oh, and there's kind of a story there too as an afterthought. Don't get me wrong, I don't think this could be classified as ecchi by any stretch, but it still managed to feel a little uncomfortable.
But even if you take the plot for what it is, that wouldn't fix the structural storytelling issues. This is an anime that doesn't know what it is, because right about in the middle, there's this massive tone shift that just ruins the whole thing. It starts out kind of lighthearted and something like a rom-com or comedy. There are some lighthearted moments, and I even laughed a few times. But somewhere around ep. 6, give or take, it decided to heck with that, and turned into a rather dark drama that had me on the edge of my seat, and not in a good way, more like in a "I hate where this is going, I want to see how it ends, but this is *painful to watch*" kind of way.
In the last couple of episodes, the plot was basically that the male main character had to kiss one of the female main characters, and some other characters were trying to prevent that from happening (I won't go into why, because I'm trying to keep spoilers to a minimum). If he had just done it without any preamble, it would have been fine. But no, he had to stand there monologuing in his head about why he thought it was a good idea, and wasted so much time just staring at her lips that the other characters had a chance to prevent it. I won't lie, I was yelling at my screen "JUST KISS HER YOU IDIOT!!!". And it's not even because I was invested, it was because I couldn't believe the level of incompetence that was playing out in front of my eyes.
And the ending itself, after all that, was amazingly disappointing. It just all... went away. It neatly resolved many of the plot points, but in such a way that I felt like I should have dropped the whole thing around ep. 6. Somehow it managed to be a perfect resolution and utterly unsatisfying in almost every way.
I think this anime would have been so much better if it hadn't pulled a bait and switch halfway through. If it had started and ended as a drama, fine. I would have at least known what to expect and probably have passed on it. If it had started and ended as a lighthearted rom-com, I probably would think a lot more highly of it, and not hate-watched the last three episodes while yelling at my screen to get ON with it! But instead, it pulled me in with a promise of one thing, and then abruptly changed tone and left me wondering what the heck I just watched.
Despite all that, I didn't rate it a "not recommended". While I personally hated this anime with the fire of a thousand suns, the point of a review is not to foist my opinions on you, the reader, and I would certainly have mixed feelings about recommending it for that reason. If you're looking for a dark drama with a side of lighthearted romp, and you're willing to not look too deeply into the plot because "thar be dragons here", and you like lots of kissing in all sorts of permutations, then you might enjoy this. But if you're looking for a good plot, good storytelling, and good characters, then maybe you should look elsewhere. I wish I did. There are very few anime I've watched to the end that make me feel like I've utterly wasted my time and caused me to actually resent it for that, and this was one of them.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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