Futakoi Alternative

Anime began in the late 18th century and was invented by Walt Disney. One-hundred and thirty-two years later Haruki Murakami, head of Toyota and designer of the album cover of KanYe West’s 4th sophomore album, The Barter 3, stole the Krabby Patty secret formula required to steal children from money and set up Studio Ghibli. He was soon fired by his employees, numbered six total, and was replaced by Mamoru Oshii, who went on to create FLCL, a six-episode OVA featuring David Beckham in the leading role. Oshii won seven little Oscars for his debut and was later arrested for child exploitation, where he would ... spend the remainder of his days complaining about how no one was around anymore to make the anime that he wanted to make. The anime he had in mind was Futakoi Alternative, and was originally conceived on a napkin in a coffee shop in a series of ideas which would form the basis of Pixar’s greatest hits in the years to come.

The show was made by ufotable, a studio who are very easy to hate, because they have a trademark style that shortcuts the need for consistent, high-fidelity animation. Well-known for layering every show they make in a heap of digital lighting effects and shaders, giving everything a kind of glossy, smooth sheen, giving a kind of unwholesome feeling that what you’re staring at is obscured in fog and isn’t as real as you’d like it to be. Futakoi Alternative however, comes before the digital deep-frier era, before ufotable sold their soul to the Nasuverse and decided to make Fate for the rest of their existence, or this was the narrative anyway, before they made Demon Slayer and sold out even harder.

Futakoi Alternative could be considered really bad if you were very harsh. The setting is impossible to take seriously, they’re driving motor-cycles up walls, shooting the mafia, basically all nonsense. Then the writer sits down across from you, literally – he literally came into my house, and sat down – he was taking food out of my refrigerator, he was eating yoghurt, I asked him about it, he said: “It’s rude to speak with your mouth open”. He was then explaining to me the conceit of his novel because like every terrible writer, he just couldn’t keep his mouth shut about the process of how he wrote it, because to him it was like magic, but I obviously couldn’t care less. He was explaining to me the idea behind writing Futakoi Alternative as a serious story, and he had one reason or another, I wasn’t listening, and then he started drinking milk straight out of the carton, not even opening the lid, he pulled out a machete, and lopped off the top of it, and started just guzzling it, and getting milk all over himself and the floor, and was generally just making a real nuisance of himself. I went to call the police, but he’d done something to the electricity, so I had to endure listening to him explain the plot of Futakoi Alternative, and the underlying meaning of the twins in the show. Sara apparently represents the desire to have an older sister to depend on while Soujyu represents the desire to have a younger sister to dote on. I told him he was just rehashing what was written in the introduction to SubaHibi but then he claimed that he wrote SubaHibi. At that point I didn’t really know what to believe in.

Something about Futakoi Alternative’s plot structure is very contrived in how it is set up. The happy, comical moments, the only good parts of the show, are treated as mere fluff to the supposed real meat of the story, which is this contrived and very boring slow-burning who-cares quote-unquote tragedy about these girls who are condemned to an arranged marriage to a rich heir of some made-up rich company, and this is all linked to a World War 2 criminal organization who produce squid-human immortal hybrids in an attempt to take over the world, and it takes way too much time for it to be resolved, and it tries to play to your nostalgia of the prior fun moments despite these moments existing only to evoke a sense of nostalgia later on, which makes these happy moments feel very disingenuous and insincere. To provide a similar example, it’d be that scene in Oyasumi Punpun, where all the kids and Punpun are staring up at the beautiful night sky: a moment designed explicitly to evoke nostalgia later on, something impossible to buy into because of how contrived and insincere it is from the get-go. You’re not going to want to shoot yourself after watching these scenes, but it is very easy to be indifferent to Sara and Soujyou’s struggles and not care about them bawling about Rentarou this and Rentarou that like they’re behind on their apartment payments.

So basically because of this I consider Alternative to be badly written, but I don’t mean that as an insult. There’s a certain artistry to bad writing. It takes a lot of effort and goodwill and knowledge and effort to write something mediocre. With something mediocre, you know that the effort has been put in. Mediocrity isn’t something you luck into. It’s achieved with guts, courage, hard work, and determination. A mediocre writer can look back on his mediocrity and say that at least they did something today, and yesterday, and the day before, which makes tomorrow seem better, and not so uncertain, because they can always do tomorrow what they’ve done today, which is the same mediocre drivel they’ve been churning out before. While this may seem bad, being condemned to mediocrity is not as bad as it seems. Much like dyslexia, there are far more famous people with the condition than you’d realize.

Futakoi Alternative is a surprisingly engaging show in spite of its bizarre and over-the-top story elements. From what I gather, the series is a spinoff of an anime that is based on a dating sim whose gimmick was a male lead having a harem involving several sets of twin girls attracted to him. While that would seem to make the original Futakoi anime rather forgettable and typical fare, Futakoi Alternative is a whole different beast as it takes many of the characters from the original series and goes in a completely different story direction that mashes up sci-fi action, manic comedy, and romantic drama in ... its focus on freelance detective Rentaro and his assistants, twin high school students Sara and Soju.

Before I get to the core of the series, I suppose I should explore the major element of the series that will make or break your enjoyment and that is in the form of its multiple genre mash-ups mentioned from the prior paragraph. I suppose a comparable series you could think of this to be like would be FLCL with parodies of some anime tropes, gun-action, tangling with yakuza, and a final battle with a secret society making mutant squids (seriously), though Futakoi Alternative does not get as ridiculously over-the-top as Gainax's famous title. The comedy does lead its major characters to take on a super-deformed state at points when things get ridiculous. The manic elements of the series did have their moments where they had me snickering at the lunacy of events playing out, though it did have its moments that did not click with me.

At the core of the series though, Futakoi Alternative focuses on the polyamorous love involving Rentaro, Sara, and Soju. The twins clearly have a strong amount of affection for the young man and while Rentaro does care a good deal for them, he does have his reservations for wanting to go to another level with their relationship due to a harsh past and struggling financially to support himself and the twins. Whereas many titles would try to fetishize this sort of romance, Futakoi Alternative instead chooses to seriously explore the developments of the relationship as all three are considerate of the feelings of one another and think carefully about more intimate elements of pursuing a romantic relationship, including considering intercourse. When one of the twins wind up leaving during the second half of the anime, Rentaro and the remaining twin understandably feel a hole in their lives without the other twin and come to grips with wanting her to return to their regular living routine.

With these two different sides to Futakoi Alternative, it would be easy for many titles to fall apart in quality since they can't properly balance focus on manic comedy and serious drama. But the series manages to effectively balance these story elements effectively well as it knows when to get silly and when to dial back the comedy to seriously focus on the developments in the polyamorous love between Rentaro, Sara, and Soju. Still, there are some who have been turned off by this genre mash-up in the same vain as FLCL and I can see where this may not be everybody's cup of tea if they are looking for a series more geared toward a specific genre. In addition to this, the focus on a polyamorous relationship may offend some conservative viewers if they are into more traditional male-female relationship pairings.

Overall, Futakoi Alternative made for a surprisingly engaging series with its effective mix of manic comedy and romantic drama focused on its main threesome of Rentaro, Sara, and Soju. The genre mash-up and focus on polyamorous love may not be everybody's cup of tea. But if you can look past both of these matters, you will find yourself enjoying this hidden 2000s gem.

*Please excuse my reviewing skills, this is my first. Also instead of writing super long reviews, I'll write short ones.

To be honest, I thoroughly enjoyed Futakoi Alternative.If you are reading this review right after watching 2-3 episodes and you are thinking of dropping it, then please don't. I also thought of dropping it after the first two episodes. At first, it was really strange, all the scenes were everywhere and it leaves the viewer assuming what's going on a lot. I was really confused. However, once you get into probably 4-5 episodes in, it gets better because you get used to the way Futakoi Alternative ... works things and it also kind of fixes the "scrambled" scenes. This anime certainly isn't your typical one step at a time anime, if you know what I'm referring to.
One of the most important things I look for in an anime, is the story line. The general idea of this anime is a pretty interesting one. It captivates you, making you wonder what is going to happen in the next episode. However, the way they executed the idea for the storyline is strange with...uhm...squid/human hybrids.I won't spoil anymore...
One of the big selling points of this anime are the characters. I just love the Sera and Soujyu! The writers or whoever, make you feel like you are actually Rentarou. You just can't choose either Sera or Soujyu!

This is a great anime to watch and I just wish it was longer (What a typical anime fan says). I'm sorry for the amateur review. Also, some of the things I mentioned here probably doesn't make sense to people who aren't halfway through yet.