Junjou Romantica (Junjo Romantica)

High school student Misaki Takahashi returns home to see his older brother being fondled by an unknown man. Bewildered by such a sight, Misaki finds out that the stranger is actually Akihiko Usami, a popular novelist and his brother's best friend. With the two of them slowly becoming acquainted, Akihiko ends up as Misaki's private tutor. However, after stumbling upon the author's latest boys-love novel, Misaki becomes uncertain whether or not to trust Akihiko regarding his friendship with the student's brother.

Elsewhere, Hiroki Kamijou, a university teacher of classical literature and Akihiko's friend, is grieving a failed romance. While on the edge of a mental breakdown, he meets student Nowaki Kusama, who wants his help for an upcoming exam. Despite denying Nowaki's request numerous times, Hiroki eventually lends him a hand. As the two get closer, more revelations about the student are made.

Furthermore, when wealthy teenager Shinobu Takatsuki finds out that his older sister has divorced Hiroki's coworker You Miyagi, he immediately wants to date the same man—as he saved Shinobu from a robbery three years prior. Even so, You does not feel the same way and attempts to scare him off. However, the educator soon realizes that Shinobu will do anything for their destined romance.

Junjou Romantica collects three love stories, narrating every couple's romance.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Adaptation:	Junjou Romantica, Junjou Minimum
Sequel:	Junjou Romantica 2
Other:	Junjou Romantica Special
Spin-off:	Sekaiichi Hatsukoi, Sekaiichi Hatsukoi: Propose-hen
Side story:	Junjou Romantica OVA

Taniyama, Kishou
Japanese

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Staff

Kon, Chiaki

Director, Episode Director, Storyboard, Key Animation

Gouda, Hozumi

Sound Director

Yokote, Michiko

Script

Nakamura, Yoshiko

Script

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Opening Theme

"Kimi = Hana (君＝花)" by pigstar

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Ending Theme

"Baby Romantica (ベイビーロマンチカ)" by SCRIPT

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Reviews

Jan 29, 2009

12 of 12 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 4

iamjoe (All reviews)

329 people found this review helpful

Oh, an anime that certainly puts the fab back in fabulous and the gay back in yaoi.

Junjou Romantica is a yaoi anime, as anyone with eyes would know. What it is, is a well loved yaoi anime and a pretty crappy normal anime.

The storyline is plain old unbelievable. You expect me to believe that there are so many gay guys who are all inter-related, yet most don't know the rest are gay unless they had boinked them in the past or something?? Where are the women in this anime? Fine, I can chalk up with the no women thing since gay men can't see read more

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Dec 10, 2011

12 of 12 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 9

OtakuTrey (All reviews)

280 people found this review helpful

For anyone that is unsure about giving this series a chance, then you should read this to see if its right for you or not. (look for *)

IF! you switched half the guys for girls people would say this is one of the best romance anime's to date. That is how good this story, and anime are!

Okay here is a little background on me, I am a Straight male with no interest in men or for even watching a BL series, However there might be a few people out there who's Girlfriends really want to watch this so..... they FORCE you to watch this (which read more

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Jul 31, 2014

12 of 12 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 3

ihateeveryone (All reviews)

207 people found this review helpful

You want to know what really helps shape a relationship for me? An abundance of rape, sexual assault, and non-consensual acts being performed to your partner. God, what a literal pure romance that is. Thankfully, Junjou Romantica was sure to base one of its relationship entirely off of non-con and definitely wasn't afraid to add in some of that to the other relationships as well! Definitely the type of romance any gay man would dream of.

There are three different "love" stories in this anime, and all three manage to be equally as terrible as the other. For one thing, let's talk about the fact that literal sexual assault by a man 10 years older than you leading into love is not only extremely disturbing, but also completely out there. There is no moral groundpoint for the character Misaki, who is constantly abused in many ways by his newfound partner, Usami. This romance is so pure, that Usami literally shoves Misaki into a car against his will because Misaki dared to have a conversation with another man. What a healthy relationship, such a charming guy. Not to mention he doesn't let Misaki speak on the phone with said guy, and makes sure to later sexually assault the poor guy.

Seriously, what in any way is romantic or logical about this? There isn't anything healthy or consensual about the actions that Usami places on Misaki. And not only that, but it's all played as a joke. As if this kind of stuff is a humorous, cute thing that Misaki secretly wants. The romance in here is a total joke, and if you expect me, or any person with a functioning brain to take a relationship completely built off of sexual harassment seriously, then there's a good chance your morals need reevaluating.

The reason this is such a issue is both because said relationship is the main focus of the show, and because this is apparently a romance. Having your romance start and develop with borderline rape is a terrible choice, because from there on out it's extremely hard to feel anything except disgust at the events occurring. It's an unnecessary element to the relationships. Age difference aside, I wouldn't have had nearly as much of an issue with this show had it not been for all the times that Misaki was screaming "No! Let go! Stop it!" when being advanced on. It makes for a very fucked up relationship.

The other two relationships, while they didn't revolve around borderline rape, still had their major problems in it. One relationship lasted for about 3 - 4 episodes and included a timeline of about 6 years. It also included the man getting up and leaving his partner without any explanation or contact because he thought it'd make him want to come back. Again, great romance there. The last romance only lasts for about 2 episodes, and therefore had less of a chance to be completely idiotic. Though it should be noted the two characters have about 17 year age difference, which is always a plus here. It still featured the token sexual harassment that this show is known for though.

Not only that, but the stories are really choppy and broken up. The first 2 episodes focus on Romantica, episode 3 on Egoist, back to Romantica for a bit, some more of Egoist, etc. Basically it's all very choppily split up, unnecessarily so. The rapey elements obviously ruin it too, and frankly the time it takes for the characters to "fall in love", their reasons for doing so, and how they act towards their loved ones (Preventing them from being with friends, going into their house after you've known them for less than 24 hours) is so incredibly far-fetched that the romance just feels terribly pushed.

In terms of characters, you can tell how they'll be from the designs. Triangle face guys are the seme, and baby-faced boys are the uke. The seme is almost always the one performing the near-rape actions while the uke is the one begging for no more and eventually falling for these creeps. There's not too much to say about them, except for the fact that Usami is an extremely creepy harasser and that the seme in the Terrorist arc actually has some interesting traits to him regarding his past. Other than that, these characters are just here to fill the traditional seme/uke roles and either begin or resist the sexual assault.

The art reeks of terrible same face syndrome, to the point where you can identify the seme and uke just by looking at their faces. The seme's are all drawn with these very awkward looking rectangle chins and huge broad shoulders, likely to insist their dominance on the usually much younger looking uke character. All the ukes are drawn with childlike features to insist their submissiveness. The animation is very cheap-looking too, often relying on chibi faces in order to save budget. It's honestly an unimpressive looking anime.

The sound isn't all that bad frankly, just not at all fitting for this type of anime. There's usually some acoustic piece playing in the background as one of the characters is being assaulted, which is very ill fitting and and makes it feel like the show is romanticizing borderline-rape even more. It's not necessarily a memorable soundtrack, but it's decent at best, just not fitting for the gross nature of this show.

Being asked if I enjoyed this anime is the equivalent to being asked if I enjoy bashing my head against a wall for about 4 hours and would likely have the same answer to them. If you're going to portray a romance, hell, especially a homosexual romance where there's already stereotypes that all homosexuals are pedophiles and stuff, then you don't do it this way. You don't have the starting point of the relationship for a major couple be near-rape. You don't give unequal focus to the relationships and have one take place over a course of 6 years in four episodes. Oh, and you especially don't include homophobic remarks from your own gay characters in an anime. Seriously, how idiotic do you have to get to even think of doing that?

Anime that focuses on something other than straight romance can be really refreshing, but when it's done this way? You'll be left wondering if half the show you just watched was a so-called "pure romance" or a stockholm-syndrome documentary.

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Nov 11, 2008

12 of 12 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 4

Whoomp (All reviews)

61 people found this review helpful

In Junjou Romantica you get to follow 2 couples (and a potential third) with Usagi and Misaki being the one that gets the most exposure. Then there is Hiroki and Nowaki which is basically the same thing as the first couple, younger guy + older guy, but reversed positions between the sheets. If you ask me I think that just focusing on Usagi and Misaki would have been better cause the others just feelt tacked on for the sole purpose of having more bi-shounens ( or "pretty boys" if you like).

The music is nothing special, it doesn't help to add to the mood but it don't do the opposite either. However, there is some nice pieces in there but I found them to seldom be played at the right time. The opening-theme is pretty nice but this isn't 1999 so it feels kind of out of place. The VAs generally does a good job but some of them don't match their character, not a huge problem since it is always with characters that have little screen-time but still annoying.

Have you ever felt that eveyone looks very similar to you? No? Well, I guess the characters in Junjou Romantica have since they all look very alike. Except from the hair and eye color they could all be brothers from the same mother. It is quite rare that you see this kind of bland and unimaginative character design. It tries to make all the characters bi-shounens but man sometimes they failed miserably, in some scenes it looks like they have some kind of facial distortion since it sometimes doesn't fit the body at all. Otherwise the animations and characters look ok and sometimes even (intentionally) funny when they go into chibi-mode and extreme facial expression-mode.

If it is so bad then why is it so highly placed on the top-list? There are perfectly bad reasons for that. The first being the amount of sex (non graphical) there is, it is almost ridiculous and you always get the tiresome ”No, I don't wanna do it with you”-reaction from the smaller of the two gets old quickly. Sometimes the reactions are so strong that they almost looks like an attempted rape... You don't get any mentionable depth to most the characters, with the exception of Usagis childhood, but that is good in a way that you don't have to care. The only ones I really came to care about was Misaki and Usagi but the rest I could have been without.

The highlights of the show is the humor which sometimes makes fun of the show itself.

To sum the series up it is an unimaginative piece of boredom that tries to excuse that unimaginativeness with some random sex. It has some qualities but they never truly shine through. If you are a fan of boy on boy-relationships then this might be for you. Otherwise I suggest that you don't even poke this with a stick cause there will be a lot of fooling-around going on. You might have read my Legend of Duo review and thinks ”Hey, this guy clearly dislikes shounen-ai so why should I listen to him?”, well... it's not that I dislike it (I try to keep an open mind about all themes) I just haven't found a series that is very enjoyable.

Please, Studio Deen, you know better than this. You gave us Maria-sama ga Miteru on the shoujo-ai side so please give us Joseph-sama ga Miteru (or something like it) on the shounen-ai side instead and lose the redundant sex scenes in favor for some real heartfelt and meaningful brotherly love. Please.

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