Love Kome: We Love Rice

I came across this anime on my quest to watch the lowest rated slice of life anime here, and I don't know why it's rated so low. I had a really great time watching it and I would recommend it to anyone. Plus, the episode run time is so short you really have nothing to lose.

The show falls on a LOT of cliches, but given the absolutely absurd premise, this is actually a strength. Like, what if generic idol academy competition plot, but RICE??? I mean, canonically within the universe of this show, rice people have rice water for blood. This comes up more than ... once, this is consistent world building we're talking about. They just triple down on the rice thing and don't look back, and it had me screaming-laughing and crying-laughing more than once.

A lot of the rice puns get lost in translation, but the translators really did their best. You can kind of get the idea that it would be funnier if you spoke Japanese. Most of the humor is more visual and premise-based, though, so the pun thing isn't too bad.

Given the minimal plot, the ending (of season 1) is still genuinely sweet and ties things up nicely. Plus, the ending scene features the main characters floating in space naked with glowing sparkles to censor their private parts, which is something this anime has in common with Puella Magi Madoka Magica, one of the greatest anime of all time. Need I say more?

Actual rating 5.5/10

This show was an interesting experince, in many ways upon the surface it would appear similar to a great cooking manga/anime like Tonkatsu DJ Agetarou, Shinya Shokudo or Shokugeki no souma, and in terms of actual product it was similar to all three but in the worst way, the linking of the shorter charachter studies in this show were enough to retain one's attention but not enough to be engaging so it is almost an inverse of Shinya Shokudou, it lacks the requisite goofiness and identity through visual presentation to be as funny as Tonkatsu Dj Agetarou and it lacks the amazing presentation ... of cooking that is present in Shokugeki no souma.

BUT

The series as a whole had one other thing in common with these other series, Passion, there was a clear effort put into making this show charming above all else, it has real heart and I think that is worth as much as I have given the show

Do you love rice? Do you love boys? If yes, you'd better hand yourself in to the police. But before you do, you'd better watch Love Rice. It might make you reconsider your life choices.

Hinohikari is a boy who knows what he wants & what he wants is to be the HarveStar of the Harvest Show. There's just one problem: nobody likes rice any more, which is unfortunate enough when you're a rice-boy (not the car kind) but doubly so when it means the Kokuritsu Inaho Academy he attends is in danger of shutting down. Undeterred, Hinohikari will achieve his dream & save his school ... the only way he knows how; by joining a cross-dressing idol unit? Okay.

Rice Boys sets out to answer the ultimate question – which is better: bread or rice? After quickly ditching the women's clothes, the newly christened Love Rice (because they love rice) prepare to do musical battle against their wheaty rivals the Yeast Kings; using as many bad puns, bland songs & homoerotic moments as it takes.

In case you weren't able to tell, Love Rice is out to promote Japanese rice (white, sticky, short grains only. None of that exotic Indian stuff here) to women. Each character is named after a specific strain & some effort is made to tie their personalities with their namesake, though it's hard to tell with rice - since it's rice. Their musical performances take place in golden paddy fields & dammit if they aren't trying their hardest to be the best rice-boys they can be so the Gourmet Girls will vote for them. It's a concept silly enough that it could have been a lot of cheesey fun.

But for a concept as silly as pretty rice-boys, Love Rice for the most part plays itself frustratingly straight. Part of this is down to the utterly uninspired production, which makes almost no effort to visually accentuate the humour & often leaves the characters looking like rough drafts rather than finished articles. But even beyond that there isn't much to it. The story is for the most part bog standard, with the bland songs doing little to improve things. It take a turn for the suitably stupid when Love Rice & the Yeast Kings set aside their differences – because at the end of the day rice & wheat are both grains - to thwart a kidnapping, but it's so rushed & disjointed that the humour is lost.

When compared to other male idol or anthropomorphic pretty boy series, Love Rice hardly measures. Unlike Sekko Boys, It doesn't do nearly enough with the ridiculousness of its core concept, relying instead of repetitive agriculture puns & Sasanishiki coughing up more white fluids than Paris Hilton. It barely manages to fill its four minute episodes, even with songs & cooking tutorials padding out the runtime, whereas Miracle Train managed to build an entire regular length series out of sexy male train stations. Or they could have gone in a completely different direction & made Love Rice about actual rice. Worked for The Nameko Families.

Instead, whatever the intentions behind its creation, Love Rice just feels like a half-arsed attempt to ride the male idol & fujoshi waves by combining “attractive” male character designs with a silly gimmick that's supposed to make you think it's just a bit of fun, so who cares? It's certainly no Pillow Boys, but there are plenty of better examples of what Love Rice is trying to do, though you might get some new meal ideas from it. Unless you really love boys...I mean rice, it can be safely ignored.