5-toubun no Hanayome ∬

5-toubun no Hanayome ∬ is basically a anime about self-entitled little girls who need a reality check and to stop acting so self-obsessed or excuse my language like hoes. Everything the main girls - Yotsuba Nakano, Miku Nakano, Nino Nakano, and all the others do is embarrassing but also rude to all the other characters around them. Unwatchable. You spend your time feeling guilty for everyone as they have to deal with these people who are so full of arrogance. I tried to continue through and hope the story would develop their character. After 4 episodes I decided I couldn't deal with these girls anymore, ... which is disappointing as the synopsis seemed so promising and the other girls showed so much promise as cute and engaging characters, but the show focuses on the worst written ones including of course the main protagonist. Very unoriginal boring plot takes place and without a good plot it becomes a dry flow of pictures with highly pitched female voices on your screen.

[!]THIS REVIEW TALKS ABOUT THE WHOLE SERIES AND NOT JUST A STANDALONE INSTALLMENT[!]

Over the years, I’ve been watching harem anime that end up being either vacant and boring or severely infuriating, two sides of the sheer negativity a harem has for the most part. The Quintessential Quintuplets (from here on out shortened to 5toubun) is the biggest offender of both sides—a series that doesn’t care about its story, its characters, pretty much its goddamn everything at this point. Not even good voice acting could save this car crash. Yes, I know you came here when I answered this question “What is the worst harem anime ... of all time?” But yes, I do believe this is possibly the worst harem anime of all time.

Before we get to me reviewing the series, let’s recap the disclaimers again:

All of these are 100% opinion-based. What you’ll see is very subjective and therefore, shouldn’t be taken seriously.

I have no problems with anyone liking the series. If you’re a fan of the series, feel free to share why you think it’s better than what I said.

Alright, let’s get to it.

What is the idea of 5toubun? Well, 5toubun is a harem series where a poor high school second-year named ‘Fuutarou Uesugi’ has a part-time job where he tutors 5 girls who happen to be quintuplets of each other. Each quintuplet has a distinct personality to each other and all of them equally hate studying. As a concept, I find this to be quite ‘eh’. It’s not too bad. It’s actually better than a lot of other premises in other harem anime. I just think that it feels a bit too dry and doesn’t feel any more engaging. But don’t worry. I’m pretty sure the show itself would make solid or even decent use of it, right? …he he …RIGHT? To which I would add, NO. Not even close to that. Now this is where the series drops really hard.

What makes this series such a big fail is the scriptwriting. The dialogue is downright atrocious. It’s either dry and monotone or chaotic and out of place, and I don’t mean the latter in ways that would make the show mindlessly enjoyable. You got interactions between Fuutarou and any of the quints with discussions that aren’t very special. They’re just topics that feel very shallow. Hell, the characters aren’t even the best at tackling them. They just talk back and forth to each other about random things randomly. It gets old really quickly to be honest. Another massive issue is how there are a lot (not all but a lot) of tropes around. I don’t necessarily mind seeing a handful of tropes in any show but the series is completely littered with stale harem tropes to the point where it doesn’t feel realistic in the slightest. You also got the so-called “comedy”. As mentioned, it’s not even funny on the surface. It’s a massive headache to sit through. It’s all over the place.

If the scriptwriting is dog water then so is the cast of characters. What we have here is Ichika, the teasing actress, Nino, the tsundere, Miku, the quiet girl, Yotsuba, the energetic girl, and lastly, the serious and gluttonous Itsuki. Are they distinct from each other in terms of character basics? Yes. Are they anything to write home about as actual characters? I’m afraid not. Literally far from that. I don’t know if I could call them “characters”. They don’t even have ‘some’ moments that made them stand out one bit. The “female cast” of 5toubun is a bunch of annoying and boring goblins who would overblow their character quirks instead of having any decent development whatsoever. Though for the annoying part, Miku is an exception because she’s a little more of a quiet girl, as the series states that out. She’s not really annoying to sit through. But even she’s a living archetype for the whole series. It’s just that she stood out from the other quints a little bit just because she doesn’t show as many expressions as the others.

The others can suffer from whip spanking. Itsuki is a crybaby, and I don’t mean a good crybaby, an insufferable one. She straight up takes almost everything too seriously and it gets head-scratching. Yotsuba is just the happy-to-go-lucky girl who hypes herself every time she’s on screen. Nino is a classic annoying tsundere who’s abusive for little-to-no reason regardless of conflicts and relations. But no one, NO ONE is as punchable as Ichika. She’s not only extremely annoying, but she’s also unreasonably manipulative. Nino is also manipulative but the manipulativeness from Ichika is a lot worse. How she “teases” Fuutarou isn’t enjoyable or cute. It’s incredibly toxic. That’s like punching a kid over a LEGO figure and calling it “teasing” for a living. So yeah, those are the quints. They are living mannequins with quirks that don’t even help their characterization at all.

Oh, wait! We can’t (or perhaps we can) forget the protagonist of the series, Fuutarou, the man who tutors all 5 girls. He is undoubtedly the most boring organism ever. Kirito and Tanjiro are well-written and inspiring characters compared to that milkless pawn. Now you would think that he would carry the series since the girls are a pile of nothingness, right? No, he’s literally just there. Hell, I forgot what his sole purpose of the show was. What does he do again? Oh, that’s right. To tutor the 5 girls. How interesting is this? As far as how the show presents, as interesting as toilet paper. Besides that gimmick, there’s just nothing special about him. Most of the time, his interactions with the quints are just boring and forgettable. It’s like reading a bunch of chores to deal with in an essay format. If you are as boring, if not more boring than Fuutarou then I am deeply sorry that happens…

Btw, if you’re wondering what my ranking on the quints is, here’s what it looks like:
Miku > Itsuki > Yotsuba > Nino > Ichika

All of them suck-ass either way.

Okay! Enough of the shitshow of the story and characters. Let’s move on to the miscellaneous elements. Artstyle is okay but is rather generic. Didn’t like the music in the series whatsoever. I guess the opening is fine-ish, but I don’t know, I couldn’t listen to any of the tracks one bit outside of watching the show. The Japanese voice acting is good. Not a fan of the English voice acting but Nino’s dub voice is kinda spot-on personally.

And that does it. So how do you make a good harem? By at least making character growth and interactions more intriguing while not going too hard on any of them. 5toubun can’t achieve any of that. It just makes the goddamn everything force. Now I actually don’t mind the first few episodes. They’re not special or anything but they’re not offensive to the series either. But by the time the show progresses, the whole presentation turns into a dry and outdated sponge. It’s not interesting and it’s not even entertaining. It’s just a massive chore to sit through. Despite my negative feelings towards this show, again, I have zero problems with anyone liking/enjoying the series. The girls do look admittedly cute. Thanks for reading.

I normally make a general statement that serves as an introduction in the reviews I make, as a means to situate the anime in its general context. But today I won't do that, because I'm mad. And it's not the kind of mad a harem anime brings when your favorite girl doesn't win MC-kun's heart. It's the kind of mad where a series you've been invested in, that had a very good running, starts to nosedive in a single episode. This is Gou-toubun no Hanayome, or the Quintessential Quintuplets and the downfall of what could have been an upper tier harem anime. Of course, I ... will not spoil this season, or else there's no point reading all of this.

If you don't remember and need a little refresher about season 1, it was mostly dedicated to the set up of the relationship between Futarou, our main character and the quintuplets, covering their meeting and giving us a glimpse of each sister's personalities so you can pick your favorite horse and hope to win the race,and also was nice enough to give Miku a head start, which she desperately needed judging by season 2.

The second season gave us something similar, getting deeper into the sisters' relationship between themselves and with Futarou and giving us a glance into their psyche going into the competition, because it is, what I consider a competitive harem. More about that after I talk general structure more.

Of course, this is harem, not romcom (nevermind, it's also romcom) and so the relationships progress a bit going into the story and our 4 sisters inch closer to the main character (What do you mean quintuplet means 5? Who the fuck is Itsuki?) and the race becomes all the more tense, as everything is fair game now. Everyone gets their moment with our MC and then episode 12 hits, I will talk about it later, because boy am I angered.

The quintuplets? Well they don't stray from their characters much (at least not all of them do) so much as they evolve beyond a simple one line characterization in the face of love so feel free to keep hyping your favorite girl. Although, I will say one thing, this season opened my eyes to how great of a waifu Yotsuba is and it may be one of my favorite points within this season.

So, as I've now coined this term, what is a competitive harem? Well, call me wrong as much as you want but I personally see harem as the combination of 2 major types: casual and competitive harem.

A casual harem takes the harem path throughout, meaning that there is no bad choice with your girl and she will end up with the main characters, all my favorite harem anime are casual harems, such as Highschool DxD, Trinity Seven or Monster Musume, and that's definitely not because they're all ecchi. The appeal of a casual harem is to not waste time on competition but rather build each individual romance, advance in a plot or even do both.

As for competitive harems, which are larger in both anime and hentai (despite the let's all fuck together twist that we all know and love) and involve the main character choosing one girl and sticking with her, and the harem is a key story point. Despite having the quantity, I don't remember enjoying any of those, probably because of how controversial they end up being, as no matter who the author chooses, those who picked someone else will be mad at them and compromising will make the author look like a coward.

A little mention about the artstyle because I really like how expressive the girls' eyes looked, how whenever they feel a negative emotion, their eyes will have those black lines drawn through the pupils, I don't know it just felt very real and that was a very nice touch, great job to the one who came up with that because I think it's the first anime that did this.

Now, if you want to see how much episode 12 was a train wreck for yourself, just know that I would have given this season a 1, if not for how much I respect non generic main characters and leave, it will get spoilery.


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WHAT?!!!!!?!



THE?!?!!!!!




EVERLOVING?!!!!!?!!??!!!





SON OF A CRIPPLED AFGHAN WHORE!!!!!!?!?!???




WAS THIS SHIT?!!!!!!!!?




MIKU THREW, ICHIKA THREW, ITSUKI IS DEAD IN THE RACE AND SOMEHOW NINO STILL BELIEVES SHE HAS COMPETITION. I CAME FOR A HAREM, NOT A SHITTY LOVE TRIANGLE. JUST ANNOUNCE THE WINNER ALREADY AND END IT! THERE WAS NO REASON TO GET THIS SEASON TO CONTINUE EVEN FOR ONE MORE SECOND. AND I HEAR THERE'S A WHOLE NEW SEASON ANNOUNCED. WHAT EVEN IS THE POINT, JUST MAKE AN OVA AND CALL IT. STOP KILLING THIS DEAD ANIME EVEN FURTHER.

I KNOW THIS ANIME CAN STILL BE SALVAGED BUT THE AUTHOR NEEDS TO STOP WRITING WITH HIS ASS AND PULL OUT AN ABSOLUTELY GODLY ENDING FOR THIS SHOW TO BE ANYTHING BEYOND FLAMING HOT GARBAGE THAT WOULD MAKE A'Y ARSONIST DEPRESSED BECAUSE OF HOW HARD SOMEONE MANAGED TO TURN SOMETHING INTO A BURNING WRECK. FUCK QQ, FUCK HAREM, AND FUCK TEENAGE GIRLS. I'M DONE WITH THIS ANIME, I NEED TO WATCH SOMETHING GOOD BEFORE I RIP MY EYES OUT WITH A PEN

Quintessential Quintuplets more like Quintessential Trash

This anime is bland, boring and forgettable. On and on the mc is in a "will they won't they" plot, with 5 other cardboard cutouts as "characters" that can be summed up in my opinion as simple archetypes.

The show doesn't even really know what character to spend time on resulting in a mess plot-wise. The mc's backstory is also quite generic and doesn't really inspire much interest to care for him. Quintessential Quintuplets offers nothing in terms of development with the cast, opting for using them just as obstacles for progression with the basic setup. This anime serves as ... nothing more than a harem fantasy showcase.

The art style and sound design are okay but nothing special that can make it stand out. Overall this show was terrible and I would not recommend wasting time watching it.

1/10

I wish I could un-see episode 12.

As for many other similar anime, the ending ruined all: It started kind of slow, looked interesting after the first few episodes, and up to ep. 11 was perfectly fine, even if not anything spectacular.

I didn't like season 1, where almost nothing happened, but I found the second season much better, and was really looking forward to a real ending.

I didn't read the manga before, because spoilers are already everywhere, and I knew how it was going to end, but I didn't want to be disappointed too soon, I hoped they could come to some kind of conclusion.

I really ... loved some episodes, particularly when Yotsuba got more screen time. She is an interesting character and I always thought she deserved more attention, but most of the story is about sisters 1, 2 and 3. Itsuki is not even worth mentioning, and they could do without her.

I think the show really reaches its final stage during the vacation arc (scrambled eggs), and I see that also most manga fans consider that the point where quality starts heading south. After that there is still some sparkle left, some unresolved tension, but nothing that can really save the story from being dragged along aimlessly.

So at the end, episode 12 is just a big bluff, backtracking on the progress already made, all soaked in denial: Miku gets her chance, but hey, we need a plot twist at the expense of consistency, so she has to backstab the whole story, deny her own feelings, and add some confusion. Ichika has been playing dirty the whole time, but at the end "it was all a lie", because of whatever reason she would never care to explain anyway. Futaro just walks away instead of asking for an explanation.

Yes, it's family and sisters' love, or whatever else, but it felt so close to a proper ending and then the ending is pulled away with brute force.

I've read the manga and I don't feel the need for a season 3, nothing meaningful is going to happen anyway.

This is just for all the hornsters out there, on the edge of their seats just getting so close then getting clapped and instantly going soft. This is the effect this had on me throughout, we all knew who the best character was (Miku), she was perfect in every way and we were all waiting for the moment she finally did something, but this is exactly what this anime is. I realized that in this whole anime nothing ever happened. Basically, they found out and told each other they are crazy bout futaro, ngl he's a bit of a chad, yet they do nothing it ... ends with them always being like "Yes, I love you", then all like "Sike fuck you, I was talking bout my sisters with the massive badoonks". That's pretty much the whole story, I have no clue if more seasons are coming and I don't really want to watch it, this is like bunny girl senpai but they at least kissed him or hugged him at least once, though the story isn't as good as bunny girl it's still more enjoyable than that garbage. It was just always round-a-bout and that's what I really hate about animes, they need an endpoint. I know they want to make more money and produce more trash but we need some closure ya know? I find gay porn more exciting than this and I'm sick of getting led onto nothing, maybe this is hinting at me needing to get a life but we all know that ain't never gonna happen. (srry for bad grammar)