Kakkou no Iinazuke

Sigh… Alright, where do we even begin with this one? First of all, if you actually finished all 24 episodes of this dumpster fire, like I did, I applaud your dedication, but sometimes I really do question the decisions I make, such as continuing to watch this week after week. Studious male harem protagonists have been somewhat of a repeating character archetype, like Futaro Uesugi from The Quintessential Quintuplets, or Nariyuki Yuiga, from We Never Learn. I am convinced however, that Umino Nagi is one of the worst harem protagonists that I have seen. He’s literally Kazuya, but gets good grades in school. He’s indecisive, ... and rather dumb for a studious kid. I felt like the author of the manga just gave up on keeping the source material at least at a decent quality, because the anime just stopped trying to be good as it went along. Just like the anime, you’ll also probably find that this review you’re reading will also drop in quality as it goes along, who knows?

My grading criteria: Story: /25 Art: /10 Music: /10 Characters: /20 Enjoyment /15 Thematic Execution /20

STORY: 5.5/25

I’m not even going to question the whole swapped at birth thing, it’s animanga, and animanga does these stupid things, and we know this. Perhaps it’s just easier to turn your brain off and just appreciate the harem anime as it is, but it’s quite an infuriating show to watch. So, we can as usual, assume that every girl likes Nagi, even his little sister, and that’s to be expected. What angers me is why the girls try to play wingwoman for another girl when they clearly like Nagi in the first place? Guess romance is weird like that. The pacing is honestly slower than I imagined, especially in the second cour, where there were cliffhangers galore. Sure, there were some well done moments, but for the most part, it just wasn’t very well written or entertaining.

ART: 7.7/10

The animation is fine. It’s colourful, quite a good job honestly. The character designs are quite decent.

MUSIC: 8.3/10

I will say I enjoyed both OPs and both EDs, they’re honestly one of the highlights of this entire show.

CHARACTERS: 5.5/20

I’ve already mentioned my disdain for Umino, so let’s talk about the girls in the story. First, there’s Erika, an “Instagram Influencer”, who lived in a rich household, and once she moved out to live with Nagi, she didn’t know how to do many things, and found a lot of mundane activities very new. She’s pretty inoffensive for the most part to watch, but her feelings for Umino were rather muddled. Then there’s Hiro, who was probably my favourite character, since it seemed like she might have a little bit of a good backstory, but her character writing was rather inconsistent. Sometimes she’s extremely kind, but sometimes she can come across as a bit overbearing and overly annoying as a character. Lastly, ooh boy, there’s Sachi. Why is she even in this harem? There was no need honestly, and she didn’t even have much of a role to play. Guess she made this whole show a bit more trashy.

ENJOYMENT: 3.5/15

I admit, there was a bit of cheap enjoyment to be had, and there were a couple very solid episodes, but most of it was a snoozefest.

THEMATIC EXECUTION: 4.5/20

The themes were rather muddled, honestly. What were we trying to do here? Figure out why Nagi and Erika were separated at birth? Just have a slice of life harem? This show is so lost, and the directions they took in the second cour really lost me as well, as any sign of writing quality went completely awol.

OVERALL: 35/100

This show was a mess, and it’s probably not going to end anytime soon, at least in the manga. I’d compare this show to a lost, misguided child. Someone, please steer this back onto a road of at least passable writing quality, please? Well, to be fair, I wouldn’t really care either way anyway…

Episode 1 is promising, from 2-9 is ok, episode 10 there's a bomb drop but after that it does nowhere and they never follow the story after that. The ending never tied all the lose endings and we just disappointing, too bad because until the final episode it was a 7 but after that ending is just a strong 5.
It doesn't even give you that trill of "ok now I need to read the manga to see where this is going" its just a disappointment after the final episode.
Honestly not worth the 6 months invested in it and not recommended.

Rom-coms have been dozens aplenty since the AniManga industry's early days, with most of the memorable classics (e.g. School Rumble, Ouran High School Host Club, Lovely★Complex to name a few) to modern-day juggernauts (e.g. Hataraku Maou-sama!, OreGairu, SaeKano, Date A Live, NiseKoi) making the scene yearly with no signs of the genre slowing down and becoming one of the most popular genres for just about any AniManga fan. Yet, for all of what the rom-com genre has to offer, there have been more bad nuts also appearing (Masamune-kun no Revenge, KanoKari) to fuel the fire for distastes. And most particularly for one mangaka by the ... name of Miki Yoshikawa, her fame that came from the rom-com that's the much beloved Yamada-kun to 7-nin no Majo a.k.a Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches, I'm left baffling at how one of her most recent works that is Kakkou no Iinazuke a.k.a A Couple of Cuckoos literally turned into a NiseKoi that's gone too far and being dragged on to the point of being unsalvageable.

But first, an educational lesson about cuckoos. Cuckoos are brood parasites, which means they have the tendency to find a nest from another species of bird that already has eggs in it, remove the other bird's eggs and lay their own there, letting the other bird species raise their young. In this way, the cuckoos trick the other birds into keeping the cuckoo eggs warm and caring for the young cuckoos. This is more exasperated in the West, particularly Germany that coins this term: Kuckuckskind a.k.a Cuckoo's child, meaning a child whose father is not his biological father, because the mother fathered it with another man and left the child and his social father in the belief that they were related by blood. This colloquially pejorative term as a cuckoo child includes a criticism of the mother who subordinates a child conceived with another man to her (spouse) partner; this designation may be perceived as stigmatizing by the child concerned.

And this is exactly what Miki Yoshikawa had in mind when she wrapped up Yamada-kun to 7-nin no Majo back in 2017 and was just floating around releasing One-shots a.k.a standalone chapters. And of the 3 one-shots stories released in 2019, Kakkou no Iinazuke was the one that was well received enough to get serialized the year after. The story (or literary plot device rather) about babies accidentally switched at birth, only for them to be taken care of by the other family, until they've each grown up to tell them the truth that their biological parents were someone else. This is the case for Nagi Umino and Erika Amano, a boy and a girl fatefully picked up by the other's family and raised like their very own, until their sweet 17th birthday that the news is broke to them that despite being cuckoo children, they are forced to be in an arranged marriage (which in these days in Japan has dropped significantly and doesn't happen very much anymore). And almost immediately, both Nagi and Erika vehemently refused to this plan, but it's not like their parents are willing to give up either. With such a case like this, it's a "do or die" situation to proceed the relationship as a "tryout" with both Nagi and Erika being the wiser to see where it would go.

The characters in Kakkou no Iinazuke, believe it or not, goes farther than just the NiseKoi situation of finding which girl holds the key to the MC's pendant and then calling it a day to declare the supposed girl the key to his heart as well. Starting off with Nagi, his biological Umino family is a family of the rich, with his father being a hotel tycoon, but thanks to the mix-up he was living a frugal life with the other family and being a close-knit son. In school, he the most stellar person always acclaiming to be that No. 1 spot that he is constantly losing the spot out to one such girl that he also has a crush on. In essence, Nagi has 3 things to worry about: marriage, school and family, and he does not have 3 clones to help him negotiate through troubled waters, because there is a girl each behind each of those situations that he has to balance with as well. I don't think I need to say this, but it's an intertwining web of perchances, misunderstandings and emotions that'll put Nagi on a stand to choose which girl is right for him.

On the marriage side, there is the already aforementioned Erika Amano, whom she has distinguished herself as a popular social media celebrity and going to a girls' school, which has a strict non-tolerance of relationships. Both her and Nagi met out of a mere coincidence when she was trying to take videos that put her safety in peril, and Nagi assumed that she was in danger if she put herself that way to get some views (you know how this all goes). That mere coincidence hit the two off, until they were called forth for the aforementioned marriage arrangement, and making the matter worse, Erika was forced to transfer to Nagi's school upon the confirmation that she was hanging out with him. She would be what you call a spoiled brat, thanks to the mix-up that allowed her to live a high life, and initially against Nagi, the two being already living in 2 separate conditions (rich vs. poor) has them bickering like birds from both families agreeing to place them both in a commune house to stimulate conditions living together (like as if they're married already). But overtime, she has both softened and hardened her stand towards Nagi, with moves that slowly inch that Nagi would be her desired fiance to come.

On the school side, you have Hiro Segawa, the consistent No. 1 student in Nagi's grade, and the girl whom Nagi wants to beat her in the literacy department just so that he could confess to her. Other than her family's job in a temple and working as a miko, she is the definition of a guilt-trip character, egging people on so that they could reach to that spot, only to tell them that "Oops, I didn't mean it! It's just meant for my entertainment to play and toy with your feelings, oopsies *tongue out*". And this is her relationship with Nagi, with the latter being forced to be better than her, only to know that she's engaged as well, but who knows if that is even true in the first place. All she does is guilt-trip over Nagi to lead him to believe that if they weren't "engaged" in the first place, their relationship could've been so much more than just school rivals.

On the family side, Nagi isn't the only child in the Umino family. There is also Sachi, but based on her family name, she is in fact Erika's biological sister and stands in Nagi's family as the adoptive daughter. Sachi is the epitome of every family's rebellious kid, one who's unable to keep herself in one place, whether will it be following the family or being overly dependent on Nagi which arises on her brocon personality. Being away from Nagi feels tough for the kin who is seeing her brother already engaged with some other girl, and the best way to be close to him is to run away from home and live together with them? That sounds like some shenanigans move right there, and I guess the semblance of the brocon trait also helps her be aware of what's he doing also. But then again, we've seen so much brocon and siscon stuff in other shows, and when Sachi herself realizes that she is in conflict with treating Nagi either like a brother or a potential lover, that's where she begins to have dangerous feelings, which also pits herself in the direct line of fire against both her older sister Erika and schoolmate rival Hiro.

I'm not surprised that chief director Hiroaki Akagi is handling this alongside Yoshiyuki Shirahata here, at least I can trust the former because he has directed the Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san series and others at Shin-Ei Animation, he's almost like a respectable in-house director who knows his talents well. The only exception is Yoshiyuki Shirahata, and this is his debut directorial work here, so at least for his first rondo, give or take, he still has a lot to learn. That being said, to air 2 consecutive cours in a row from Spring to Summer is already a risk given inconsistent production values (even more because of the studio collab with SynergySP), but I'm legit surprised that it has managed to keep at a fairly consistent level, and rare chances for me to spot any lackluster values in its long run. At the very least, its entertaining to a certain degree.

The choice of OST was a little mixed, sadly. The 1st Cour's combination with Kiyoe Yoshioka (vocalist of the Japanese duo Ikimonogakari) and Sangatsu no Phantasia was a perfect introduction with striking visuals and seemingly the best efforts done out from both the OP and ED in terms of style and semblance of the song's narrations, it's almost an instant great start and finish to Spring's episode runs. But when it comes towards the 2nd Cour, I get that they were trying to go for the playful affair with sumika and Eir Aoi's song combination, but it just seemed so boring in comparison to the strong game set by the 1st half, I'm like: "Heck it, just let it finish already." Other than that, it was just decent on an impressive start, only to dip to a somewhat mediocre end.

When it all comes down to it, Kakkou no Iinazuke a.k.a A Couple of Cuckoos needn't be this elaborate in its rom-com setting, but when you have something like a cuckoo bird business running around, it's gonna get messy. And since this is still an ongoing manga, like KanoKari, it has to pad on for God knows how long this love quadrangle affair needs to be resolved, and that's the sad life of a rom-com that doesn't have the luxury of knowing when it would end, except by the authors themselves. I was hoping to read the manga before the anime came out, but the adverse came true, and my gut instinct was correct. It's definitely a mid-tier series when it comes to rom-coms, though it has its decent moments as well. As for the choice whether to delve in the anime or the manga, I would suggest the anime first then the manga, but it goes without saying this: be prepared for endless padding.