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9 people found this review helpful
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9 of 13 episodes seen
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_Futakoi Alternative_ pairs two plots: a screwball action-comedy (a loser detective and his cute assistants saving the world from a Nazi-zaibatsu secret society of squid) and the sort of tragic dating-sim story Key made famous (two twins fall in love with a detective before a forced-marriage tears the trio apart); the abrupt switches between the parallel plots (crudely brought together at the end) account for its reputation of mood-swings.
I really wanted to like this show: it has claymation eyecatches and EDs! How can any anime which uses claymation be bad? And it quotes _His and Her Circumstances_, the last episodes heavily homages _End of Evangelion_ & _Castle of Cagliostro_, there are clever touches like Rentaro's hair gradually growing and looking more like his fathers, there's interesting background artwork, the cinematography is often great and felt like I was watching a film or at least a much better show, the twin characters are much better than one might expect and genuinely likable (not something VN adaptations always manage). After watching the first episode, which was a very fun action-comedy episode (think shows like _Excel Saga_), I thought that all it had to do was keep that up and FA would rank as an unjustly forgotten show.
But there are too many drawbacks. Character design is a bit formulaic. The romance plot is slow and mopey, with endless foreshadowing. Some episodes make no sense, like the one with the twin teachers (what on earth was that about). There's definite fetishization of being a twin, and undertones of twincest. It gets worse when the foreshadowing materializes, as Rentaro keeps asking himself whether having sex with both of the twins before one left would have been a solution, which is a view of sex and virginity that is... more than a little problematic. The plot twist is epicly bad; it's the forced-marriage trope except the man forcing the marriage doesn't care which *completely defeats the point and destroys any pathos* because even if the premise (a will) were granted, they could simply do a sham marriage, not 'leave the man they love and cut off ties forever'. The action plot may be worse; at first I thought it was supposed to be some sort of hyper-dramatic fantasy rendering of some minor detective incidents because there was no overlap between the two plots and the world-building seemed competent, but then I realized no, it was serious, the strange super-powered squid was actually the action plot and then the plots *merge* upon ludicrous fiat. The problem is that the realistic romance plot seriously stumbled, and then was compromised further by connecting to the action plot, which is ultimately not dynamic or funny enough to work: protagonists hopping in a biplane to Germany is not cool, it is stupid. (This is the problem with Rule of Cool: are events or characters or items cool or funny enough to excuse how stupid/unrealistic they are? If it is, you get successes like _Hellsing_ or _Kill La Kill_ or _Tengen Toppen Gurren Lagann_; if it isn't...)
I really wanted to like this show: it has claymation eyecatches and EDs! How can any anime which uses claymation be bad? And it quotes _His and Her Circumstances_, the last episodes heavily homages _End of Evangelion_ & _Castle of Cagliostro_, there are clever touches like Rentaro's hair gradually growing and looking more like his fathers, there's interesting background artwork, the cinematography is often great and felt like I was watching a film or at least a much better show, the twin characters are much better than one might expect and genuinely likable (not something VN adaptations always manage). After watching the first episode, which was a very fun action-comedy episode (think shows like _Excel Saga_), I thought that all it had to do was keep that up and FA would rank as an unjustly forgotten show.
But there are too many drawbacks. Character design is a bit formulaic. The romance plot is slow and mopey, with endless foreshadowing. Some episodes make no sense, like the one with the twin teachers (what on earth was that about). There's definite fetishization of being a twin, and undertones of twincest. It gets worse when the foreshadowing materializes, as Rentaro keeps asking himself whether having sex with both of the twins before one left would have been a solution, which is a view of sex and virginity that is... more than a little problematic. The plot twist is epicly bad; it's the forced-marriage trope except the man forcing the marriage doesn't care which *completely defeats the point and destroys any pathos* because even if the premise (a will) were granted, they could simply do a sham marriage, not 'leave the man they love and cut off ties forever'. The action plot may be worse; at first I thought it was supposed to be some sort of hyper-dramatic fantasy rendering of some minor detective incidents because there was no overlap between the two plots and the world-building seemed competent, but then I realized no, it was serious, the strange super-powered squid was actually the action plot and then the plots *merge* upon ludicrous fiat. The problem is that the realistic romance plot seriously stumbled, and then was compromised further by connecting to the action plot, which is ultimately not dynamic or funny enough to work: protagonists hopping in a biplane to Germany is not cool, it is stupid. (This is the problem with Rule of Cool: are events or characters or items cool or funny enough to excuse how stupid/unrealistic they are? If it is, you get successes like _Hellsing_ or _Kill La Kill_ or _Tengen Toppen Gurren Lagann_; if it isn't...)