I was thrown off by how much I disliked the female lead (Masuzu). She explodes onto the scene and attracts everyone's attention, typical oujou-sama style. Her character isn't too bad looking, and at this point I'm thinking, "She must be a pretty interesting character." But I was wrong. The show attempts to make her as contemptible as possible, which I don't understand the reason for. I just didn't get it. It felt like the authors WANTED the viewers to feel absolutely frustrated with how shallow and character-lacking she was. It felt like I was watching a piece of paper flopping around and interacting with other, equally floppy pieces of paper, cut-outs of characters and their images. No special quality. No uniqueness to distinguish their place and role in the show. A bland continuation of "going with the flow" and "force the situation onto the main character". The way Masuzu just forced herself onto the main character's life was incredibly irritating and unnecessary. It created a gaping hole in her character that would not be filled for all the episodes to come, no matter how good of a relationship the main character builds with her over time. Her introduction was a failure, and her reservations and desires of the main male character were empty and unsatisfactory.
A bit strange to talk about the main character after the lead female, but this is the crux of the issue. As with many harem shows, this main character is nothing more than the embodiment of what I refer to as, "personality in the gaseous form". That is, the character is so devoid of its own characteristics and decision-making abilities that it fails to impact the plot in any major way. Not solid, or even liquid, but pure gaseous. It seeps through events, almost blending completely into the background, and only when the plot needs a push does he perform "the right thing". The viewer is unable to penetrate the veil of ambiguity that is the main character, which defeats the purpose of a clearly told story. While I understand it's a harem and that anything can happen in a harem, the story does not even attempt to make the viewer even a little emotionally invested in any of the characters, or anything that's happening. The MMC is a combination of weakness and head-strong personality, the worst mix possible. I felt like throwing up whenever he played his "Because I'm righteous" card. Give me a break.
The conflicts, which would normally serve as the jumping points for emotion, plot progression, character development, and a shift in the flow of the events, are also forced and trivial. Petty. Unsubstantiated. Unreasonable. They held little meaning to me, especially when the antagonistic forces were as equally trivial as the protagonists. Or perhaps, it was simply because the main character was, again, quite weak.
Hah. I just realized who some of the characters remind me of. So like, Masuzu is probably a scaled down, much less interesting version of Chitoge, from Nisekoi, and Hime (the third harem member introduced, because that is where I stopped), is also the equivalent of a scaled down, much less interesting Rikka, from Chuunibyou. I don't know about the childhood friend.
The reason I gave it a 6 and not a 5 (as tempted as I was) was that, it is understandably difficult to flesh out every single character in a 13 episode show. The artwork wasn't too shabby. And admittedly, there were a few moments when I thought my mouth would give a ghost of a smile.
A combination of poor character development, poor characters in general, petty conflicts, and lack of motivation to care about the characters, however, all contributed to making this quite a disappointing 6-episode trial and a waste of time.
