Our story follows Raku Ichijou and his search for a long-lost childhood love, at least it starts out that way. When Chitoge Kirisaki arrives on the scene tensions boil over when the pair are asked to pretend to be boyfriend and girlfriend. The childhood love, which was always at the back of Ichijo's mind, suddenly comes to the fore when he realises that the past could be catching up with him. The unwelcome coupling also hurts his dream of asking out his crush Kosaki Onodera and so we now have our main conflict.
At least it's an interesting spin on the harem situation and allows even just a little bit of extra complexity to creep into the relationships between everyone involved. The situation between the leading pair is the fodder for the show's comedy, usually revolving around the act of trying to keep up appearances in front of some rather deadly opposition. I found myself laughing often enough to get me through the lack of anything of story value actually happening.
It's story 'progression' goes something along the lines of "awkward situation" -> "misunderstanding" -> "learn something new about each other" -> "can't bring themselves to act upon this information". In other words, no progression. However it doesn't mean the show can put out its share of fun moments. Despite probably not working as a complete package, due to little being achieved on the plot front, a mix of individually strong episodes and moments mean my time was definitely not wasted. In fact, I really wanted more.
I believe the show manages to avoid ever becoming completely stale. Some of the reasons for this feel a bit cheap though. If the pace starts to drop off, the show introduces a new character and lets them take control for the next few episodes until the balance is restored. Then that cycle repeats until the series ends. It works to an extent. Each character brings a new level of drama to the situation and it brings out its share of amusing moments. Some characters are certainly more interesting than others. Chitoge tends to command the scene every time she's around and also shows the most amount of development across the 20 episodes - if we can call it development.
That unmistakeable Shaft art style is an attention grabber, and another reason why things kept feeling fresh. Brightly patterned background elements, long range establishing shots, wacky reaction faces, quick cuts, unorthodox camera angles. It definitely all has an element of charm to it. This show is very, very vivid with its colour selection and suits it well. There's little actually carried out in the animation department that is of a stand-out level, but in something less action focused that's perfectly fine. All the VA's also do a really good job and go a long way at helping to bring life to their characters.
I went in with relatively low expectations but they were surpassed. I can recommend Nisekoi to anyone who's after a couple of laughs but not for anyone who wants romance. It draws a parallel to Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun in that it's a show where the romance is simply used as a device to hand out large doses of comedy instead. If you go in with this mindset you'll get much more out of it.
