Lovely Complex
Review By: John Fragglepuss Evans
Lovely Complex shows how complicated love can be for kids. There are heartfelt moments, but there are also heart-breaking times. Distorted facial expressions and imaginative situations are used to express how these poor high schoolers feel at times. For example, during one heart breaking moment, a battleship appears with the person’s face on it, and a cannonball is fired to sink the ship. This is the type of comedy used throughout the anime, so if that is the type that you enjoy, check it out.
Fun for high school/slice of life/romance fans.
You might enjoy this if: You want a love story that takes the scenic route. Will they date each other and end up together? Who knows…
You might not like it if: You want a storyline that constantly progresses. They could have completed the season in 12 episodes instead of 24.
Note to the Viewer: Be prepared for Risa to be all over the place emotionally.
EXPANDED REVIEW:
SLC Anime reviewed Lovely Complex this month. There was a general consensus that it was a good anime with more pros than cons.
It was mentioned by several people that it is an enjoyable slice of life anime, even for those people that do not particularly enjoy slice of life. The characters were believable. The way that they acted made sense for kids in high school. There was distorted faces when someone would go right or wrong, or when a character was feeling particularly emotional. The way their faces would distort made sense for the situations and helped portray how they really felt. The characters were cute and sweet, while they still had there flaws. This helped make them more believable as well.
The anime focuses a lot on the height difference of the main short guy and tall girl, and the tall girls in the SLC Anime group said that they could relate to that feeling of towering over a boy in high school and how rough that could be to the high school mentality.
Another positive to the anime’s credit is how they break from Japanese norms for anime by having a transgender character that is accepted as an actual character instead of being a comedic side character that gets made fun of.
The last positive note was how Lovely Complex struck a chord with one of the SLC Anime group members because they mentioned how the relationship of the two main characters in the anime reminded them of their high school relationship with their now-wife. One of them was chasing the other throughout high school while the other had no idea, and then they ended up together at the end of high school. I know, very sweet story indeed.
The down side to Lovely Complex was the slow progression of the storyline. There were several episodes that would pass and feel like filler episodes. There were several episodes that felt like the same episode, only set in a different location. There were several episodes where Risa would confess her love to Otani, and then in the next episode it would be like the confession never happened. It felt like they could have made this 24 episode anime in 12 episodes.
Overall, SLC Anime enjoyed and approved of Lovely Complex.
