As a concept, this is funny. A dig at harem anime and their bland-ass protagonists getting girls for no reason is satisfying to see. Plus, it's presented in an entertaining, sassy manner, embellished by the greatest antagonist in anime, bench-kun, along with our MC Jouro calling everyone a "bitchii" in his head.
It's all fun and games, but then fast forward a few episodes, and the show is doing exactly what it was making fun of in episode 1. The two girls who had confessed to liking baseball boy wake up one day and decide that, nah, Jouro's looking good now, and there's no real reason for this switch-up.
Moreover, the second aspect that Oresuki was parodying, the protagonist himself, gets thrown out the window. Because ACTUALLY, Jouro has an alter-alter ego, so deep, deep down, he's a kind, run-of-the-mill harem protagonist.
What was the point of making him an asshole then?
The occasional comedy. That's it.
This here is the entire show in a nutshell. It parodies the harem genre, but that's exactly what it is. The few jokes it makes every so often exist in a vacuum, and are only there to spice up an otherwise unapologetically trashy show. I didn't mind the comedy in this series, but Oresuki separates itself from the humor bit by bit, filling in that void with forced drama, while developing character relationships in the most ridiculous way possible. Nothing is dealt with properly, and by the end, you're left asking yourself, why? Why is Jouro amiable with the girl who purposely isolated him from his friends and ruined his reputation? Why is this girl having lunch with the guy who threatened to rape her last episode?
All this does is make every character super unlikeable. They exist to act annoying and cause conflict when the plot wills it, only for them to be rewarded for their psychotic behavior. There's a limit to the absurdity I can tolerate because "it's trashy, comedy anime, the characters don't need to make sense 24/7", but when Oresuki's humor falters, it takes away any room for excuses.
I did mention a lot already, but is any of this even a big deal? Maybe I went into this with unreasonable expectations.
To that, I say, yes! I did expect more.
What truly bothers me about Oresuki is that it had the potential to be a good, satirical rom-com with harem elements sprinkled in there for the fun of it.
The first episode laid out everything well. It even introduced Pansy, who challenges everything Jouro wants and doesn't fit his idea of an ideal girl. Pansy is our bespectacled, disheveled-looking love interest who admits to stalking Jouro, and then admits her non-mutual feelings toward him, only to get immediately shut down. As far as their initial interactions/arguments go, they were entertaining to watch together, and dare I say, they had chemistry. All Oresuki had to do for the next 12 episodes was have Jouro continue his desperate harem protagonist act, have him fail in haha funny ways because the world doesn't work like that, and develop his hate-to-love relationship with Pansy as they both realize their flaws and become better people. But no, let's disregard the fact that the story writes itself because that would be too consistent, and god forbid this anime has any form of redeemable takeaway.
