Seriously, what's up with adaptations from Kodansha's Nakayoshi Shoujo-centric magazine that just end up being failures one after another? If anything, the magazine now hosting just the solid kids' franchise of Pretty Cure just tells of the sad story of the current state of works that came from one of the best-selling manga magazines. If the reboot of Tokyo Mew Mew didn't quite pander to the new fans, and its prolific author, Ema Touyama, also didn't work out with Vampire Dormitory (which gave us the rather horrible Spring 2024 anime), what reason does it have to stand that the newest and most current serialization of mangaka Haruka Mitsui's Douse, Koishite Shimaunda a.k.a Anyway, I'm Falling in Love with You will ever hope to achieve some recognition for trying to be different but still being just as Shoujo-trash-astic as ever?
For reference (and as context for those living in the West who are not in the know), there was a live-action movie that went by the title of "You Are the Apple of My Eye" (那些年，我們一起追的女孩, lit. 'The Girl We Chased Together in Those Years'), a coming-of-age romance film based on the semi-autobiographical novel of the same name by Taiwanese novelist Giddens Ko, that was released way back in 2011. And at the time, the film earned both fame and recognition for its "larky retro coming-of-age confection that injects a fresh, tart edge to the genre with a constantly self-mocking boys' angle (an alternative to Asian teen movies that tend to be syrupy)" that broke box office records in Asia (mainly Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore). And upon knowing that Haruka Mitsui took this idea and updated it to the standards of the modern COVID pandemic outbreak, I was feeling skeptical of how she would make a story between a girl and her 4 handsome Ikemen childhood friends, living in such a tight lockdown that's a whole different experience of their days in high school altogether, only to preempt it as a flashback between then and 10 years from now.
In a sense, you could catch the fever that the author herself is trying to mask, but at the same time, make the underlying premise a fake-out, only warranting when COVID conditions are serious enough to justify cancelling events for the group of female MCs Mizuho Nishino and her childhood friends Kizuki Hazawa, Shin Kashiwagi, Airu Izumi, and Shugo Hoshikawa. These 5 young adults are having the best time of their lives being close to one another and dubbed the Koigahama Highlands boys alongside their only flower, who aspires to be a manga illustrator when she grows up. Surely nothing wrong will go between them, right? Other than the obvious implications of the pandemic limiting their choices when it comes to severe restrictions, it's the feeling of adolescence that Mizuho will one day be stolen by one of the 4 guys who all had their affections upon her, but respectively going about their own dilemmas to either play the friendzone treatment or just go for gold with building jealousy within the group that only seems to shatter the long-standing friendship that they have thus far.
Sadly, as current Nakayoshi standards go, I don't quite have the confidence to say that this show has a story to tell, as disjointed as it sounds. What's the point of the 5 of them hanging out at the same known places, where the crowd doesn't mask up and maintain distance against one another? Worse still, the story feels nothing like the Taiwanese film that I've mentioned earlier in the review, instead opting for your stereotypical soap opera drama of potential boyfriend conflicts and interests against the lone girl who's trying to hide the fact that one of them has an interest in her, and they're just playing hard to get so that she can maintain the status quo. As they say, "Nothing is forever," and though Mizuho gets the gist that their friendship will break sooner than later, it's the emotional and psychological fight between her two most prominent potentials, Kizuki and Shin, that has both Shugo and Aira witnessing from the sidelines, as they're different in their views of the friendship. It's certainly not all that different from the standards of an otome game, where the anime chooses your endgame route rather than the player doing his/hers, and you have no say in what and how the direction will take you, barring the good and bad parts of it.
Knowing Typhoon Graphics and their course produced this show, it just feels like you're reading a VN with non-scrolling but boring text dialogue that tells you what is going on in the minds of the boys, while we witness from Mizuho's view the shallowness of trying to play the friendship game, only to realize that she's screwed the moment any of the 4 boys pounces on her. That said, while the background art is passable, the animation is minimalistic at best, to the sheer point of barely where sacrifices can clearly be seen.
With the music helmed by composer Keiji Inai, I was expecting the level of, yet another Typhoon Graphics show of Spring 2023's Kanojo ga Koushakutei ni Itta Riyuu a.k.a Why Raeliana Ended Up at the Duke's Mansion. But even that couldn't prepare me for yet another minimalist effort that just shows the total commitment of effort to the anime overall. Aside from Marcy's ED song (which is literally just the song only), I'm quickly getting sick of new bands created to merge the J- and K-Pop feels together, as is the case for INI's OP song, and more of them have been coming into the Anisong spectrum only to grate on the ears of a Korea takeover in J-Pop.
I feel almost obliged to say that if you consider Douse, Koishite Shimaunda a.k.a Anyway, I'm Falling in Love with You, a Shoujo work by all means and sense, yes, it is. But its target demographic should already tell you when guys try to even watch this show and yet still cannot relate to females loving bad boys and the whole "nine yards down" shtick. Shoujo works CAN be enjoyed by both sexes, but not to a point that feels condescending just for shock value, which is exactly what the anime is trying to do here.
It's true in the Shoujo sense, but you're better off with other works that have done this better.
