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9 people found this review helpful
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12 of 12 episodes seen
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A broken little girl drags into her fantasy/shonen delusions a nebbish who apparently had similar deusions; he helps fix her as he falls in love with her and learns life lessons. Standard enough summary for a highschool romance-comedy: it sounds like a storyline that could've come out of a Key production like _Clannad_ or _Kanon_ without much modification.
The animation is pleasant enough in the standard Kyoani template; the sound is entirely forgettable.
Character highlights for me included the protagonist Yuuta not being a blank slate dating sim protagonist but having his own delusive past and acting appropriately; the beautiful but two-faced Nibutani (an archetype one may remember from _Toradora_'s Ami or _Haruhi_'s Asakura); the protagonist buddy being actually a decent guy and not a knave or buffoon; the sidekick is a prodigy rich girl, a type we don't see that often (only example that comes to mind is in _Azumanga Daioh_); and in particular, Rikka's older sister Touka is great, a strong female character with her own career who is unafraid to blackmail Yuuta with some interesting moves of her own, and I found particularly hilarious the running gag of Touka & Yumeha playing a 'realistic' game of house.
The plot moves forward on predictable rails (the first meeting, forming a club, gathering the members) to the climax of coming to grips with Rikka's issues and then the declarations of love ('first girl always wins', as the saying goes), and is good as far as it goes, especially in painfully evoking the ridiculousness of the play-acting - I never did anything like that but still winced in pain at some points. (After a while, I did wish that the battle animations would be more varied. Talk about recyling! It's only 12 episodes, guys...)
My beef is more with the ending: after convincing Rikka to give up the chuunibyou and dissolve the club, the plot takes the tragicly obvious route of Nibutani pointing out that a lot of things can be seen as chuunibyou, Yuuta then realizing how that renunciation was a horrible mistake and how delusions make life worth living etc, and having realized his mistake, he then goes to rescue Rikka with the assistance of the club members. Good End.
I disagree, completely. A question Hideaki Anno asked once comes up again:
> "I wonder if a person over the age of twenty who likes robot anime is really happy? He could find greater happiness elsewhere. Regrettably, I have my doubts about his happiness."
Nibutani points out that the acting club's president could be seen as suffering chuunibyou. Yes, if you define chuunibyou as simply a passionate interest, many highschoolers or adults suffer it. But this definition 'has all the advantages of theft over honest toil': people do not see chuunibyou as the same as a passion or interest. Why? Because passions are directed toward a real object, they aim at real ends, one can grow, there is objective subject matter to master, and they give genuine rewards and satisfaction. A chuunibyou like Rikka's offers none of these: the subject matter is made up on whim, is artistically impoverished and repetitive, is not transferrable to others (everyone has their own chuunibyou or variants on another's, even Dekomori differs from Rikka, via her Mabinogion), has no depth that the person has not put in themselves, can mutate on the spur of the moment, and is fundamentally unsatisfactory - even as a psychological defense mechanism, it is no substitute for genuinely dealing with the issues.
Yuuta et al say that it's fine to not be too self-conscious and to pursue one's dreams and passions. I agree. Not having a dream or passion is a terrible thing: a sense of meaning can make even the unhappiest life worth living. And so I don't mind Yuuta seeking to give Rikka a dream after destroying her pale chuunibyou dreams. But while the solution to bad dreams is clearly not no dreams at all, it also *is not more bad dreams*! It is *better* dreams. It is a dream like the dream of the acting club's president: a real dream, one that could be attained, that can lead one to more goals and growth, and to surmount additional obstacles.
> "Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified."
What _Chuunibyou_ *should* have shown us is Rikka developing a new dream: perhaps acting, perhaps fencing, perhaps fiction-writing... Many possibilities. Instead, we got a revival of her old crap, whose only saving grace is that we can choose to interpret it as a mix of romantic and a final resolution of her psychological problems which uses the vocabulary of her chuunibyou.
An echo of this false dichotomy, this failure to come up with the genuinely healthy outcome, appears in the final beach scene. Rikka, still dreamless, says that the lights are merely electrical lights. This is apparently supposed to indicate the depths of her despair: mere electrical headlights! A stellar example of failing to take joy in the merely real.
Just some electrical lights? No, they're not 'just' some lights! They're the legacy of a man who night after night in the darkness labored because he knew the world could be better one day; they're the greatest accomplishment of a man who had discovered a thousand ways to not build a light bulb; they're a sign of a new world, a world so busy that it cannot stop simply because the sun has set; they're a technology that has spread everywhere that humans have spread and clustered in their hives of light, so closely tied to En*light*enment that you can mark the extent of suffering and misery by simply at night looking where electrical lights are *not* (by satellite - and are not satellites themselves something far absurder and more extraordinary than anything you have read in a novel? something which *keeps falling yet stays up*; even novels try to avoid self-contradiction); they're a symbol of what Japan was missing out on as it slept away the enturies under the Tokugawa; they're the expression of human cooperation and building, an intricate network of components built across the world, powered by a country's nervous system that at every millisecond, faster than human thought, is being finetuned by distant workers to serve you (and save on men wearily going from gaslight to gaslight, lighting them and dousing them every night and day); they're part of what makes cities work at all, hindering the work of thieves and assisting the police; they're the new reality that reading need no longer be snatched in tiny increments in the daylight in between work in the fields, but absorbed at leisure when necessary, so ordinary people can learn things that our ancestors could never dream of, Horatio; they're why we know so much about so many things, but not how to make a smoky indoors fire so we can see just a little by at night (and poison our lungs, and poison our children). The electric lights are economic wealth, the lights are knowledge, the lights are safety.
I am reminded, oddly enough, of a bit from a _Haruhi_ fanfiction I read a while ago:
> "Of late, the teachers are really starting to drill us for entrance exams, and that's fine. That's expected, even, but it feels like it's not enough. I don't want to keep a list of the top ten facts about the Meiji Restoration on the back of my hand. Tell me that it was something big and important — that when Tokugawa stepped down and ended the shogunate for good, it was a sign. Japan would never be the same again. Japan would never be able to keep to itself again. It changed the way we live, and you can see that every day. Whenever you buy a pair of headphones that say _Sony_ on the side or a car with a three-diamond ornament on the front, you see something that goes back to that time, that wouldn't exist without that change in how we live our lives.
> I've watched all our classmates scribble down notes furiously. I wonder sometimes if they ever thought to do more than just copy, copy, and copy some more."
In comparison to reality, stories about Dark Flame Masters or Tyrant's Eyes come off as exactly what they seem: shallow, childish, ignorant, and unsatisfying. That Rikka or the author cannot see this unseen world all around her is the real tragedy.
The animation is pleasant enough in the standard Kyoani template; the sound is entirely forgettable.
Character highlights for me included the protagonist Yuuta not being a blank slate dating sim protagonist but having his own delusive past and acting appropriately; the beautiful but two-faced Nibutani (an archetype one may remember from _Toradora_'s Ami or _Haruhi_'s Asakura); the protagonist buddy being actually a decent guy and not a knave or buffoon; the sidekick is a prodigy rich girl, a type we don't see that often (only example that comes to mind is in _Azumanga Daioh_); and in particular, Rikka's older sister Touka is great, a strong female character with her own career who is unafraid to blackmail Yuuta with some interesting moves of her own, and I found particularly hilarious the running gag of Touka & Yumeha playing a 'realistic' game of house.
The plot moves forward on predictable rails (the first meeting, forming a club, gathering the members) to the climax of coming to grips with Rikka's issues and then the declarations of love ('first girl always wins', as the saying goes), and is good as far as it goes, especially in painfully evoking the ridiculousness of the play-acting - I never did anything like that but still winced in pain at some points. (After a while, I did wish that the battle animations would be more varied. Talk about recyling! It's only 12 episodes, guys...)
My beef is more with the ending: after convincing Rikka to give up the chuunibyou and dissolve the club, the plot takes the tragicly obvious route of Nibutani pointing out that a lot of things can be seen as chuunibyou, Yuuta then realizing how that renunciation was a horrible mistake and how delusions make life worth living etc, and having realized his mistake, he then goes to rescue Rikka with the assistance of the club members. Good End.
I disagree, completely. A question Hideaki Anno asked once comes up again:
> "I wonder if a person over the age of twenty who likes robot anime is really happy? He could find greater happiness elsewhere. Regrettably, I have my doubts about his happiness."
Nibutani points out that the acting club's president could be seen as suffering chuunibyou. Yes, if you define chuunibyou as simply a passionate interest, many highschoolers or adults suffer it. But this definition 'has all the advantages of theft over honest toil': people do not see chuunibyou as the same as a passion or interest. Why? Because passions are directed toward a real object, they aim at real ends, one can grow, there is objective subject matter to master, and they give genuine rewards and satisfaction. A chuunibyou like Rikka's offers none of these: the subject matter is made up on whim, is artistically impoverished and repetitive, is not transferrable to others (everyone has their own chuunibyou or variants on another's, even Dekomori differs from Rikka, via her Mabinogion), has no depth that the person has not put in themselves, can mutate on the spur of the moment, and is fundamentally unsatisfactory - even as a psychological defense mechanism, it is no substitute for genuinely dealing with the issues.
Yuuta et al say that it's fine to not be too self-conscious and to pursue one's dreams and passions. I agree. Not having a dream or passion is a terrible thing: a sense of meaning can make even the unhappiest life worth living. And so I don't mind Yuuta seeking to give Rikka a dream after destroying her pale chuunibyou dreams. But while the solution to bad dreams is clearly not no dreams at all, it also *is not more bad dreams*! It is *better* dreams. It is a dream like the dream of the acting club's president: a real dream, one that could be attained, that can lead one to more goals and growth, and to surmount additional obstacles.
> "Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified."
What _Chuunibyou_ *should* have shown us is Rikka developing a new dream: perhaps acting, perhaps fencing, perhaps fiction-writing... Many possibilities. Instead, we got a revival of her old crap, whose only saving grace is that we can choose to interpret it as a mix of romantic and a final resolution of her psychological problems which uses the vocabulary of her chuunibyou.
An echo of this false dichotomy, this failure to come up with the genuinely healthy outcome, appears in the final beach scene. Rikka, still dreamless, says that the lights are merely electrical lights. This is apparently supposed to indicate the depths of her despair: mere electrical headlights! A stellar example of failing to take joy in the merely real.
Just some electrical lights? No, they're not 'just' some lights! They're the legacy of a man who night after night in the darkness labored because he knew the world could be better one day; they're the greatest accomplishment of a man who had discovered a thousand ways to not build a light bulb; they're a sign of a new world, a world so busy that it cannot stop simply because the sun has set; they're a technology that has spread everywhere that humans have spread and clustered in their hives of light, so closely tied to En*light*enment that you can mark the extent of suffering and misery by simply at night looking where electrical lights are *not* (by satellite - and are not satellites themselves something far absurder and more extraordinary than anything you have read in a novel? something which *keeps falling yet stays up*; even novels try to avoid self-contradiction); they're a symbol of what Japan was missing out on as it slept away the enturies under the Tokugawa; they're the expression of human cooperation and building, an intricate network of components built across the world, powered by a country's nervous system that at every millisecond, faster than human thought, is being finetuned by distant workers to serve you (and save on men wearily going from gaslight to gaslight, lighting them and dousing them every night and day); they're part of what makes cities work at all, hindering the work of thieves and assisting the police; they're the new reality that reading need no longer be snatched in tiny increments in the daylight in between work in the fields, but absorbed at leisure when necessary, so ordinary people can learn things that our ancestors could never dream of, Horatio; they're why we know so much about so many things, but not how to make a smoky indoors fire so we can see just a little by at night (and poison our lungs, and poison our children). The electric lights are economic wealth, the lights are knowledge, the lights are safety.
I am reminded, oddly enough, of a bit from a _Haruhi_ fanfiction I read a while ago:
> "Of late, the teachers are really starting to drill us for entrance exams, and that's fine. That's expected, even, but it feels like it's not enough. I don't want to keep a list of the top ten facts about the Meiji Restoration on the back of my hand. Tell me that it was something big and important — that when Tokugawa stepped down and ended the shogunate for good, it was a sign. Japan would never be the same again. Japan would never be able to keep to itself again. It changed the way we live, and you can see that every day. Whenever you buy a pair of headphones that say _Sony_ on the side or a car with a three-diamond ornament on the front, you see something that goes back to that time, that wouldn't exist without that change in how we live our lives.
> I've watched all our classmates scribble down notes furiously. I wonder sometimes if they ever thought to do more than just copy, copy, and copy some more."
In comparison to reality, stories about Dark Flame Masters or Tyrant's Eyes come off as exactly what they seem: shallow, childish, ignorant, and unsatisfying. That Rikka or the author cannot see this unseen world all around her is the real tragedy.