Chuunibyou Demo Koi ga Shitai! Ren

Chuunibyou Demo Koi ga Shitai! Ren:  B+

So I heard Chuunibyou, my most recent series to get an S grade, was getting a second season midway through last year.  And I dreaded it a little bit.  The first season had a good arc, told a good story.  Did it need more?  I didn't think so.

And really, I still don't think it needed more, but so long as it's getting more, what it got was actually pretty good.

We get a single new character who is actually handled pretty well and becomes extremely sympathetic.  We get more adorable and hilarious eighth-grader syndrome hijinks.  We get some poorly written episodes that fail to commit.  We get some very well-written episodes that don't fail to commit.  For all that it's spurious and lacks the depth and power of the first season, Ren is definitely not bad and there was a little part of me that wanted to give it an A, but it just falls into a few too many traps.

I'm generally anti-sequel, so this is actually a pretty positive review.  If you liked the first season, the second season has more of the good things that the first had: comedy, eye-melting imaginary action scenes, awkward romance, emotional turmoil, embarrassing deliberate melodrama.  If you didn't like the first season, a) what is wrong with you it was really good and b) the second season doesn't change the formula much, though it is definitely about slightly different things, like building on a relationship, unrequited love and what friendship is about.  Definitely doesn't make the first season better through it's existence but it also doesn't retroactively weaken it.

Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai!

Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai!:  S*

This is a series for anyone who's ever done anything for absolutely no reason other than because it was cool.

This is a series for anyone who's ever tried to get away from reality by inventing a fantasy to replace it.

This is a series for anyone who's ever felt out of place, like they didn't belong among the rest of the world.

This is a series for pretty much everybody.

* While Chuu2Koi gets the S rank for being extremely thought-provoking, very intelligent, heartstoppingly gorgeous and a genuinely deep story about being human, the final episode falls short of the series' potential.  It resolves the story itself, but fails to come to any true conclusion regarding the questions it raises, probably because they are extremely personal to everyone who engages with them.  The ending's weakness reduces the final impact of the series, but doesn't prevent it from still being eye-opening on a level few anime series manage, so it still gets the S rank from me despite being considerably less perfect than most series I rank as S.

Chu2Koi: Episode 11 Update

Damn this series is good.

It's like, this year's Madoka.  If the ending brings itself together like episode 11 makes it look like it's going to, it may earn an S rating for being an intelligent discussion of a deep and pervasive stage of psychological development that is nevertheless very difficult to take seriously.  I have high hopes for the last 20 minutes.

Short update today.  I've gotta review Oda Nobuna no Yabou, then after that... I'm not sure.  Maybe the second season of Sengoku Basara, but I'm not expecting it to be really different from the first.  Maybe I'll get into Clannad and Clannad After Story?  We'll see.

Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai! Episodes 1-7

So, I've added Kyoto Animation to my list of studios (after Shaft and Gaianx) that I will just watch everything they produce because it's gold.  Their current project is an adaptation of a two-volume Light Novel series of the title seen above.

(Man, I'm watching a lot of series these days that are just long strings of words in Japanese.  "Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai!" is usually translated "In spite of my adolescent delusions of grandeur, I want a date!")

It's about a boy (Togashi Yuuta) who, before entering high school, was a delusional sort who wore a long jacket, carried a oversized fantasy resin sword, spoke in an incredibly melodramatic fashion and called himself (in Engrish) "Dark Flame Master."  However, at some point he realized how incredibly embarrassing this is and stopped doing it, trying to forget everything about it and move on, making a fresh start in high school.

Unfortunately, a girl (Takanashi Rikka) moves into the apartment above the one where he lives, and she still does stuff like that, wearing a medical eyepatch (to seal her 'Wicked Eye') and a bandage on her left arm (covering a seal on the power of the harbinger of darkness), making combat poses at everyone she meets and talking a lot about her  mana, chimera familiar (a stray cat she put wings on), the evil Priestess who shares the apartment she lives in (her big sister) and how she must be ready for battle at all times.  Due to a momentary indiscretion when Yuuta is attempting to cleanse himself of his past forever, his neighbor (also his classmate) overhears of him being Dark Flame Master, and attempts to befriend him as a dark sorcerer who is also facing the threats that she faces.

... And we've all been there?  Right?  ...Right?

Anyway, as someone who is only about 90-95% over his own adolescent delusions of grandeur (Chuunibyou literally translates as 'Eighth-grader disease'), I find the premise to be nostalgic and amusing (and that's without mentioning Kyoto Animation's eye-melting artwork), and the execution to be effective and interesting.  Rikka and Yuuta are hardly the only characters who have ever suffered from chuunibyou, and it's not portrayed as a life-destroying disease as much as a phase that may or may not have deeper roots.

A part of me wants to write an entire essay on the idea of adolescent delusions of grandeur and how they figure into society, grow and evolve and how accepted they are even in adults, but this is an anime blog.

So, instead, I'll say that Chuu2Koi (that's the official abbreviation, apparently) is pretty good, so far, and is likely to be high on my list of recommendations to my more grown-up nerd friends.  Since we all were like that, once upon a time.