Chris
Lucas, fall is here, and love is...less in the air than it was in the spring and summer seasons. We've got a fair few shows for our requisite romcom rundown, but several of them are edge cases, or shorts, or prioritize points besides puppy love.
So why don't we cut to the chase ourselves and "fall" in love this season with what's available?
Lucas
Chris, ordinarily I'd offer some condolences to our readers who are fans of romcoms in the face of this seasonal shortage. Thankfully, though, this is a quality over quantity situation and the romcoms that we do get this time around are some of the best we've had in a long time! In fact, if Rebecca will allow me to dip into my "swear allotment" for the month, I'd even go so far as to say that these romcoms fuck!
And I mean that in every sense of the word! Beyond their unusually high quality as works of animation, there are an unprecedented number of RomComs featuring characters actually hooking up this season, and I couldn't be more thrilled about it!
Yeah, several of these entries are real surprise gems, especially given their status and presentation out of the gate. By which I mean we can start with I'm Dating a Dark Summoner, which is an auspicious half-length hentai short, and also, somehow, probably the most entertaining pure, proper romcom we've got this season!
Technically a LitRPG series, the core of this show revolves around a goth girl, Amona, and a religious guy, Roni, letting their initial contempt for each other boil over into a raucous night of passion, which immediately becomes a tender and deliciously illicit subject for them and everyone around them.
The dynamic between these characters and the fun the show has at their expense is nothing short of a delight. Beyond being the only piece of media that I can think of that successfully pulls off the "two characters cannot leave this room until they have sex" trope, even the title, I'm Dating a Dark Summoner, itself is an amazing gag, as neither of these characters would admit to being in a relationship with the other!
Having peeked ahead into the third episode, I'm thrilled to share that the fantasy world they inhabit begins to motivate some wacky scenarios for them, with the introduction of what appears to be a literal semen daemon.
Which, of course, prompts a question that should be asked more often in these, often sexually charged but bizarrely chaste, fantasy adventure series:
With I'm Dating a Dark Summoner being so good that it motivated me to read the manga, I'm thrilled to share that this work actually follows the path of Interspecies Reviewers, with the anime being FAR more explicit than anything we see in the manga.
It's really firing on all cylinders for me, and I'll gladly devote fifteen minutes of my life to it every week for the rest of this season, or in any season if we're lucky enough to be blessed with a second season for this hilariously smutty romp.
It's a nice little pick-me-up, precisely what a series of this nature is supposed to be! It really lets Dark Summoner shine compared to the more subdued efforts of the other "regular" romcoms this season.
You compare the confident raunchiness of Dark Summoner to something like The Cold Sato-san is Only Sweet to Me, which is about as rip-roaring an effort as you would expect from a show about two awkward teens taking food pics for Instagram—I'm sorry, Minstagram.
Chris, if you and our readers will allow me to voice an opinion that brushes up against misogyny (the irony of having to preface this after praising phonography is not lost on me), I am so sick of anime that frame a character as "the prettiest girl in our class/community/world," and then she looks like the default lady avatar in an anime RPG!
The Cold Sato-san is Only Sweet to Me, which really should have been titled The Salty Sato-san is Only Sweet to Me as the light novel is localized as The Salty Koharu Has a Soft Spot for Me, is such a weird show! It feels like it's an attempt at positive PR for being an adolescent in high school, but it's written by somebody who was never a teenager and reduces the characters to stereotypes of teenagers like "wants to date the prettiest girl in class" and "likes social media."
I get that these characters are intentionally bland so that a prospective viewer can more easily map themselves and their crush onto them, but it leans so far into this palatability that I can only see this show being appealing to aliens who have no immediate experience whatsoever with the human condition.
You see this a lot with these modern light-novel-derived high-school romance-comedies. Every story is someone's first, I get it, but a series still needs to have some distinctive energy to grab said audience's attention. The most The Cold Sato gave me was Sota's muscled-up dad explicitly shipping his son with his crush. That ain't gonna carry a show like this.
Also, and this may be a personal nitpick, but The Cold Sato does that thing where it internally confirms the two leads are genuinely in love with each other right from the jump, which for me always sucks the air out of the all-important are-they/aren't-they will-they/won't-they and just turns the whole experience into a watch-checking holding pattern.
As someone who does not catch romantic feelings for other people in a way that could be described as a crush, this trope is especially annoying for me. I want to shake these kids and tell them to communicate with each other so that we can move on to a, hopefully, better story already!
Speaking of better stories, Hello, I am a Witch, and my Crush Wants me to Make a Love Potion! is WAY better than its extremely light novel-ass title would make folks think at first glance!
Between these themes of self-improvement that feel more important now than ever in today's dating landscape and Rose feeling like an actual young woman who's never navigated feelings of romantic interest before, this is another romcom bringing up the seasonal average by a hefty margin!
That's two-for-two so far on fantasy-based romcoms, meaning it's inevitably time for one that's a bit less standout.
Though Even Though I’m a Super Timid Noble Girl, I Accepted the Bet From My Cunning Fiancé, if the title length didn't give it away, is also this season's crossover with the isekai lineup, so it's playing with a hefty handicap to begin with.
Aside from having one of the rare good poop jokes in anime, I found Timid Noble Girl to be more of a confusing experience than anything else.
It's overtly an isekai where a college student is transported into her favorite otome game shortly after getting cheated on and trying to catch a rebound with truck[knife]-kun, but the narrative keeps introducing new plot points and characters that are surprising to her. I'd much rather watch a story where the protagonist has to use her cunning and knowledge of these characters and how the story is supposed to unfold to create a scenario that's advantageous to her against all odds, rather than just passively let this game's bonus content happen to her.
Agreed. Maybe I'll dip back in when the homewrecker who's supposed to be the protagonist of this game shows up, but I already feel like I may have given this anime too much time.
And speaking of homewreckers...I like the overtly pornographic My Girlfriend's Friend WAY more than I thought I would! I'm fully aware that it's trash TV, but it has me chomping on popcorn from start to finish with every new episode!
Ah, and here we find ourselves moving out of anything that could be considered "traditional" romcoms and into the true porny shorts of the season, courtesy of our pal OceanVeil! Weirdly, they weren't streaming Dark Summoner; HIDIVE swooped them in on that one, but they did get several others that don't quite focus on the "Comedy" part much either.
Well, not directly anyway. I'm happy you're having fun with My Girlfriend's Friend, Lucas, but I really can't stand this show myself.
Faaaaaaaaair~ and I'm inclined to agree with you, at least until the giant oni woman that Snow Widow has been teasing in all of the promotional material shows up.
God, please, I am so tired of this snow lady and the protag's downright shabby treatment of her.
Oh, agreed! And we should probably drop a PSA for the entire internet now: Tan Otori is a great character within the show and, similarly to how the rest of the main cast is a dissection of gifted and talented kid archetypes, is a great examination of how a constant need for external validation can warp a young person's identity and behavior. That being said, DO NOT ENGAGE with any social media accounts that use his adorable mug as an avatar!!! Anyone emulating this character will not be pleasant to talk to on the internet!
Oh god, I do not want to know the average Nagatoro fanboy's opinion on femboys...
But yes! Even the Student Council Has Its Holes! is so fun and frenetic, while also being so much more relatable than a romcom like Cold Sato because it is explicitly informed by the actual feelings and experiences of the people behind it. It's nothing short of a shot in the arm, and I wish we got an anime this itself every season!
Hey, while I love me a season of anime that feels like it's pushing this medium forward, I'm just as enamored with a quieter season that allows some of the odder and less broadly appealing works in this space to shine! While Even the Student Council Has Its Holes! is the breakout of tonight's convo, this season is full of the kind of hyper-specific, lifelong anime fan-inducing titles that actually get people to stick around in this community, and I can't wait to talk about all of them in future installments of this column!
I'm glad we could have so much fun with what we got tonight. The best of these stories remind us of the loving joys of being human, and the importance of taking care of ourselves.
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