English Dub Review: Love Tyrant “I’m Here to Stay the Night x I’m… Growing Up, Too”

1 guy. 4 girls. 1 roof. 1 sleepover from hell.

If Love Tyrant is a subversive series of love tropes and we already got a beach episode then a sleepover episode was another inevitability to see. And thankfully for me, this was split with another story revolving around Aqua which is where Love Tyrant is far stronger. The last episode struggled as it was stretching out a very paper thin justification of Guri and Akane to be even more serious rivals and Yuzu having her mixed feelings about falling in love with Seiji. In terms of actual narrative plot points, both could be major but the episode was marred by the detached nature of Guri’s character dragging everything down.

In today’s episode, we got one-half of the episode dedicated to Seiji involuntarily holding a sleepover with all the girls while his parents are away and the second half is an Aqua and Guri focused story. Finally, we have Guri acting more proactively in trying to figure out her emotions and taking action towards it. It’s honestly not much and at this time is just build up to next episode but Guri shows off she has been evolving as a character as she confronts Aqua about her closed off nature and why she is acting out, namely to get Seiji’s attention. This is honestly the best outing for Guri as while she is still her ol’ oblivious and dimwitted self she begins to show a firmer understanding of relationships, demonstrating that lightly with Akane’s mother and more in depth with Aqua, even delving in deep into why she dresses more masculine now compared to the past. As well Guri starts showcasing a more self-reflective characteristic in herself, it still has a bend towards making quirky humor but it also opens up her character to be self-aware of her flaws and lets the story pursue her character arc.

Other than that, this was just a solid episode for Love Tyrant. The relationship of Seiji and Akane grew sweeter with their scenes, Yuzu showed off her weird stalker humour which was odd but funny and the evil penguin returned with a six pack and got roundhouse kicked by Aqua. I don’t even need to add more to that. The very fact of her round house kicking a demonic penguin is just so enjoyably silly. Love Tyrant is stronger when it keeps simple with its story and poking fun at love tropes of the past, as soon as it over complicates they show reverts back to LOL humour and the enjoyment definitely plummets. I’m hoping now that Guri is starting to show more of a dimensional personality that she’ll grow to be a more endearing character. This episode has given me hope for that and for that I say this is a very solid episode.

 

SCORE
7/10