English Dub Review: Love Tyrant “It’s a Festival x How Did It Come to This?!”

The story of the emotions behind our two best girls. Who do you want Seiji to be with?

 

This is a very difficult episode to review honestly. Love Tyrant has been very strong for most of the series with great characterization, cute simple romantic moments offset by goofy ultra-wackiness and very heartfelt theming about unnatural love. However, there has been a niggling hindrance the show keeps dragging along, which up until this point wasn’t annoying, but has now been spotlighted for all to see in this episode. The Love Tyrant a.k.a. Guri is a plain annoying character.

Ever since episode one, Guri’s character is she is a cupid who knows nothing about love and just acts as a hyperactive little kid with occasional doses of “random” nonsensical humor. These sort of nonsense-prone characters are rampant in a lot of comedy writing but my problem isn’t that Guri isn’t original or anything like that. It’s that for a nonsense-prone character to be acting as the oblivious about love romantic rival for the main character comes across as rather irritating. Narrative wise it makes sense as a means of mirroring her opponent’s view on love. While Guri never had a realization of what love was despite being a cupid and surrounded by it, Akane’s family life suppressed any emotions of any kind which made her realization all the stronger and made her infatuation deeper. The cynical portion of my mind just boils that down to a character devout about keeping love despite family heritage versus a willfully oblivious ignorant character who is loving because it sounds cool.

That difference in character foundation leads to half of this episode being annoying and the second half is awesome. The first story of the episode is about Guri wanting to go see the fireworks at the nearby festival while wearing a yukata with Seiji but Seiji “selfishly” already made plans despite Guri scheduling them to go there by not even asking Seiji to come until the day of. So Guri heads out steamed over being snubbed and meets up with a cute guy who is quick to ask her out and tries to swoon her into dumping Seiji. However, despite Guri’s lack of understanding of love she is able to feel bad about almost cheating on Seiji and stabs the guy in the eyes with his fingers and ends up meeting up with Seiji and the girls who met up with her to enjoy the fireworks. Something that would have happened if she had just asked Seiji nicely.

When it comes to writing conflict, I understand the need to want to push your main characters into solo situations to test their character but Love Tyrant frames Guri in such a poor light. Firstly, the reason she is upset isn’t even warranted as she completely springs the plan to go to the fireworks last minute despite Seiji making plans to go to the aquarium with Akane and Yuzu. Secondly, the whole conflict can end by Seiji just saying “we can go to the fireworks after the aquarium if you want Guri?” A thoughtful question completely within character for Seiji but we couldn’t have that when instead Guri can just run away complaining like a brat. It really makes it difficult to like Guri as without her LOL random humor she comes off as just an ignorant and self-absorbed character only pursuing what she finds interesting and emotionally stimulating.

The twist of this first story actually leaves off on a funny note but what kills this story and Guri’s character arc for me is that despite causing this whole situation and series to begin with Guri isn’t really the main character. She is mostly reactive to scenarios letting wacky shenanigans mainly land in her lap to get her yucks out. This leaves Guri as a tag along character despite events centering on her understanding of love and what choice she’ll make with that understanding. Everything is loaded off on Seiji to cope with which lends itself to comedy but a more positive active role would help make Guri more likable and relatable like weirdly enough Akane.

Our crazy knife wielding cutie has definitely become a favorite of mine this anime season. Great comedic timing, wonderfully adorable acting and some rather interesting characterization lead Akane to be rather interesting to follow in the series. Vastly more interesting than what Guri is going through which is pretty bad when, literally, God and the devil are fighting over Guri to choose a side and Akane just has messed up family issues. In this episode, we start seeing a clearer picture of who Akane is and we see the reason why Akane fell in love with Seiji. Honestly given the build-up over the last few episodes the answer didn’t disappoint and was adorable.

Akane fits much better in this parody of romance as she is being played rather straight as the cute every girl mixed with psychotic yandere which offsets the genuine romantic moments with over the top violence and wackiness. It develops a unique taste to the anime which unfortunately wouldn’t be for everyone given a greater majority is left to Guri’s plot thread. However, if I were to rate this as succinctly as possible part 1 of this episode was a 5/10 because of Guri’s character and part 2 of this episode was an 8/10 because of Akane’s which leave the episode sadly at just an above average rating. If you have watched up to this point you understand the pros and cons of the series and if you can get past Guri’s oblivious nature then there is a lot of fun to be watched.

 

SCORE
6.5/10