English Dub Review: Love Tyrant “Right, Let’s All Die! x I Finally Understand”

Love Tyrant all ends this week with everyone dying, then not falling in love. Romance?

No. This is not romance. This series has managed to have two infatuation tales with Yuzu and Akane loving Seiji in their own ways and develop it in a very cute light. However, Love Tyrant has also developed Guri who now with this series finale episode is just hands down the least romantic character in the show. Plus, everything tied around Guri’s side of the story is nonsensical and comes off more as a derailment of the narrative than anything substantial. Last week we had Guri become a demon because Seiji said she was a nuisance, in quite honestly the anime’s most artificial example of narrative character writing. Now for the finale, Seiji, Akane and Yuzu make their way to hell through a Mario warp pipe, yes really, to save her.

The setup is as simple as that but Love Tyrant attempts to not only wrap up the show but cram in as many emotional heart string pulls as possible. The most off-putting of such is the ham-handed scene with Maou, who for those who forgot is the devil in the show’s universe. To summarize, Maou had goo-goo eyes for Guri’s mother but she friend zoned him and married Kami instead who later cheated on her resulting in her vanishing. This adds nothing to the current situation besides take up time, especially because Maou disappears from the rest of the episode after this. Not even for when Guri inevitably turns into an angel again, no conclusion or any form of closure for Maou.

I’ll be honest though I don’t dwell on the wastefulness of Maou’s subplot because I feel betrayed they didn’t use such a “deep” character. Maou leaves no impression as like with Guri’s Angel subplot it is barely tangibly formed and this finale is just the mad dash to cover every other story beat we need as an audience to see before Guri realizes what she’s been missing. Seiji telling her he loves her… Well, no kidding. The girl in love wants to be loved. Throughout these last few episodes, I have commented I liked how Guri was increasingly becoming more insightful when it came to romance in comparison to her dumb as dirt first appearance in the pilot. But this is just 10 steps back in terms of characterization for me, to make such a big deal about wanting to be loved by Seiji, a plot point already used in Akane’s story line, and Seiji says nothing meaningful.

It really is the worst of Seiji passive nice guy attitude coming to bite the writing in the ass. Because we wanna keep the story as sweet and open-ended as possible, the writers’ make it a point to never late Seiji utter anything that can show preference in one girl over the other. This is so fans can keep going on the never-ending discussion of who is best girl on the show without having to be final about it. I liked Seiji in the early episode as he was an awkward yet simple guy, but while in the early episodes he would make active choices showing a character with agency over his life as the series went on that was slowly stripped away. Here is just the cherry on top of that as he monologues this very heartfelt speech about his time with Guri but unfortunately, he never utters a single word of it to Guri. Even though she is right in front of him. They do have a final say to each other to cap off the series but it provides no sort of closure to where this relationship can go. The same can be said for the other girls’ relationships with Seiji as well.

At the end of it all I’m disappointed by this finale. There is plenty more of the manga out to see the extended adventures of Guri and the gang but I don’t think I can pick that up. There is just such an uneven nature to the series that I can only sincerely enjoy it half the time. The other half I am just hoping for the good moments to come back again. This was sadly not one of those moments. At best the finale is non-offensive if you have watched the series until this point you know what you will get right off the bat. I’ll soon condense all my thoughts on Love Tyrant into a final review overall but as this finale is concerned it ended on a whimper.

SCORE
5/10