English Dub Review: Love Tyrant “I’m Not Going to Lose! x Are You Like Me?”

Love is about to get sadistic for the Love Tyrant.

When one first view or reads anything about an incestuous relationship most people do have the instinct feelings of disgust towards it while others have their fascinations with it to varying degrees. Love Tyrant gives us two unrequited love stories. One between Seiji and his sister, Aqua, and the second, plus the focus of this episode, between Akane and Yuzu. From the beginning, Yuzu came off as a delightfully funny but cute creep, rooting around Akane’s trash, carrying a creepy sex doll of Akane and acting insanely possessive of her as Seiji was thrust into getting close with her. Today was the episode to dive into the context behind their relationship to hopefully rope us into caring about the two and if the episode did anything, it definitely made me appreciate these two a lot more.

Taking an even heavier episodic nature now to the series (including a new opening stinger shot of the episode’s title written in a notebook) Love Tyrant opens with a flashback of Akane and Yuzu’s past, where Yuzu’s mother is warning her that her new step sister is a “demon.” This rightfully so scares the little Yuzu, who squeezes her doll tightly, until her other pink haired cousin, Shikimi Shiramine, throws her doll towards the piranha infested fountain. Because if you can have a demonic penguin, of course, you can have a fountain randomly be filled to the brim with piranhas. Thankfully Akane steps in with an apathetic look in her eye and saves Yuzu, making her heart skip a beat and igniting her intense infatuation with Akane.

This backstory opens up some new avenues for Yuzu and Akane. For Yuzu, we get to see a very vulnerable side to her character, before she was just the creep who sniffed Akane’s used tissues, but now… she’s still that but there’s a sense of understanding of what she’s truly feeling. Infatuation, not love. Compounded with the fact that Akane keeps Yuzu at arm’s length with her apathetic emotions about her and Yuzu becomes a character the audience can pity and root for along with Seiji. Who more and more through just being the most decent and regular human being alive is becoming the show’s sweetheart. Think the chivalrous nature of Takeo Gōda from My Love Story and funnel that into a scrawny guy with blue hair.

As for Akane, this is opening up some questions on her erratic emotions. Why does she love Seiji so devoutly and why treat Yuzu with such clear apathy even when she clearly knows about Yuzu’s feelings? It leads the audience to want to follow these plot threads and see where they go and narrative writing clearly succeeds when it gets the audience member feeling that. It helps that Akane’s voice actress, Felecia Angelle, does such an incredible job shifting to all of Akane’s emotional extremes and back to her apathetic regular tone. It makes Akane feel like a more dynamic character and boasts the comedic antics of her scenes greatly to an extremely enjoyable point.

But now we gotta talk about the shows next girl for Seiji to pull his hair out over, Shikimi. While not a lot is introduced yet about her background the episode makes it very clear what Shikimi is. A completely sadistic sociopath. The second half of the episode starts all fine and dandy, just Guri and Seiji, helping a nerdy looking girl to get with her crush. However as soon as Shikimi gets Seiji alone in an abandoned hospital, she binds him and begins stabbing a spike through Seiji’s hand. No visible gore is seen but the writing, direction, and sound design really get across a skin crawling feeling of Seiji being tortured as Shikimi gets off on it. Other than that, there’s not much that I would deem could make me like or dislike her. At the moment, I am excited for her to become a character you love to hate to bring a more antagonistic air to the group dynamic in the show but only time will tell where Shikimi’s inclusion will take the group.

Overall this was a great episode of Love Tyrant. I’m appreciating the 11-minute episodic writing style these recent episodes have been going for. With the episode split into two connecting but clearly separate stories it lets the comedy writing come off very quick and punchy for the audience to laugh along with it and look over any of the quick stupid jokes as another rushes in to distract them right away. With a fast-paced comedy style and legitimate feel good characters, this is becoming my comedy of the season to watch to put me in a good mood and if that all sounded fun to you it may become yours as well. Even if it involves the main hero getting his palms stabbed repeatedly.