Overview:
A young man cursed with misfortune finds himself tied to an alien wife.
Our Take:
I was really excited to cover this when it first started up. I’ve been going through a lot of older, classical anime and this one was on my list. I saw that it was being remade and thought “Perfect! I’ll just watch that!”. Jumping on the review opportunity was the biggest mistake ever because now I’m tied to it, I HAD to watch it now. That’s the double-edged sword of a job like this I suppose but I’ve found more gems than duds I feel.
But this might be the biggest dud, it’s between this and Skate-Leading Stars for the worst show I’ve reviewed, though Rent-a-Girlfriend could give them both a run for their money. Now, that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I think I owe it to you all to tell you why I disliked this show so much.
You might notice a trend for me when it comes to my reviews that I value characters more than just about anything. You can have a mid-story but if the characters are fantastic then it makes up for that. So, it stands to reason that horrible characters could ruin a show and that is more or less what happened here. Pretty much all of the characters are annoying in one way or another, and if they aren’t they aren’t featured enough to contribute in any sort of positive way.
The worst of the worst has to be the main character Ataru Moroboshi, he is one of the worst leads I’ve seen in a rom-com and that is saying a lot because Kazuya from Rent-a-Girlfriend exists. Look, the pervert archetype is nothing new in anime, it’s pretty much existed since the beginning. But Ataru is just the worst. It’s almost like he has the worst case of short-term memory loss known to man. When he first meets Lum he loves her and thinks she’s the most sexy thing he’s ever seen. But then when he actually gets a chance to marry her he never once shows any attraction to her ever again. Now this could be fine as a character flaw but we never dive deep into these characters at all. There’s next to no backstory for any of them outside of Lum and they don’t change in any meaningful way. It’s a gag series and that is all it focuses on much to its detriment.
The voice talent is not bad, Sentai tends to use their own group and I was surprised that this show included some new, up-and-coming talent. Cat Thomas was the only one I recognized from her work as Yui in My Teen Romantic Comedy which I loved. Jade Kelly voices Lum and this was the first series I had heard her in and I liked how she did. Hearing her yell “Darliiiing!!” got annoying at times but that is more of a writing issue than anything. Going to briefly mention Jack Stansbury who played Mendo because while I hadn’t heard him at all he does get the lead role in the much better Oshi no Ko which blew me away.
I think that the biggest annoyance for this series is that it is getting a continuation next year. It technically has two seasons so far but it felt more like a split cour season than two separate seasons to me. The only positive thing I can think of is that maybe… just maybe there will finally be some great character development that happens in the future. I mean this is a beloved series for a reason right? Maybe it will get better because honestly, it can’t get much worse.