English Dub Review: Love Flops “Don’t Get So Grabby, You Clumsy Oaf!”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Asahi Kashiwagi begins a seemingly normal day at school and meets five strange girls (including one guy who is actually a girl) through increasingly strange encounters, and then finds out they all go to his new school, with one of them even being his teacher.

OUR TAKE

Oh boy, it’s been awhile since I’ve covered a harem anime…or maybe it’s just that I’ve blocked out of my mind if I’ve covered any of them recently. Regardless, Love Flops is a true return to form…ula, return to formula. Because it is the most shameless and formulaic take on the harem genre I have seen in years! We’ve got ALL the tropes! We’ve got the bumping into and groping them on the walk to school! We’ve got getting hit in the face with their underwear! We’ve got meeting the one who says they’re a guy but they’re definitely a girl! And we’ve got them all showing up at the same place and slapping the protagonist in the face over stuff he was in no way at fault for! Everything! It’s all there down to the letter and we’ve got eleven episodes to go! But seriously, Love Flops is a show from last year that, for some strange reason, is only now getting a dub release on HiDive, giving those who managed to escape its grasp the first time a chance to suffer with everyone who saw it all over again! Don’t you feel lucky? I sure do, boy oh boy.

The harem genre is a tried and tested as a formula where a piece of cardboard protagonist finds himself surrounded by a handful (sometimes several handfuls) of hot girls who inexplicably see him as the most desirable thing on earth for the most bare minimum of reasons. But with a year of hindsight, we know that Love Flops only SEEMS to be the most generic version of that formula, but does, in fact, have THE TWIST. What is THE TWIST? Well, honestly, it’s been so long since I heard about it that even I’m not entirely sure what exactly it was, but what I DO know is that there will be A TWIST somewhere down the line. It’s not a twist that I will spoil, but it is definitely one that will CHANGE YOUR ENTIRE PERCEPTION OF THIS ENTIRE ANIME ENTIRELY. It’s that big of a twist. But also, is it really? You’ll have to wait to find out. In the meantime, feel free to be as gobsmacked as I was that they actually put a scene in here of the protagonist being assaulted by a dog. Also, being confessed to by one of the girls at the end even though they just met will probably be important later.