English Dub Review: Love Flops “I’m Glad I Got to Meet You”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Despite mourning the loss of Mongfa, Asahi and the other girls continue making their way towards Aoi. As they keep going, Karin and Irina stay behind to hold off opposing characters, and Amelia allows Asahi to make his way to where Aoi is but stays behind herself. Each of them reflect on when they felt they first became “real” and gained genuine feelings for Asahi, all of which came from when they remembered Ai’s memories. Asahi reluctantly keeps going to meet Aoi and stop her.

OUR TAKE

If you thought Mongfa’s death was just a one off, turns out no, they’re really killing off all of the girls, possibly even Aoi if things go really bad in the finale. Or ARE they? The tone of this whole show doesn’t really seem like it would go in that direction, even with that sudden shift when Aoi started going rogue and deleting everyone temporarily. It’s not great when I have to wait until the next episode to know how I feel about the one I’m reviewing, mainly because there’s the very real chance this will all get undone so we can have a happy harem ending, in which case none of these sacrifices are really gonna mean much of anything, which then undercuts all the drama and tension they’re trying to hold up by giving them tearful and sentimental goodbyes as if they’re all about to stop existing. This might just be because I have Gurren Lagann on the brain lately, but when a similar episode occurred near the end of THAT show, the deaths felt real and costly, even if they were just supporting characters, and it felt within the show’s capabilities to carry the weight of that.

Can’t really see that happening in a harem show, even a slightly subversive one, but hey let’s consider that kind of ending for a second while we wait for the finale. Mongfa, Amelia, Karin, and Irina are capital D dead. They’re not coming back, even if they’re reuploaded, because those wouldn’t be the ones we’ve been following anyway. So, with all of that in mind, Asahi is about to talk Aoi down from…I guess killing a bunch of people? Also, the remnants of the memories of Ai, Asahi’s dead childhood friend and basis for all five of the AI girls, is somewhere in the program too. With all of that to consider and keep in mind, what kind of ending are we heading towards exactly? Even if Asahi could stop Aoi, does that mean she’ll be the one he picks because she’s the last one standing, or does the fact that she has basically killed her competition mean she’s out of the running for Asahi’s heart? And does Ai still exist now? Can she be cloned and reuploaded? What are the ethics of that? Well, we’ll maybe get the answers to some of those as we flop into the ending of Love Flops. And it’s looking like that title is gonna be pretty prophetic.