Kaguja-sama wa kokurasetai: Tensaitači no ren'ai zunósen - Season 1

This show feels like a rom-com meets documentary, it is such a stupid and weird combination of things that it could not possibly be anything but a ridiculous comedy... After all, a juxtaposition, combining the relatively incompatible, is both original and interesting to a certain extent. However, that is only if everything works and also depends on how funny it is. To be perfectly honest, I only occasionally found some of the gags funny, merely laughing at the absurdity of some of the situations, and occasionally (or perhaps quite a few times) at the running commentary. I can admit that I had quite a problem with the whole premise of this anime series, because as a closet romantic I am kind of convinced that a person in love is led by the instincts of his heart in certain situations because it is rarely the brain that ultimately decides what we do, and that the two characters could not have really fought their feelings like that, or lasted that long, and behaved the way they did in some situations (too often a voice inside my head was screaming: "This is bullshit" or "This is not how it should be"). A lot of things rubbed me up the wrong way as they were just not my idea of how romance works. Sure, it is meant to be a comedy and not to be taken seriously, although it felt like a documentary with a commentary that attempted to quite seriously rationalize most of the unacceptable romantic situations, which left me feeling very uncomfortable. I guess I just could not relax enough and get on their wavelength (except maybe the purely romantic scenes in the last episode, although it was once again very clichéd), or maybe it was really just a mediocre comedy anime series, with stand-alone episodes, featuring a few good gags, a juxtaposition of documentary and rom-com, and unfortunately, it was not that good and probably not that amusing either... To each their own, I for one am not going to award it more than 5.2/10. (07/04/2020)