Romance Killer

I felt like I needed something short and the first couple of episodes had auto-downloaded, so I tried the Romantic Killer anime and managed to power through the whole thing in, like, two days. It's based on a manga of the same name by Wataru Momose.

Anzu has three needs in her life: games, chocolate, and her cat Momohiki. Her joy at getting the latest game in the mail takes a sudden turn when the graphics and gameplay seem unbelievably cheesy...and then Riri, a weird little wizard thing appears. Riri explains that she's been chosen as the very first test subject -- Anzu must find love. Anzu wants nothing to do with the idea, but she'd already clicked past the terms & conditions and now she's stuck. And Riri has confiscated her three loves -- all her games are gone, she can't get near chocolate, and her parents have suddenly moved to the US for a job and taken the cat with them, leaving her on her own. 

She soon runs (literally) into the first ikemen -- Tsukasa Kazuki -- when she opens a door, knocking his phone out of his hand and breaking it. He says not to worry about it (in a nice twist, we learn why later) and she bounces, glad that she's avoided an otome-ish trigger event. But Riri keeps interfering and Tsukasa winds up living in Anzu's house with her. Unlike her first impression, Anzu learns that he's actually a decent guy and she warms to him as she figures out he has no interest in dating. And he begins to open up to her precisely because she is so actively avoiding any romantic entanglements with him and treats him like she'd treat any friend. In fact, growing up, she mostly had guy friends that she played games with. 

So Riri introduces a new ikemen to complicate things -- Junta, who says he was her childhood friend. But Anzu has no recollection of ever having some handsome guy friend in elementary school and assumes that the poor guy's memory has been manipulated by Riri. I suspected not, and was proved correct many episodes later -- he was, in fact, a good friend of hers back then...but he was a chubby gamer boy that she played a cat game with. He moved away and began playing baseball because he'd once heard Anzu said her type was sporty guys and she liked baseball. So, years, later, he's now sporty handsome dude and also super sweet and with a bit of a complex. He's had a crush on her for years and, through Riri's machinations, he too winds up moving in with her. I do have to say that Anzu's realisation that he really is a childhood friend was perfect. 

To round out the ikemen, there's also Hijiri, a literal prince with an attitude. Anzu immediately rejects anything to do with him, which, once again, provokes his interest. To be fair, he grows as he actually takes a job and listens to what she's saying about him. And there's not really any romantic interest from him--he's just so confused about why she's not interested in him. He started off really annoying, but as his character grew (as testified by his bodyguard, who was a joy as a deadpan character), he turned out okay and actually not totally selfish.

Lastly, there's Riri, who first appears in human form as a girl pretending to be Anzu's cousin, but then later pops in as a male. There might be some hints of the weird little wizard caring too much about Anzu; definitely more than they are supposed to, but there's no hint at the end (to me) that Anzu feels anything but a brotherly/sisterly annoyance. She saves him/her at the end when he's supposed to be sent down to dungeon detail for screwing up and caring too much.

There's also Anzu's close friend Saki, who is whatever you'd call the female version of an ikeman. They have a nice relationship, which was great. 

While there's no full resolution at the end and it's definitely left open for a second season (which is interesting, because the manga is apparently finished and ended the same way), it feels to me like Tsukasa is the one. He does grow to love Anzu because of her nature and loyalty. He's got a lot of trauma going on due to an older female stalker and Anzu is instrumental in helping him through that. She makes him able to smile again, something he hadn't been able to do in a while. 

I really did love their character arcs together and how they were woven together. While this show definitely tries to poke fun at and subvert the normal tropes, it's also really about ALL kinds of love, whether it's friendship or whatever, and loyalty. So there's a lovely found family aspect of it too. But, for me, I definitely ship Anzu and Tsukasa, though Junta is also a cinnamon bun lovely fellow. I do hope there is a second season.

Takane & Hana (manga version)

Ha. Okay, so I finally...and I do mean FINALLY finished the Takane & Hana manga series. I started reading it when it first came out and then did a post about it when I tried the live action version back in 2020 (which I didn't wind up watching any more of--Takane was just so wrong.) So...it's been a long time. We finished collecting the books awhile ago but I had to sit and watch kiddo as he took his makeup exams, so I had some reading time and figured it was a good time to finish it up. I went back to volume 9 and then barrelled my way through volume 18 + the extra episode booklet the last volume came with.

Okay. I feel like I have to reiterate again that I'd really not be in favour of this relationship in real life. A 26 year old should not date a 16 year old. Okay, they didn't technically date until it was 27/17, but that's honestly not really any better. And, yes, if it was a 20 year old a 30 year old, that wouldn't be ideal BUT it would be a lot less skeevy. I really really wish she'd written it as Hana at 17 to start and Takane at 25. It'd still be wrong but not AS WRONG. Anyway.

All that said, the author does manage to make it work, possibly partly because Takane has a lot of moments where he is very, very conscious of why this SHOULD NOT BE A GOOD THING. And, as over the top and insane as he is, he does also do his very best to not take advantage. 

But, yeah, in real life, just, NO.

But this isn't real life. It's manga. And the series is very fun. Hana is such a strong character and Takane, for all his posturing, has a good heart. So it all works. 

The last half dealt with a few bit things -- Takane's mom coming back into the picture, for one. She was unexpectedly not as chaebol crazy as one would think. And some "enemies" became, if not exactly friends, at least people that would not actively move against our lovely couple. I did love when they had their New Year's trip to visit Hana's grandparents -- who had been warned ahead of time -- and grandpa wanted to kill Takane...but then they wound up bonding over mochi making. 

The last few volumes were actually very remarkably angst free. There were threats from an aunt, but the grandpa chairman was no threat. When they finally go to tell him, he readily confesses that he knew already. And, seriously, I expected that. He'd have to be blind not to be able to tell that Hana wasn't her sister. She's obviously a high schooler, even when she's all makeup and wig. And he's no idiot. Manipulative, sure, but not an idiot.

But, there were a lot of nice moments once they did officially "get together" and weirdly wound up married before Takane had even had a chance to propose. I'm not going to recap all of it. I'll just say that yes, I'm glad I read this one. I will probably read it again in the future some time. I enjoyed it. The art was good. The side characters were also interesting and fairly well developed (though it's definitely the "Takane and Hana" show). And kudos to the author for taking something inherently skeevy and making it work and getting you to root for them.

The Ice Guy and his Cool Female Colleague

Little dude and I watched the anime The Ice Guy and his Cool Female Colleague recently and it was good fun. He says it was "pretty good" and I thought it was a good joint watch as it's very sweet--sweeter than I expected. 

So, based on the title, I'd thought it was going to be one of those shows with a possibly tsundere male lead (or perhaps on both sides). But, it turns out the "Ice Guy" refers to the fact that he's actually the descendant of a Snow Woman. Ha. 

He's literally about the warmest backwoods cinnamon bun you can imagine -- he literally freezes up when he's nervous, he blizzards when he's happy, and out pop adorable little snowmen when he's full of joy. It's very squee-able. 

And his cool female colleague is really more of a deadpan lady, not at all mean or distant. She's just never been good at expressing her emotions. 

We watched the whole season and I do hope there's more. It's just a very sweet, innocent show. Not a lot happens but it's cotton candy fluff. I don't think there's much angst at all; they both like each other though, I think, he's more cognisant of it. He knows he likes her. She's more the type of oh, I enjoy being around him but kind of clueless.

The side characters are cute as well, including a guy that's descended from a phoenix and a lady from a kitsune. The little sister even avoids that horribly annoying trope of loving her big brother too much. It's the kind of show you want to watch when you don't want to stress or think too much and just need something happy and cute.