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.
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