How we can comprehend something inherently dumb and insipid in shows such as these are let loose into the anime medium has always made me wonder what drives us into having such a thing as guilty pleasures. When you imagine a show with those two terms in your mind, could you ever imagine a show like that trying to consider deep themes of free will and choice? The answer to that question would be yes and no.
Yes, because something like Ore no Nounai, and no, I refuse to spell out the absurdly long title, could've been thought out by writers just like in any creative process of writing out ideas for shows. On the other hand, no, because it would be impossible for an absurd RomCom like this to try to implement these themes perfectly, or at least it would take the skill of a talented writer to pull that off. This skill, sadly, isn't the case for Ore no Nounai; but that's not to say it doesn't have its charming moments in some areas.
The primary emphasis that the show wants to drive its plot towards is how our lives are often being created by ourselves through the choices we make in them. Since this is a RomCom, our bland perverted protagonist is confronted with many options that threaten his social status from girls, hence the title. Already the logic thrown at us is beyond erratic and not given much thought to how the "Absolute Choice" works precisely. For comedy's sake, there is an unfortunate lack of wit to the humor these choices give to the audience: Why are there only two choices? Most of the options shown to Kanade aren't very imaginative or creative for the record. When you have this opportunity to think of what you want the humor to go through, you need to bring out the big guns, or it'll become tedious.
The comedy works through some of the character interactions that do not involve the choice system. The chemistry between the girls and Kanade isn't the greatest because the girls don't leave a lasting impression. There are exceptions to this, them being Yukihira and Chocolat. Yukihira does come across as a bland dandere character until she finally comes out of her shell. We get to see what she is thanks to the surprisingly well-done performance of newcomer Yui Kondou, who gives Yukihira a funny mood swing-type of vibe to her archetype that works quite smoothly. Chocolat gives a larger-than-life personality to Ore no Nounai, despite her cliched nature when she is first introduced. While not as unique as Yukihira, her presence provides some nice, needed wholehearted fun to the comedy and story.
RomCom protagonists generally considered entertaining or not annoying are a rarity, and Kanade is no exception. Not everything that he does or says is immediate eye-rolls. There are a few notable moments where he is pretty humorous. Still, he eventually does go full force into bland, stereotypical protagonist territory, where he acts incredibly against the odds of how a typical teenager in the real world would react. This kind of thing would be done good in a comedic sense if the jokes weren't stuff that we have already seen on countless shows like Ore no Nounai and don't do anything with them, then copy and paste them into the narrative.
Inevitably, the artwork tries its best to make the girls look the cutest and sexiest that they can be. They succeeded in this domain by giving a lot of emphasis to coloring the characters, making them very easy to identify and helping us remember a particular part of their design. The blushing skin was nice in escalating the sexual tension from looking at the girls and their cute blushing faces. The sporadic animation helps in giving the humor some significant traditional face reactions that we are used to in anime. However, there were moments when CG was used in some car scenes that looked dreadful, but thankfully, there's not much to be remembered in infamy.
The quality of the music can be construed as underwhelming in the actual show itself with your typical synthesizers. However, the opening delivers a great song to showcase the show's tone. Even though the OP is quite lazy in how it was choreographed, the song at least fits well with the things going on in the opening. However, I found myself perplexed by how the ending song was produced for Ore no Nounai. It didn't fit very well to the tone in that it felt like it was more suited to an action show than a romantic comedy.
Ore no Nounai is a strange attempt to milk the high school comedy genre into new territory. The result wasn't as fulfilling as the creators' initial premise before being released, but that shouldn't suggest terrible quality. There isn't anything inherently offensive or needlessly degrading to anyone's intelligence or the people who try to think too hard about it. It is convoluted in its subject matter and doesn't even bother to push it any further than it generally tries to be another ecchi comedy. Even talking about how we look at ecchi comedies in anime in a different spectrum is at least a hopeful note in the future.
Grade: C
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