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Up until now I have had very little experience with any shoujo anime or manga. The only one, that I've had completed so far was Sugar Soldier, which I enjoyed far more than initially expected.
Having now finished "Wolf Girl and Black Prince" I am so incredibly glad that my first experience did not come from this one, because my god.
In all fairness, I came into this show with already quite a bias, having heard from friends, that watched the show in their teenage years, how much of an embarrassing shitshow this title was going to be. I am saying this to put into context how shocked I was with the overally quality being even lower than actually expected.
It is not just the story and the characters that dont work to any satisfying degree on any possible level but they are a great place to start. These are not characters. Neither do they show any resemblance to any actual human being beyond a surface level. It doesnt matter how illogical or infuriating they behave in any given scene, the anime will pretend that it is actually a master of story writing with its many "emotional" moments it pretends it earned. The only character I could tolerate was Ayumi. I like Ayumi. She did nothing wrong once.
But the worst offender has to have been Kyouta. It is actually baffling how much of a contrast there is between how much he acts like an unlikable, whiny, spoiled child and how the show acts at any given point as hes actually the most attractive human being on this earth since the conception of man. I am still trying to find a single positive trait about him. At his best most he does the bare minimum. He is very rarely at his best.
The overally production isnt any better in the slightest. It has actually been awhile since I have seen an anime where it just seems so obvious that not a single person cared. Neither in terms of direction, animation or soundtrack was theire any ounce of fucks that were given. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe someone somewhere really had some passion for this project. But if so then I did not notice.
The Opening of this anime must have been the funniest example of this. So incredibly bland and void of subastance for the one thing in your production where you want to shine the most. I especially like the last 15 seconds where it feels like the song and visuals were ready to end but someone on the team was like "Shoot, we still have to fill 15 seconds. Quick, add some scenes that mean nothing!"
However, the most aggrevating part must have been just how overall toxic the message of this anime is.
"Just keeping hanging onto your toxic partner, he is just reallyyyy bad at conveying his feelings. Dont you dare try and find someone that treats you better or doesnt verbally abuse you. Thats not real love."
I personally know many friends that actually read/watched this title when they were growing up (for some reason it was reasonably successful in Germany) and the "moral" that children get out this just kind of suck.
I didnt want this anime to stand out among my ratings but I even struggled to justify giving it something above a 10. It is a piece of art that, whose only redeeming quality to me has been, that I can now appreciate good shows a little bit more. So thanks I guess.
Dont watch this, nothing is being lost.