Overall, better than I was anticipating. The show’s about Ayla, but she’s definitely not the most interesting character here. Far and away, Yuki is consistently more compelling, and Masachika too, to an extent. It was very strong out the gate if you can excuse some of the heavy fanservice, but it definitely began to teeter off in the last third. Those speeches weren’t as convincing as they needed to be for the moments to feel justified.

They’ve got room to make the follow-ups interesting, but I don’t have a tonne of faith based on some of the ways it’s been written so far, and I can’t say this season was particularly satisfying by itself, either. Spoiler warning from here on out!

Characters weren’t especially multi-dimensional and we didn’t see very much of progression from them. They were setting up interesting character dynamics, and that really carried them early on, but then we don’t really see anyone changing as they face the challenges ahead. The closest we get to that is Masachika eventually giving in to joining the student council. But we don’t really see what changed about him to do that. Early on this was actually quite a strong point about his character, his past trauma clearly interfering with his ability to believe that Ayla’s obvious flirting is sincere…

… and just in case you didn’t get it, they really drive it home… The complete absence of active listening did get a little rough throughout the show. A lot was being said that really didn’t need to be. That was internal monologue too, which you usually want to use as little as you need. Every line of internal monologue should provide new insight we didn’t have before.

But by FAR the best part of this show was Yuki when she was being herself. The humour was degenerate, a bit crass, but she is so charismatic when she’s on screen. There’s plenty of genuinely funny lines here, the show was always way more interesting whenever she was present as her true self.

She’s easily the highlight. It’s in the same way that The Great Ace Attorney was always peak every single time Herlock Sholmes was on screen.

The structure/pacing was pretty standard for a season intended to be continued. I think my biggest issue is that I don’t feel as though they’ve very clearly outlined character motivations; I don’t know why Masachika is doing anything for anybody right now. It’s not like he’s said he actually likes Alya, I’m pretty sure they were trying to imply he still doesn’t actively have feelings for her.

Music-wise, nothing bad. I remember kinda bumping to the BGM when I took this one screenshot, felt like I was trying to sneak around, but the clap of my ass cheeks kept alerting the guards.

# Takeaway They’ve set themselves up for a season 2 that could be interesting. There’s still a lot of questions left; will Masachika actually fall for Ayla? When will Ayla find out he’s always been able to speak Russian? When will they find out Yuki and Masachika are related? These were all revealed to us early on, and why the show hooks you so instantly, but because they didn’t keep it moving, it started to wane, and I fear the trend will continue. If we get a season 2 and that doesn’t definitively end the narrative, it’s probably over. They haven’t created enough interesting ideas to coast, the dynamics need to shift more. There needs to be more twists and turns.

It's because of this that I can’t rate it very highly compared to something like Pseudo Harem, which I reviewed recently. Though this show might be a little better in terms of the moment-to-moment writing, overall, it fails to deliver in a truly satisfying way, and it’s going to bank too heavily on the execution of the follow-up season, which we don’t have yet. That, and this one definitely started to get less engaging in the last third. Pseudo Harem did a better job with character growth, too.

I still think it was fairly decent, but it’s somewhat difficult to recommend considering it needs a season 2 to be worth the investment, and I’m not super confident that the writers can deliver in said season 2 based on their current habits. We’ll see!

By the way, check out Alya’s VA’s profile, it’s almost as if she was born for this role, lmao.