Imagine that you are a normal high school-aged boy that has finally overcome a severe case of chuunibyou. After overcoming your delusions, you set up the path that you want to take: you want to go to medical school with the ultimate goal of being able to fix your childhood friend’s hip injury, allowing her to do kendo again. To do __this, you are going to study your ass off and ignore anything remotely related to love, since love is ‘just a distraction’. Now imagine that one day that your journey takes a major detour due to the prettiest girl in class asking you out. While she says she likes you, you know she is full of it. She reveals that she only wants to ‘go out’ with you because she wants to stop having to be confessed to every day. She reveals that she believes that ‘love is fake’, and that she is a nihilistic asshole that somehow got a hold of your middle school journal entries that you used to write out your fantasies. You have to go along with her since she will release your embarrassing journal entries, ending your high school career before it ever really took off, if you do not.

Welcome to Oreshura.

Oreshura is a 2013 anime adapted from a light novel with the same name. Eita Kidou, the main character, is a first-year high schooler that has decided to forgo anything related to relationships and love to pursue his goal of making it into medical school and becoming a doctor. Before this, he had a severe case of chuunibyou in middle school, which he has tried to erase any memory and trace from. One day, Masuzu Natsukawa, the most beautiful girl in his class (as clearly stated by the anime) randomly asks him to walk with her home, which she uses as a chance to ask him out. After he calls her bluff, she reveals that she has possession of his middle school journal, which he accidentally sold while selling other books to a used bookshop. Using the diary as blackmail, she gets him to agree to go out with her, on her condition that their relationship is only a decoy, or a ‘fake’ as she says, and that she is only going out with him so she will stop getting asked out (she has been asked out over fifty times in the last two months).

While Eita reluctantly goes along with Masuzu’s blackmail, Eita’s best friend (and designated ‘childhood friend’ girl), Chiwa Harusaki, strongly objects to them going out due to her already liking Eita. Masuzu ends up starting a club in order to make Chiwa more popular and get a boyfriend. From then, two other girls, Himeka Akishino and Ai Fuyuumi, join the club in later episodes to fully form the harem.

Eita Kidou is your standard rom-com/harem protagonist. Pretty clueless, and there is about one interesting thing about him, His one interesting thing is that he uses his chuunibyou skills that he acquired in the past to save the day in unorthodox ways. Nothing else of note.

The girl I mentioned in the first paragraph is not the first girl that is introduced, but she is the feature girl in this anime, and makes it what it is. Masuzu Natsukawa is seemingly the ‘most beautiful girl in school’, but is secretly an irony-poisoned nihilist. Her likes are Jojo’s and manipulating simpletons like Chiwa. She is also richer than you can ever imagine. She states that she is only dating Eita because she does not want to seem available, but it seems like she actually likes him, showing signs of jealousy often. Is this her being an asshole, or her hiding behind layers of irony to show her affection for Eita?

The next girl, and technically the first girl we meet, is Chiwa Harusaki, Eita’s childhood friend and next-door neighbor. She likes kendo, but is unable to do it anymore due to a devastating hip injury. She has loved Eita for who knows how long, but he never got the clue until it was too late. Now that he is dating Masuzu, she has to force the issue more and be more explicit.

The third girl introduced a little later is Himeka Akishino. She is impressed by Eita’s chuuni antics in the first act of the anime, and decides to play along, being the ‘princess’ to his ‘fighter’, Other than that, she is very quiet and has one of the worst haircuts I have ever seen in an anime.

The last girl introduced is Ai Fuyuumi. She is very interesting as a tsundere, since she sucks a lot at the tsun part, and is quite possibly mentally ill. She is also a hall monitor that will never bend the rules, unless if it is to get close to Eita. She is a very interesting girl, but you will have to get to episode six to know why since I rather not spoil more.

Now back to the story. I know that the story is not the most important part, or even why most people would watch an anime like this, but if you would strip the harem elements out of it,_ Oreshura_ would hold its own based on its story. Of course, that goes by the wayside as the anime progresses and more girls get introduced, but Oreshura is not a bad anime. It obviously is not for everyone, but more people would be into it then they might expect.

At its core, Oreshura is about finding purpose and the fun in life. Of course it is about the girls liking Eita too, but I will put that aside for now. After hanging up his chuunibyou delusions and becoming dedicated to school, Eita still occasionally relapses to those delusions, even if it is mostly for show. His passion for becoming a doctor and trying to find a fix to Chiwa’s hip is the main reason why Chiwa loves him in the first place. In the absence of kendo, Chiwa relies on Eita for support, which is why she becomes upset often after Masuzu becomes his girlfriend. She can not monopolize his time anymore and struggles to find something to replace it. Part of me believes that if this anime did not have any harem elements in it, and just had Masuzu and Chiwa being foils to each other, that it could have been potentially a great, and just not good, anime. The conflict between those two girls gets diluted once Himeka and Ai get introduced.

Masuzu is the opposite of Eita, in that she does not see the point in living, and has no goals for the future as far as we know. Her negative outview reflects her past experiences, which has made her become a nihilist. She is alone in this view, as Eita also ‘hates love’, but does not let that get to soil all facets of his life unlike Masuzu. Not much of Himeka before she is properly introduced is known, but we do know that her witnessing Eita’s chuuni antics at the end of the first arc of the anime shows the fun of acting like a total jackass like chunni-mode Eita. An otherwise gloomy looking girl with a ‘just fuck me up’ haircut now has many more reasons to get up and go to school, even if it is childish and uncool. For Ai, her unhealthy fixation on Eita is her main reason to live. Every girl, except for Masuzu, has had their life made better and more enjoyable through Eita. We can argue the same for Masuzu, but she hides behind so many layers of irony it is hard to tell what she really thinks most of the time.

Although I rated this anime higher when I first watched it in 2013, I fully appreciate what the anime offers more now than back then. Oreshura fell off slightly at the end, giving to its harem elements leading to an unsatisfying ending. It is especially unsatisfying since the anime currently does not and will probably never get a second season. I have never read the light novel Oreshura is based on, but I am guessing that the anime ending was original. Fun fact: the light novel is actually still going on, even though a new volume has not been written since 2017. Anyways, the ending was a cop-out, which probably was made incase Oreshura ever got a second season. A second season is never going to happen, so this mediocre conclusion is what we get.

If you are interested in harem anime, you have probably watched this anime already--if you have not, then you should definitely watch Oreshura. I would also recommend this show to those who are interested in slice-of-life and rom-com anime. For other types of anime fans, Oreshura is a bit of a hard sell, but I still would recommend that you give it a shot. It is a very interesting anime with genuinely funny moments and endearing (and unendearing) characters.