First Love Monster

When it comes to romance, one thing you must keep in mind is that appearances aren't everything. I'm not just talking about personalities, either; what I mean is that chances are that a hot guy you've seen before is actually WAY younger than you. Let me get one thing straight; I knew all along that Hatsukoi Monster wasn't going to be good. The manga already isn't all that well-received, and when I read a few chapters of it myself, I found myself getting more bored with it than a lot of other shoujo manga I've read. Just for the sake of writing a review, though, I ended up watching the anime adaptation, and.... well, you'll understand when you read this review.

Ladies and little boys who look like gentlemen, here's my review of "Hatsukoi Monster", a.k.a. "First Love Monster".

Hatsukoi Monster follows a girl named Kaho Nikaidou, who is from a rich family and moves to an apartment building at the start of high school. When she arrives, she is almost hit by a truck and is saved by a handsome "young man". As it turns out, the "young man", Kanade Takahashi, is living in the same apartment building as Kaho; soon enough, Kaho confesses her newfound feelings for him. Kanade accepts her confession.... only to reveal to her the next day that he's a fifth grader. From there, a slightly chaotic story around their relationship forms.

As you can see, everything about the story of Hatsukoi Monster is cliché, even the fact that Kanade and two of his friends, Tomu and Gin, are elementary school students who look older; I can easily name two other anime that do the same thing (Recorder to Randoseru and Yoiko). However, it's the fact that all of the elementary school students who actually LOOK their age who are more mature than them, even their friend Kazu, that especially bugs me. Yes, they're young, but these three behave the most immaturely out of everyone, making poop jokes and other things like that; honestly, it's kind of cringey. Speaking of jokes, while a select few of them did manage to get me to grin a little bit, none of them actually got me to laugh. This anime plays itself off like a parody, but there's a right and a wrong way to do a parody; this isn't the right way.

As I mentioned before, Kanade and his friends have got to be some of the cringiest characters in anime history, and I wasn't really a fan of any of them. I'll give Kanade credit for one thing, though; he has said some pretty deep things throughout the series for a fifth grader. I still wasn't a fan of him, though. I really didn't like Kaho, either; except for one scene in the last episode, she spent the whole series as a wishy-washy Mary Sue (okay, maybe not exactly a Mary Sue, but the word just happened to come to my mind) with something obviously wrong with her brain if she's going to stick to loving Kanade with that age difference and his extreme childishness. The rest of the cast comes out either bland or just plain annoying; I will admit, though, I did kind of like Kazu at first.

The voice acting was decent, considering the fact that one of my favorite seiyuus, Yui Horie, is part of the cast - and as the protagonist, no less! (Too bad her voice couldn't save her character.) The opening and ending themes, "Innocence" and "Kimi ni Sasageru Chinkonka" both by Shouta Aoi, were skippable yet not bad songs. Hatsukoi Monster does have one thing I can honestly praise, though, and that is its animation. This year, Studio Deen gave us Konosuba and Haven't You Heard? I'm Sakamoto (with the former getting a second season next year), two favorable anime with good animation. Despite this one not turning out as well over all, the animation quality manages to survive; it's bright and colorful, and it's overall pretty to look at.

Unfortunately, despite its few up-points, my overall opinion of Hatsukoi Monster was not a pretty one. If I were to recommend it at all, it'd be to someone who is looking for a cliché only someone who has seen enough anime would be able to spot. Oh, and someone who finds all kinds of poop jokes funny! You can't forget the poop jokes!