Masamune-kun no Revenge might be a rare example of me holding a higher opinion on an anime than the average person on Anilist and MyAnimeList does. It’s not that I’m a harsh critic - it’s more that most people that rate anime like to give generous ratings. I know everyone has their different metrics when it comes to rating something, people who rate anime mostly rating it on the ‘Enjoyment Factor’, which at times has nothing to do if the anime is actually good or not. It can sometimes give someone a false read on an anime. With that being said, I’m surprised that Masamune-kun only has a 65% rating on AniList (6.8 on MyAnimeList) - it’s definitely nowhere near the best romantic comedy anime out there. Hell, it’s probably not the best romantic comedy from the season it aired (Winter 2017). At the same time, I’ve seen much worse anime have higher ratings on the same site (I’ll not name any names to avoid having people telling me to die again). It makes me beg the question; what gives? Is it that Masamune-kun doesn’t have enough fanservice? Is it that Masamune himself is a rejection of the typical pitiful rom-com protagonist? Is it that Adagaki is too little of a tsundere? Is it that she’s too much of a tsundere? I don’t think I could come up with a conclusive answer if I tried, but it doesn’t matter anyway.

The ‘revenge’ in Masamune-kun no Revenge is this: Makabe Masamune, our main character, wants Aki Adagaki, the ‘main girl’, to fall in love with him for the sake of dumping and humiliating her. Why, you may ask? Because eight years ago, Makabe, then a short and fat kid, was bullied by her, along with every other kid that made fun of him for being a ‘fat rich kid’, but especially by her. Her nickname for him, ‘Pig’s Foot’, sticks to him to this day. Despite all of this, Makabe confesses his love to Aki, being rejected to no one’s shock. While I can’t garner much sympathy for Makabe, I have respect for the way he ‘trains’ to get back at her. In between the eight years from that rejection to the beginning of the anime, Makabe has transformed himself physically and mentally. His workout regime as far as we know is simple - A shit-ton of pushups, cardio, and from him having a home gym set up in his room, a lot of other things. His training hasn’t exactly made him look like DK Metcalf or young Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I don’t know many 16-year-olds that look like either of them. It seems to me that the mangaka of the manga this anime is based on doesn’t know all that much about weight training, working out, and the diets of bodybuilders/guys who work out every day. In his room, there’s no squat rack to do squats, and no bench to do any bench presses, the two exercises being the most commonly known and done weight lifting exercises. He doesn’t even have a Smith Machine, which would let him do both without having to have a spotter in case he’s trying to max out. Being rich, he could definitely obtain one if he wanted it. And it’s not just that - while Makabe is averse to foods with ‘high calories’ and ‘fat’, it’s common for athletes to eat a lot of food when they’re training, the most famous example being Michael Phelps’s ‘12,000 calorie a day diet’, which included three-slices of french toast, three chocolate chip pancakes, an entire pizza, and enough energy drinks to kill a horse. Of course, Makabe doesn’t train as hard as someone who’s won 23 Olympic gold medals, but it’s hard for me to believe that Makabe has been cutting for eight years. Even if Makabe was cutting the whole time, there’s no scene with him eating or talking about grilled chicken, which is the staple for bodybuilders who want to eat something with high protein and low fat. His lack of knowledge about supplements is exposed when questioned about his vitamin intake by Neko Fujinomiya. While I don’t expect Makabe to be cycling, especially considering his slim stature, I would expect him to know about whey, creatine, and some of the million other weightlifting supplements out there. Ultimately, I could chalk this all up to Makabe being dumb, but I think a lack of info about working out and ‘workout culture’ from the mangaka and/or the anime studio is the main culprit in this situation. Socially, he has ‘trained’ to ‘talk to girls’ by reading a copious amount of shoujo manga. Often taking lines from series that he’s read and using them on Aki, his strategy of being a shoujo manga main character is so-so. It’s painfully obvious that Makabe has little experience with talking to women, or having friends in general - three scenes in particular being; when he freezes up when trying to add his class’s rep to his contact list, showing that he has zero people added on the app that’s supposed to represent LINE; every time a woman calls him, with him taking a good minute to answer every time due to nerves; and his lack of experience at karaoke. He doesn’t act like a total loser, but it’s clear that good looks will only get him so far. As silly as using shoujo manga as your basis as to how you’re going to swoon girls, it’s better than, say, reading books by pick-up artists or anything as contemptible. It makes me wonder - what else did Makabe do while he was gone for eight years? In the anime, that part of his life wasn’t shown, but I’m guessing it was eventually shown more in the manga (update: It was in the second chapter).

Moving on, Makabe’s ‘victim’, Aki Adagaki, is what I’d call your bog-standard rich tsundere main girl. In the first scene in the anime, she is confessed by a ‘super hot’ guy in a Romeo and Juliet type fashion (with her being on the school roof while he’s outside at the entrance of the school), and cuts him down, revealing that he bought a volume of a gender-swap manga last week, his internet power fantasy novel which has the main character sharing his name, and the fact that he has a hairy mole on his chest. She gives him the nickname ‘Moley’, having her maid, Yoshino Koiwai, unwrap a twenty-five feet long banner with ‘Moley’ on it. I know this scene was an exaggeration to introduce her character, but it makes me wonder; why do men line up to confess to her even after seeing how brutally she cuts down other clueless men? Who knows. No one else is humiliated to the degree that guy was, so it might have been a one-time thing. Aki has a huge secret though. It’s enough of a secret that no one except Yoshino knows about it. The secret? It’s that she has an unstoppable appetite. Makabe should be eating like her if we’re being honest. Her typical lunch is Five ‘Explosive’ Croquette Buns, four Cutlet Sandwiches, and god knows how many bentos. While having a huge appetite isn’t exactly a third rail in contemporary girl culture, I can see why Aki would want to hide the fact that she could close a buffet down for the night if she wanted to. It doesn’t seem to hurt her weight-wise, which I can only guess is due to her having great metabolism as well. Other than that, the only thing that separates her from other ‘rich tsundere girls’ is that she’s more flippant than average. Aki’s assistant, Yoshino, is more interesting. Hiding under the veneer of a slow and clumsy girl, Yoshino is actually ruthless and machiavellian. She decides to help Makabe on his quest to ‘get revenge’, believing that Aki has to ‘reexamine herself a bit’ and that getting dumped by Makabe could help her behave a little more like someone who isn’t on her high horse all the time. While Makabe’s revenge would be Aki’s just deserts, whether or not it would actually make her think about how she treats others is questionable. To paraphrase Slavoj Žižek, “There’s nothing liberating in suffering”. There’s as much chance that Aki would double down on her misandrist behavior as the chance that it would help her ‘reflect on her actions in the past’. Being bullied doesn’t ‘teach a lesson’ to the bullied that ‘bullying is bad’. In fact, it does the opposite. The same for kids who have abusive parents and/or guardians. Nevertheless, Yoshino’s intervention into Makabe’s plans is a lifesaver for him. Without her, he would’ve gotten nowhere. The level of control she has over Aki, who is as socially maladroit as Makabe, sometimes leads to funny situations. The one that sticks out the most is when Aki shows up to a date with Makabe, she shows up wearing a magical girl cosplay, being tricked by Yoshino into believing that this is ‘proper dress etiquette’ for first dates. I know that description doesn’t sound that funny, but if you get to episode three, you’ll hopefully understand why I think it’s funny. Other characters of note include; Kojuurou Shuri, your typical ‘girlish looking boy’ that every anime rom-com series has to have for some reason; Neko Fujinomiya, a mysterious girl that plays a huge role in the second arc of this anime, and thankfully doesn’t become fodder after that; and Kanetsugu Gasou, another mysterious guy who looks like how Makabe would look if he never did a sit-up - this man would be the ‘Fat Bastard’ to young Makabe’s ‘Porky’.

There isn’t really one thing I can point to emphasize why I don’t think that it’s a bad show. The morals, from what I can pick up from it, are solid. Looking handsome can help you out in life, but you won’t get everything handed to you on a silver platter because of it. No one would notice or care if Makabe was 17% body fat instead of 7%. The only scenes where it matters are those over-dramatic scenes where girls are like “who’s that guy?” and whatever. I could do without those, but I’m not the main audience here. In the grand scheme of things, the fact that Makabe went through what I presume a rigorous self-improvement regime for years up to this point means little to the plot at hand. Just because you are ‘hot’ doesn’t mean that girls will line up to date you. Women are harder to get than that (well, most of them anyway). Working out just so girls will like you is quite possibly the worst reason why you could start working out. It’s a good way to become either the biggest narcissist ever or an MGTOW loser. Makabe IS a narcissist, but in a ‘former fat-kid turned ‘hottie’’ way and not a ‘4chan told me this is how I get women’ way. The point is that if you decide to start working out, do it because you either want to be healthier or because you want to lift more weight - not because of a girl. Another, albeit a more ‘no shit’ point, is that is it worth Makabe to go through all of this just to ‘get revenge’? This shallow quest to capture Aki’s heart just to crush it...is it worth it? For the point of this series, it is, but it begs the question; is Makabe being truthful to himself? For those who’ve ever watched a romance anime before, you probably already know the kayfabe that’s going on here. It’s up to Makabe to realize it for himself, and not others.

One thing that is unique about Masamune-kun is how average it is. As in, there are no great moments, but at the same time, there are no moments that wanted me to turn it off and drop it. Even if the anime committed the great sin of trying to have a humorous part in a heavy scene, I didn’t mind that much since the ‘humor’ was only in passing and didn’t derail the whole scene, unlike in other anime of the same genre. What makes me give this anime a higher rating than ‘average’ is that I left it having a positive experience. With an anime like this, your experience with it can depend heavily on if you like a character a lot, and if they ‘win’ or not. I didn’t have any strong affection for any character, so I was watching this from a neutral perspective. The lack of a conclusive ending could have turned people off too. The ending hints at ‘something new’ that never happens in the anime universe since the only thing released after this was a bad OVA. It’s to be expected though, since this anime was an adaptation of a manga that was at the time still ongoing. While it’s annoying now, it makes sense that they used the ending to promote the manga - if it worked, I don’t know. I know that I’m going to at least attempt to read the manga, due to it not being terribly long. The manga has been officially translated into English, so being able to read it won’t be that hard either. From what I’ve seen, the unadapted parts of the manga are more wild and give more context to some parts of the anime. Unfortunately, I already spoiled myself when writing this review, so the reveals won’t be shocking. It also helps that this anime doesn’t pretend to be anything more high-brow than it actually is, while at the same time not seeping into being irredeemable gutter shit (compared to other anime of the same genre). It knows what it is, and doesn’t pretend to be anything other than it.

The $64,000 question here is: Is this anime worth watching? I’d say definitely if you’re into this type of anime. It’s not the best rom-com anime out there, but it’s good enough. Most of the complaints I have about the anime have to do something that has little to do with the actual plot. While yes, the mangaka and anime studio might have a pedestrian understanding of working out, most people watching this don’t give a shit about that, or won’t even notice it. It was more humorous to me since I have a little more understanding of the insane world of ‘being fit’. The overall story and characters are average, but don’t leave a bad taste in my mouth. While the humor is on par with the average anime, some parts are genuinely hilarious. I still haven’t found the reason why people that watched this show gave it such a mediocre rating. Maybe it’s because for this show, and this show only, they graded it solely based on objective measures. Who knows - I probably don’t want to know, since the reasons will be esoteric in nature and have something to do with what THAT person likes in a show. I’m not trying to defend Masamune-kun. It can be considered uninspiring, bland, and cookie-cutter, but to me, it was still enjoyable to watch.