I have no familiarity with the original work what so ever, never even heard of it. But god damn, this has to be one of the best first episodes of an anime I've seen in ages. It's so brutally simple, cartoonishly elite student counsel president and VP are in love with each other, but both are ridiculously prideful so instead of communicating or indeed expressing their affection in any normal way, shape, or form; they're trying to get the other to declare their love to them. The declarer's image of an independent, powerful, sophisticated, and aloof titan of world commerce and society will be ruined and they will forever be the overly-emotional, beta in the relationship while the other gets to bask in ultimate victory in their hard fought war of love.

It's essentially a two tsunderes fall in love but won't admit it story line with the pride elevated to an utterly absurd level. The goofy mishaps of other romcoms are gone, replaced with calculated and precise strategies of two genius masterminds giving their all to gain the upper hand. The show plays heavily on the tropes of gambling anime (as evidenced by all those playing cards in the intro and on the poster) and almost comes off as some intoxicating hybrid of Kaiji and Toradora. Indeed, it does an amazing job of selling Love as a War and shows us a pair of extremely likable and impressive combatants. Likewise, the supporting character/collateral of the first episode is a true idiot savant, waltzing through this battlefield without a care in the world and suffering not so much as a scratch.

The animation and art direction on this show are amazing. The OP blew me away with it's slick Bondian style and the rest of the episode likewise carried over that high level of production. The show, like many gambling anime (among other genres) uses overt visuals to lend a sense of grandeur equal to the intellect being thrown around. The animation was beautifully smooth and direction and "camera" work amazing for anime. The expressions also really stood out, while not as overt as say Hinamatsuri or Ashobi Ashobase, they are so effective and so perfectly timed to the comedy I was blown away.

The soundtrack was fun (once again, the OP is gold) and the mixing was good. VAs did stellar work but I couldn't help wishing I was watching a good dub of this, between the amazing animation and rapid pace of some dialogue I was struggling to keep up.

I'll admit, I'm getting bad about reviewing shows before they've really had a chance to prove themselves. But I honestly can't see this show going bad. It's base off of what I understand to be a really good manga, its shown it has amazing characters in an amazing premise and was executed damn near perfectly. Sort of a complete and total breakdown of Darling in the Franxx proportions, I can't see this show being anything less than a god tier romcom.

I was concerned 2019 wasn't going to be able to follow up 2018's act but this show is making that fear look redundant.