English Dub Review: Masamune-kun’s Revenge “The Boy Who Was Called Pig’s Foot”

Holding a grudge gone wrong.

 

Spoilers Below

Do you remember those bygone days of high school romances? Those whirlwinds of infatuation and stomach-butterflies? The will-she-won’t-she unknowns of your confessions of love under the sakura blossoms? I don’t, but then again, I was socially awkward. Just be glad you don’t go to the same school as Aki Adagaki, because wow, this chick has serious issues. Every guy who asks this young beauty out doesn’t just get turned down. No, the cold shoulder isn’t her thing. Instead, she has her maid do a thorough background search on him, finds out all his dirty secrets, and airs it to the school. Then she gives him a hurtful nickname. Wow. Seriously? This girl is the kind of person who has a great number of people plotting nasty revenge on her… oh. Like Masamune Makabe, maybe. Yeah, this guy is the new school heartthrob and his whole life mission is to make her fall in love with him. Then, he’s going to give her the takedown she deserves.

 

To be honest, rom-com slice-of-life anime aren’t normally my thing, but Masamune’s plight is one I can get behind. Five minutes in, and I want to slap Aki so hard that her ancestors feel it. Masamune’s thought processes gave me an odd vibe of Light Yagami from Death Note. Like, what if Light wasn’t a mass-murdering psycho and was a romantic protagonist instead… yeah…He’s thinking through his every move and even getting hurt on purpose in order to amp up his appeal. At first, this plays out as intense vanity, but when you realize his goals and where he came from, it’s halfway admirable. He was once in love with her, too. But she turned him down because he was fat. I get you buddy. The music got oddly intense during one portion of his inner monologue, which only increased the Yagami Factor.

 

The art, animation, and voice acting were all pretty standard. I didn’t see anything that blew me away, or anything that turned me off or broke me out of the show. The characters were your typical high school slice-of-life in design, and there wasn’t really much of a call for great animation. The dub was solid. Aki’s voice actress really brought out the snobbiness of the character and made me love to hate her as she ordered her maid around. They also did a good job casting Masamune’s friend Kojuro, who is an effeminate boy. The voice carried that ambiguity through, so the only way you could tell he was a he was from his uniform.

 

The script and music were the real stars here.The pacing was deceptively fast. I looked down at the scroll bar at what felt like the halfway point, and realized I was almost finished! Despite that, nothing of real importance felt like it happened. Then again, I’ve never been into this type of anime before. I could be convinced after Masamune-kun’s Revenge. The music was nothing that you would normally write home about, but it just seemed to fit with this story. It added that dramatic flair that the show needed, and gave you a much better key in on Masamune’s mental state.

I’d give it eight bento boxes out of ten.