English Dub Review: Love Flops “Wow! It’s Huge!”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

The girls, and Ilya, win a trip to a hot spring, with the girls going in one room and Asahi and Ilya going in another. The two totally manly men enjoy a time in sauna, only for it to be revealed that Ilya…is a girl! What a shocking twist! Apparently she was raised by her father to act as a man, but Asahi tells her that she should live the way she wants, which is as a girl whose name is Irina.

OUR TAKE

Another week, another episode of this show that picks typical harem anime cliches out of a hat and then throws them into a blender that pours out a finished script. This time it’s the obligatory hot spring episode, coupled with the episode that reveals the androgynous character who says they are a guy turns out to actually be a girl, which is such a non-twist at this point that it would actually be MORE surprising if they just had that character really be a dude. And since Ilya, or rather Irina, has her entire character begin and end with that cliche, There’s sadly not much to actually say about her as a character. Asahi remarks that he will be bummed that he’ll be the only guy in the house once again, which is kind of an extra bummer when you consider his only male friend is that one guy at the school who is ALSO just a walking harem cliche (the male best friend who simply vomits exposition about the harem candidates).

It genuinely seems like Asahi is trying to make some well grounded friendships with these girls, but most of them seem hell bent on only seeing him as their future romantic partner. I know we’re not really supposed to think about it, but when you think about the whole “nice guy” type of person who is only nice to women because he thinks he might get to date them, this almost seems like a reversal of that, not that they’d ever acknowledge it. Asahi actually seemed relieved to have someone he could have regular non-romantic interactions with (even feeling weirdly comfortable enough to slap Irina’s ass quite a few times), but now we’ll probably see that dialed back now that she is very firmly back on the girl side. Of course, it would be nice if the show didn’t arbitrarily split things into “asexual platonic friend” and “sexualized potential girlfriend”, but at a certain point, you just have to accept that these are the trappings of the genre which it simply refuses to break out of. Or at least, the ones that don’t want to try all that hard refuse to do so. I’m sure there are plenty that like to mix it up from time to time, but those are definitely not the ones I am watching in this series. Next week is Chrstimas, so we’ll see if we get another episode on the usual day. Would certainly be a Christmas miracle to take a week off from this.