Douse, Koishite Shimaunda.

Aspiring manga artist Mizuho Nishino has grown alongside her four childhood friends: Kizuki Hazawa, Shuugo Hoshikawa, Shin Kashiwagi, and Airu Izumi. But on Mizuho's 17th birthday, Kizuki suddenly asks to be her boyfriend. Having no previous experience with romance, Mizuho brushes it off easily, but Kizuki is genuine and intends to win her heart.

Kizuki no longer hides his affections, and Mizuho hesitates, worried about the consequences their potential relationship could have on their whole friend group. As Mizuho works through the confusion of youth, it seems that the other three boys have fallen for her as well—and she must find a way to sort her feelings out without shattering the close-knit group she holds dear.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Nishino, Mizuho Main

Shinfuku, Sakura Japanese

Kashiwagi, Shin Main

Yoshitaka, Sion Japanese

Hazawa, Kizuki Main

Ura, Kazuki Japanese

Izumi, Airu Main

Chiba, Shouya Japanese

Hoshikawa, Shuugo Main

Inomata, Satoshi Japanese

Yamamoto Supporting

Okai, Katsunori Japanese

Akiyama Supporting

Hasegawa, Ikumi Japanese

Shiraishi, Manami Supporting

Nazuka, Kaori Japanese

Hoshikawa, Tougo Supporting

Umehara, Yuuichirou Japanese

Kurashiki, Chika Supporting

Tadokoro, Azusa Japanese

Herek, Samantha Producer

Sakurai, Takashi Producer

Yamamoto, Junichi Director

Ebina, Yasunori Sound Director

Reviews

Mar 4, 2025

iNinjeek

Recommended

Preliminary (8/12 eps)

I guess I’m the only one here who enjoys cringy, trashy anime—HAHA.

This anime has a laid-back, easygoing vibe and follows a girl with four super popular, attractive childhood best friends. The story explores different routes, showing what it would be like if she ended up with each of them while offering insight into their perspectives and relationships with her. You’ve got your classic male tropes: the hot nerdy guy, the fashionable popular guy who used to be a delinquent, the caring but emotionally clueless guy, and the crybaby-turned-reliable athlete. The pacing is slow, and it seems to take place during the 2020 pandemic. Personally, I ... enjoy it because it feels like an otome game—except instead of choosing your route, the anime decides the endgame guy for you.

I didn’t have any issues with the art; the visuals were pretty and gave off a nice summer feel. The plot isn’t anything revolutionary—just your typical reverse harem—but the way each character expresses their feelings for the main girl is pretty entertaining. The series shifts between the past and present, reminding viewers to appreciate the present because you never realize how good things are until you look back on them later in life. The present is clouded with mystery, always carrying a sad element whenever the main character reminisces about the past.

Maybe I just have a thing for trashy shoujos, but even though it’s predictable and you already know who she’ll end up with, it’s still fun watching everyone’s emotions unfold. It took me a few episodes to really get into it… or maybe I’m just shoujo deprived LOL.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Mar 27, 2025

KANLen09

Mixed Feelings

Anyway, I'm Falling in Love with You. - An inspired work that only panders to the hearts of the hopeless romantics of watching an actual soap opera on the cusp of collapse.

Seriously, what's up with adaptations from Kodansha's Nakayoshi Shoujo-centric magazine that just end up being failures one after another? If anything, the magazine now hosting just the solid kids' franchise of Pretty Cure just tells of the sad story of the current state of works that came from one of the best-selling manga magazines. If the reboot of Tokyo Mew Mew didn't quite pander to the new fans, and its prolific author, Ema Touyama, ... also didn't work out with Vampire Dormitory (which gave us the rather horrible Spring 2024 anime), what reason does it have to stand that the newest and most current serialization of mangaka Haruka Mitsui's Douse, Koishite Shimaunda a.k.a Anyway, I'm Falling in Love with You will ever hope to achieve some recognition for trying to be different but still being just as Shoujo-trash-astic as ever?

For reference (and as context for those living in the West who are not in the know), there was a live-action movie that went by the title of "You Are the Apple of My Eye" (那些年，我們一起追的女孩, lit. 'The Girl We Chased Together in Those Years'), a coming-of-age romance film based on the semi-autobiographical novel of the same name by Taiwanese novelist Giddens Ko, that was released way back in 2011. And at the time, the film earned both fame and recognition for its "larky retro coming-of-age confection that injects a fresh, tart edge to the genre with a constantly self-mocking boys' angle (an alternative to Asian teen movies that tend to be syrupy)" that broke box office records in Asia (mainly Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore). And upon knowing that Haruka Mitsui took this idea and updated it to the standards of the modern COVID pandemic outbreak, I was feeling skeptical of how she would make a story between a girl and her 4 handsome Ikemen childhood friends, living in such a tight lockdown that's a whole different experience of their days in high school altogether, only to preempt it as a flashback between then and 10 years from now.

In a sense, you could catch the fever that the author herself is trying to mask, but at the same time, make the underlying premise a fake-out, only warranting when COVID conditions are serious enough to justify cancelling events for the group of female MCs Mizuho Nishino and her childhood friends Kizuki Hazawa, Shin Kashiwagi, Airu Izumi, and Shugo Hoshikawa. These 5 young adults are having the best time of their lives being close to one another and dubbed the Koigahama Highlands boys alongside their only flower, who aspires to be a manga illustrator when she grows up. Surely nothing wrong will go between them, right? Other than the obvious implications of the pandemic limiting their choices when it comes to severe restrictions, it's the feeling of adolescence that Mizuho will one day be stolen by one of the 4 guys who all had their affections upon her, but respectively going about their own dilemmas to either play the friendzone treatment or just go for gold with building jealousy within the group that only seems to shatter the long-standing friendship that they have thus far.

Sadly, as current Nakayoshi standards go, I don't quite have the confidence to say that this show has a story to tell, as disjointed as it sounds. What's the point of the 5 of them hanging out at the same known places, where the crowd doesn't mask up and maintain distance against one another? Worse still, the story feels nothing like the Taiwanese film that I've mentioned earlier in the review, instead opting for your stereotypical soap opera drama of potential boyfriend conflicts and interests against the lone girl who's trying to hide the fact that one of them has an interest in her, and they're just playing hard to get so that she can maintain the status quo. As they say, "Nothing is forever," and though Mizuho gets the gist that their friendship will break sooner than later, it's the emotional and psychological fight between her two most prominent potentials, Kizuki and Shin, that has both Shugo and Aira witnessing from the sidelines, as they're different in their views of the friendship. It's certainly not all that different from the standards of an otome game, where the anime chooses your endgame route rather than the player doing his/hers, and you have no say in what and how the direction will take you, barring the good and bad parts of it.

Knowing Typhoon Graphics and their course produced this show, it just feels like you're reading a VN with non-scrolling but boring text dialogue that tells you what is going on in the minds of the boys, while we witness from Mizuho's view the shallowness of trying to play the friendship game, only to realize that she's screwed the moment any of the 4 boys pounces on her. That said, while the background art is passable, the animation is minimalistic at best, to the sheer point of barely where sacrifices can clearly be seen.

With the music helmed by composer Keiji Inai, I was expecting the level of, yet another Typhoon Graphics show of Spring 2023's Kanojo ga Koushakutei ni Itta Riyuu a.k.a Why Raeliana Ended Up at the Duke's Mansion. But even that couldn't prepare me for yet another minimalist effort that just shows the total commitment of effort to the anime overall. Aside from Marcy's ED song (which is literally just the song only), I'm quickly getting sick of new bands created to merge the J- and K-Pop feels together, as is the case for INI's OP song, and more of them have been coming into the Anisong spectrum only to grate on the ears of a Korea takeover in J-Pop.

I feel almost obliged to say that if you consider Douse, Koishite Shimaunda a.k.a Anyway, I'm Falling in Love with You, a Shoujo work by all means and sense, yes, it is. But its target demographic should already tell you when guys try to even watch this show and yet still cannot relate to females loving bad boys and the whole "nine yards down" shtick. Shoujo works CAN be enjoyed by both sexes, but not to a point that feels condescending just for shock value, which is exactly what the anime is trying to do here.

It's true in the Shoujo sense, but you're better off with other works that have done this better.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Mar 27, 2025

griddyweeb

Not Recommended

This is just bad. Lazy animation, horrible direction and just overall not good story/storytelling.

I usually don't give a damn about animation, but when it's this shameless it's hard to overlook it. Budget aside there are ways to make it work, this studio didn't even try to look for compromises or try to hide the fact and that sums up the studio's entire attitude towards this anime and lack of effort.

Direction is also full of interesting choices, most notably the amount of staring in this anime. It should serve as a dramatic effect, but at this point it's comedy, the characters stare at each other almost ... like they're confused or socially awkward.

And the story, maybe the worst thing about this anime and the only thing that's not the studio's fault except for adapting it in the first place. It feels like some wattpad fantasy, it feels so amateur, everything just happens without a reason most of the time, there's no build up so everything feels forced and unprompted. It also speedruns tropes and cliches. Everyone is always seducing Mizuho in the most shameless, unreasonable and senseless ways. This could be the girls' version of some pervy shounen romance that has no value and its only goal is satisfying your "needs".

The characters are just as bland as the story, it's very fitting how the 4 male MCs all look alike, literally fuckboy copy pastes. Their personalities are just as shallow, they all have their main quirk and that's their only personality. And Mizuho is as oblivious as a girl in a shoujo can be, comes very handy to fuel this trash story.

There are sweet moments in the show that's for sure, the only redeeming quality, but once again the issue is that most of these moments come out of nowhere and while they're heartwarming they also feel out of place and it makes it a bit awkward, so it's not that simple to just take in these moments.

Just don't waste your time on this, the only way you can enjoy this is if you're looking for some trashy, shameless reverse harem fantasy specifically.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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	Poll: Douse, Koishite Shimaunda. Episode 12 Discussion Stark700 - Mar 27	25 replies	by Kidd_Vicious »» 2 hours ago
	Poll: Douse, Koishite Shimaunda. Episode 5 Discussion Stark700 - Feb 6	24 replies	by cooldogmom »» 9 hours ago
	Season 2 Leak patkarunungan - Mar 27	12 replies	by Memore »» Yesterday, 4:06 AM
	Poll: Douse, Koishite Shimaunda. Episode 10 Discussion Stark700 - Mar 13	13 replies	by Camoboi1 »» Mar 28, 11:19 PM
	Poll: Douse, Koishite Shimaunda. Episode 11 Discussion Stark700 - Mar 20	18 replies	by KANLen09 »» Mar 25, 4:05 AM