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Renai Boukun is a unique experience you've had a million times before, but it's not exactly same-garbage-different-day because if it was exactly the same thing on a different day of the week, at least you would expect nothing and you would not be disappointed. But Oh Boy does Love Tyrant have some disappointment in store for you, sitting right there on the top shelf behind the glass doors of the security case! It's on clearance, too; no refunds, no exchanges.

Now surely it can't be as bad as I'm building it up to be, right? I must be way off, I just forgot to turn my ... brain off and ended up taking it way too seriously when Love Tyrant didn't even bother taking itself seriously, so this is just me being a Salty Sandra, right?

Well, you tell me.

I've managed to narrow down exactly what Love Tyrant does wrong and why it ends up the Jonestown Massacre it is by asking three key questions:

1: Why did they ignore the fundamentals?
In every harem, there is always a main girl, and protocol is typically to place the first girl the MC meets in that role. This anime places the Second girl in that role. Is that bad? No! In fact it's nice to have the trope subverted. The problem lies with the type the second girl is: she's a yandere. She is not sweet, she is not kind, she's an obsessive, violent berserker with no regard for human life. That is the exact opposite of the kind of girl you need as a stable main when building a harem. Yanderes are bad enough on their own, but they don't work as part of a harem and as the main, the girl at the core of the harem, it's a relationship structure designed to implode on itself.

2: What are characters?
None of the respective girls' redeeming qualities actually outweigh their faults except the little sister: Yuzu's moments as a true friend and voice of reason never have much of an impact when her role is basically to be a loud, squeaky third wheel. The fact that Guri is the life of the party hardly makes up for the fact that the party is nonstop cat fighting, conflict and constructing gay relationships on the spot for her own amusement. Then there's Shikimi, who doesn't even care about Seiji but wants to be included in the Love Club and does horrible things to everybody because she's an irredeemable attention whore. And of course, Akane is a jealous murder hound with a generous amount of sand up her pussy who stabs everybody at the slightest provocation. Imouto Akua, meanwhile, is a basically normal little sister who kind of resents the fact that her brother doesn't pay as much attention to her as he used to...oh yeah and she's being chased by a demonic rapist penguin. Basic Japanese Girl Problems, right? But that aside, she's just your average tsundere imouto, which is a breath of fresh air in comparison to all the legal, non-blood related women in Seiji's life. And when all the choices are basically shit compared to your sister, that is how you know you've Had Gone Done Been Went and made a gosh derned mistake there, buckaroo!

3: What is pacing?!
It's an established practice with adaptations to change the order of events so that the adaptation can wrap up one way or another. I have not read the source material so I'm uncertain if this is the case with Love Tyrant, but one thing is for certain: the placement of events is terribly weak and the directors chose this order for a reason: they were aiming for the harem ending. I saw it coming when episode 8 finally gave Seiji and Akane's relationship the validity it needs to function, made Akane human and relatable, and this is the point where I nearly dropped the series. I should have, and I recommend you do if you decide to watch this abomination, because it was a decisive, moving plot arc that felt like a series finale. They could have ended the show on a high note by making episode 8 episode 12 instead of dropping it slap bang in the middle and pulling the worst pump and dump on a relationship I have ever seen. First they cracked Akane's shell and made me care about her and gave her so many Best Girl points it was practically no contest, and then immediately took them all back and left her as we met her: a god damned nutcase that'll slit your throat if another woman so much as brushes up against you by accident (comedy at it's finest, people!)

In closing, I guess it's not the absolute worst I've ever come across. The visuals are nice, I guess and it managed to keep me watching somehow. But good GOD, I'm gonna need a long shower to wash this one off me.

Oh, and what's a Kiss Note, you ask? A pile of ashes by the end of episode 3, don't fuckin' worry about it.