Masamune-kun’s Revenge caught my interest when I read the summary. A boy who changed his entire life to get back at his crush for dumping him in a brutal manner.
The story is seemingly all about Makabe Masamune and his plan to get revenge on Aki Adagaki. So naturally, this is a high school romantic drama comedy. Masamune changed from being a chubby, bullied boy with no confidence to an outright narcissistic macho. Aki Adagaki basically didn’t change over the years as she is, frankly speaking, a total bitch. That is basically the theme of the show and at the beginning, it pulls it off well as it is hard to like anyone but that’s what I liked about it, despite some overused cliches.
To make this clear from the start: This story had potential and it should have had its finale in the fifth episode, but that’s where the cliches come in and drag everything down, making the entire show painful to watch.
The plot is actually really refreshing at the beginning and I never felt bored. Even if I didn’t like Makabe, just hearing his self-absorbed bantering about his own awesomeness only for Aki to shatter his illusions was amusing in its own right. That was the good part of the show and luckily, we even get some romantic and character development throughout these first few episodes that could have made for one really good, although dark, finale. Even if some of it was nonsense later on, the series still managed to execute the drama very well! So what went wrong?
I can’t stress enough that the series should have ended with five, six at most episodes.
The end of the fourth episode raises A GIANT red flag of everything you’ve already seen in a harem. The show does have signs of being a harem early on but these are quickly dealt with, as the show did understand that the focus should be on the conflict at hand.
What kind of cliches and harem attributes are we talking about exactly?
Suddenly bigger breasted girl who is in love with the protagonist appears out of nowhere, the conflict is slowly replaced by a story you’ve seen a million times, a good beach episode for once, suddenly new male love rival out of nowhere, retarded “it was all an accident but they don’t know it yet” flashback nonsense, high school kids doing stupid things and one of the most disappointing, cliffhanger manga-bait endings I’ve ever seen.
I didn’t even mention the theatrical play and the karaoke yet and yes, it will go down exactly as you already imagined it. Also yes, the play is Snow White.
What the hell happened? Why did anyone think that turning this series from a potentially really good short-story into yet another series that can’t do anything but reuse stuff that was already deemed outdated ten years ago? Did nobody even question this?
The soundtrack is okay and I got a kick from the opening. It’s not really memorable and it doesn’t fit the tone of the first few episodes but it’s catchy.
The animation is usually solid but there are some pretty weird scenes, especially when characters are running. The majority of the anime does look good though. It’s by far nothing outstanding and there is nothing new here to look forward to but that’s okay, because that would normally allow a series to focus more on things like the soundtrack or the plot but we’ve already talked about those.
I can’t recommend Masamune-kun’s Revenge at all. Not everything is bad and the anime will certainly have its audience, but I am just tired of potentially good stories that are ruined by that one wrong decision to keep things going for much longer than necessary.
I mean seriously, Snow White? What’s next? Romeo and Juliet? BECAUSE WE HAVEN’T SEEN THAT IN ANIME BEFORE!
4
Watchable
-M
Critical Bytes 