VIVID IMAGINATION
This is yet another school comedy based on light novels, but with a twist. It’s about teenagers who suffer from chuunibyo, meaning a vivid imagination which makes them do weird stuff. I had no idea there was a term for such a condition; I assumed it was something all children go through for a couple of years before it goes away on its own. Apparently it sticks around to some people up until their adolescence and becomes a source a great embarrassment when you recollect all the stupid things you were doing during that time. This gimmick was more than enough to give an otherwise generic moeshit anime an identity of its own. It was full of imaginary superpower battles that made it stand out from others of its kind, and was also something everybody had experienced for a least a few months in their lives. But no matter how good the premise of a show sounds to be, it means nothing if they don’t do anything with it. And since this was made by Kyoani, guess what happened. Freaking nothing! It remained nothing more than a moeshit comedy.
SELF AWARENESS
If there was some credit to the show, it’s the initial attempt to be self aware, and in a superficial way to about anti-escapism. Since the protagonist was very ashamed of what he had done while he was role playing as Dark Flame Master, he was constantly trying to stay away from all that nonsense that was essentially empowerment fantasy. Later on he was also in a relationship, which made it seem like he was finally leaving behind his childhood and was moving towards becoming a far more serious and responsible adult. If the anime kept going with these themes, we would have a masterpiece of the likes of Welcome to the NHK. And we didn’t; because Kyoanus and light novel cancer.
IT LOOKS WRONG
Eventually the show betrays all its good aspects and crawls back into the mud hole that is defining modern anime. For a premise that is about anti-escapism, every girl in the show is super cute. And I mean every girl, from babies to milfs. And typical to Kyoani tradition, there is a lot of fan service to keep the audience drooling over animated cartoons. How can you take the theme seriously when it is presented in the exact opposite way of how it should? Where are some ugly, fat, deformed people to give us a sense of depowering reality? The real world looks as beautiful as the imaginary one. Where are people who are supposed to be annoyed by all these nonsense? If you notice, nobody besides Rikka gets scolded for the crazy stuff they constantly do. Friends and family around the major characters don’t care, they don’t even bother to laugh or shake their heads in contempt. They just look puzzled for a few seconds before going back to whatever they were doing, completely forgeting the whole thing. There is no reason to feel embarrassed if nobody cares. So where is this anti-escapism theme you kept yapping about, show? Nowhere!
IT BECOMES WHAT IT SCORNS
Some tried to excuse that as being part of the subversion the show was going for. It makes it seem like it’s moe, only to turn the tables later on, and surprise the audience by addressing the theme of anti-escapism. It would be excused and it would be an amazing twist, if the theme of anti-escapism was going somewhere. But it didn’t. Despite all the efforts of Yuuta to stay the hell away from all these stupid illusions, he spent the entire show being surrounded by cute moeblobs, doing non-stop silly things as a running joke, and at the end he even accepted to turn back into his Dark Flame Master persona that he despised so much, for the sake of a delusional chick. He joined the dark side, instead of bringing the girl to the light side. Thus the show embarrassed what it was shooing away at first.
IT REFUSES TO MOVE ON
Some tried to excuse him reverting to his chuunibyou period, as part of saving the girl he liked. Rikka, as the only person with people who gave a damn about her crazy antics, was escaping her cruel reality, and when she was forced to face it towards the end of the first season, it was too much for her. She was even about to commit suicide if Yuuta hadn’t calmed her down by pretending to believe all the nonsense she kept spouting all this time. Ok then, let’s roll with that. He saved her, became her boyfriend, gets the chance to understand her, and now we are promised with watching how a relationship plays out in anime. If you didn’t realize it yet, almost no anime that is about romance has established couples in it. Most of them fool around until they say I love you and then end without showing us anything. But not this show, it established a couple midway and had the whole second half to show us how Yuuta and Rikka become more responsible and mature by being in a relationship. And guess what, NOTHING HAPPENED.
IT ENDS AS A SHADOW OF WHAT IT WAS
Not only the relationship resets to zero, but typical to harem formulas they even add more girls, maintained the status quo intact, while not forgetting to throw in yuri shipping. And even during the finale when we would finally get at least a kiss, to believe these two are in a relationship, THEY CHICKEN OUT and we are left with blue balls. Thus the show ends by destroying the last thing that was good about it. Some say that it was never about the romantic relationships, as it was about identity. You need to love someone for who he is and even accept him the way he is. There is no need to change if there is nothing wrong with the way things are. And since their chuunibyou personas are essentially who they want to be, then you might as well accept their silly illusions. It’s a good theme alright, but again, they didn’t do anything with it, and thus it goes to waste.
PRETENTIOUSNESS
I bet there are still those who will say that the show was never trying to be a subversion. It was always a generic moeblob comedy with the themes being there simply as a joke generator and nothing more. I mean, it’s obvious, isn’t it? The cast is made up of one typical blunt dork protagonist, a dozen typically cute girls surrounding him in ways that feel like they dig him, and a minor male student who is there only to address the horny side of the protagonist. Those are traditional trademarks of harems; why would you assume there is more to it? I don’t know, why does most of the anime community still thinks SAO has an amazing romance and a realistic videogame world? Oh, I know, it’s because the show keeps telling us it is all that! It pretends to be things that it isn’t, and thus it makes complete sense that we will be looking forward to what we are promised and be very disappointed when we don’t get it. And the reason we never get it is simple. Because Kyoanus and light novel cancer.
