Review of Nisekoi: False Love

Spoiler-free should-you-watch review of the entire series: Nisekoi is... good. It's in a weird place, but I liked it quite a bit more than I thought I would; I'd recommend it to pretty much anyone that can tolerate episodic harem anime. My core review is pretty short this time: -- Nisekoi helped me realize that I really like Shaft as a studio; the animation and character designs are great, the BGM is interesting and the OP and ED are fun. -- The writing is plus-minus-plus. It's a harem anime and it's super derivative, but it does satirize that derivativeness, and it often goes so over the top inits stupidity that it's hilarious. The plot within individual episodes is great, but it's primarily episodic so the overall plot is kind of lacking.
-- The romance, same as above, is super generic at first. But moment-to-moment, the romantic scenes can become pretty compelling, and it's not too hard to become invested. That said, you will almost certainly be disappointed if you crave the romance angle.
-- This probably deserves a warning bullet: the show is super ecchi. Weirdly enough, it doesn't often use the erotic content to be sexy, it's usually for comedy or a silly situation. The camera's male gaze often objectifies the harem, and there are more than a few nude scenes covered by steam/arms/hands etc.

The only thing really worth elaborating on is the romance. The show doesn't exactly respect the payoff-for-buildup contract of romantic writing, and it primarily uses the romance as a plot device for crazy situations. The first season does a pretty decent job of stringing your heart along, but after that, the show is so afraid of disappointing *someone* that they end up kind of disappointing *everyone*. It's fine, and it does its job in setting up situational comedy, but the romance does a lot of leading you on and not a lot of satisfying you, which feels good at first, but not great after you realize it. But you learn to cope, and watching the show while suppressing your feelings about the romance is still a lot of fun. Personally, what resolved my thoughts about the romance was the April fools trailer for Nisekoimonogatari that Shaft made; the parallels they draw between girls is very telling IMO, but that only really works if you've seen most of Monogatari.

Oh, and I suppose the constant assault is worth mentioning; the two main men in the series are attacked nearly every single episode whether they deserve it (Shuu) or not (Raku). It's exaggerated for comedy and pretty inoffensive, but it is a thing I suppose.

So yeah, weirdly enough I'd probably recommend it higher than my rating would imply. Just don't get too sucked into the romance. The second season is fun for digging deeper into different characters, but doesn't do much for the plot. The OVAs are solid though, and as much as I was a little bored by the Magical Pâtissière parts, I really like the idea of having that kind of weird multi-genre cross-series element, so good on the author for trying it.