Review of Nisekoi: False Love

Super Mario Maker is now eight years old and what better way to commemorate it than to review the anime the video game advertised in the form of Event Courses, Nisekoi: False Love. It's really funny since "Nisekoi" literally means False Love so the full title would actually be False Love: False Love. As a matter of fact, if you type False Love into the search bar, your first search result will point towards this anime. True to the title, this anime is all about the main character Raku Ichijo being placed in a fake relationship with a transfer student named Chitoge Kirisaki. This is toprevent an intense turf war between the Shuei Clan and the Beehive Gang as Raku and Chitoge's fathers are the leaders of each group respectively. The task is easier said than done since Raku and Chitoge got on negative terms with each other during the latter's first day in school beforehand. What makes faking the romantic relationship even harder is the fact that Raku has his eyes on another female student, Kosaki Onodera, who also has feelings for him. In fact, there is a strong possibility that Kosaki may be the girl holding the key to opening Raku's locket, the promise being to get married should they ever meet again to do so. Raku still remembers this promise from ten years ago.

Back when I first watched this anime in February 2016, I wasn't too fond of the romantic comedy genre. Before rewatching it again for this review, I only remembered getting annoyed at the "It's not what it looks like" cliche. I still don't really like it whenever it happened during my rewatch, but I soon realized it wasn't used as frequently as I thought it did. The anime knows how to avoid being repetitive... except with one character which I will get to.

While Raku and Chitoge do their best pretending to be a couple for the sake of maintaining the peace between their families, other characters got involved with each having their own goal.

First, we have Kosaki's best friend Ruri Miyamoto. Isn't it a coincidence that she shares the same last name as the creator of Mario? Ruri strongly believes that Raku's "relationship" with Chitoge cannot stop Kosaki from getting closer to him. She creates multiple opportunities for Kosaki to strengthen her ties with Raku, only for Kosaki to screw them up or something completely out control gets in the way.

Next, there is Seishiro Tsugumi, the adopted "son" of the Beehive Gang member, Claude. Claude is super overprotective of Chitoge and even suspects her relationship with Raku to be fake. Since he cannot always be watching them at school, he enrolls Seishiro to keep an eye on Raku in his place. Should Seishiro confirm the relationship to be fake, "he" will execute Raku on the spot with guns "he" apparently is allowed to carry around on campus and doesn't ever get arrested for firing them. You can thank the weird teacher Raku and his friends have.

Introduced way late into the anime is Marika Tachibana, a frail girl who claims to be the girl who made the promise with Raku ten years ago, even declaring herself as his fiance. Marika happens to be the daughter of the police commissioner, who also threatens to use deadly force on the Shuei Clan if Raku fails to keep her happy. This makes faking a relationship with Chitoge even more difficult for Raku than it already is. Plus, other boys in the class want to date Marika, so it's only natural they bullied Raku over her love for him.

These characters are very memorable, having their own personalities demonstrated with their actions in trying to put an end to Raku and Chitoge's romantic relationship. Although they ended up failing, they all became friends with each other as well as with the main characters. Oh yeah, Raku's friend since middle school Shu Maiko is also here. Shu is a guy with a very perverted mindset and he literally tries to obtain lewd photos of girls and he enjoys peeping. Shu's quirks were rather repetitive, it's safe to say he is a character I dislike.

There are a lot of songs to talk about here. There are two opening songs, Click and Step, both sung by ClariS. Of the two, I'd say I remember Click more, just because it played for the first fourteen episodes while Step played for the last six. The first opening sequence was very interesting as it updates twice throughout the anime. Initially, there is a section where Seishiro and Marika appear as silhouettes until after their introductions, in which their respective silhouette gets filled. I do have to point out that, the final version of the first opening sequence only showed up once, that being the final time Click plays on Episode 14, since as said earlier, Marika does not appear until Episode 13; That late into the show. I hold nothing against the second opening, but in my opinion, it would have been more beneficial to stick with the one opening at that point.

There are multiple ending songs used throughout the anime. Chitoge, Kosaki, Ruri, Seishiro, and Marika all have their own theme songs used as ending soundtracks. However, there are some differences between the original airing on TV and the DVD release when it comes to the endings. Ruri's theme originally didn't exist on TV; It was exclusive to the DVD version. The episodes each song played on were different too. I'm not going to go over all the details. You can look them up yourself. There is another DVD exclusive song made for the 18th and 19th episodes, which originally had Marika's theme, now moved to the 12th and 13th episodes. It's a good song, but my goodness the animation sequence for it... the studio Shaft really wanted their audience to know it's them. If you are very familiar with Shaft, then you are definitely aware of a certain series they created three years prior to making the anime adaptation of False Love, but that's a whole different review for another time.

Overall, this tale of fake love in order to prevent any turf wars that could result in several casualties and mass destruction is really good. It gets 8/10. Thank you Super Mario Maker for getting me to give this anime a try.