Review of Nisekoi: False Love

I don't like giving numerical ratings to the shows I watch so that's why they're all 10s. ^^ Warning: The following review will contain spoilers for the ending as well as specific moments of Nisekoi. This is a review of the anime and manga so yes, that means I will be discussing all the way until the manga’s conclusion. If you wish to skip over the spoilers, I will provide timestamps which will allow you to do so and will also give a warning beforehand. So now without further ado… Nisekoi was not the best. I mean, it wasn’t horrible. I have some praise to give itand also have a fair amount of problems with the it. I've been with the series since the manga was first released in the U.S. and own every volume, so I've been pretty committed to it since I was 15 years old. As for why I committed so hard to it, well it was honestly pretty hilarious and the series had a lot of potential. It’s unfortunate how it didn’t really do anything with that potential.

For those who haven't seen or read anything related to Nisekoi yet, the story is about a high school kid named Raku Ichijou. He’s the son of the leader of a big Yakuza gang. On his way to school, he meets a girl named Chitoge Kirisaki. She and Raku later meet up at school and come to hate each other’s guts because of their inability to get along. Raku, instead likes a girl named Kosaki Onodera, who also has a crush on him. Neither have admitted anything to each other, however. Later, Chitoge is revealed to also be in a Yakuza gang, which just so happens to be rivals with Raku’s gang. In order to maintain peace and keep both gangs from destroying each other, Raku and Chitoge are both forced to date in spite of their conflicting personalities. Raku also made a promise with a girl 10 years ago where he and a her had planned to get married. Whoever the girl was now still possesses a key to the pendant Raku always wears around his neck. And of course, several of the main characters possess a key that could potentially unlock this pendant.

So what are my thoughts on the series? Well there's one major criticism I hear a lot that I want to address. If you’ve seen or read any Nisekoi review, you probably know exactly where I’m going with this. Nothing happens whatsoever.

I'm case you're unaware, despite such an interesting premise, the series takes forever to actually get things to happen in the story. It constantly teases the audience by making it seem like something very important is about to happen, and proceeds to backpedal and pretend like nothing ever did happen in the first place. I’ll go ahead and list a few quick examples to demonstrate this point.

Minor spoilers ahead. Nothing related to the ending, just some examples of how a few less important scenes play out

Volume 1 Chapter 5: Onodera drops her key to Raku’s pendant. She says it’s just a key to a bookcase. Raku believes her.
Volume 2 Chapter 14: Onodera is about to confess her feelings to Raku. Right before she does, though, a baseball comes flying in through the glass window, ending the conversation.
Volume 3 Chapter 22: All the main characters are playing a card game. The loser has to reveal their first crush to everybody. Chitoge ends up losing. Before she can reveal anything, however, everybody is interrupted by being called to dinner.
Volume 4 Chapter 29: Chitoge decides to finally put her key into Raku’s pendant to see if she was the girl Raku made the promise with. The key twists and breaks inside the keyhole without any information being discovered.
Volume 5 Chapter 39: Onodera was about to send a text telling Raku she liked him in Junior High. She decides to not send it.

The list goes on and on. But the thing is that this blatant teasing is not unintentional. The series will actually go out of its way to make sure that the plot makes no progress, even sacrificing character believability.

I noticed this when reading volume 8. Onodera had given chocolates to Raku on Valentine’s Day after lots of mental preparation. When she did, he told her that it’s platonic to assure that she didn't have special feelings for him. But she replied with “It’s kind of a special platonic.” This was the perfect opportunity for Raku to at least get at least a little bit suspicious of whether Onodera has feelings for him. But no, the series, like always, just ignored this and never mentioned the scene again.

This was when it dawned on me on how shameless the series is with its whole “nothing happens” fiasco. It's so obvious that Onodera likes Raku. She goes as far as practically confessing her feelings to him. But somehow Raku is so clueless to that fact and continues to wonder if his feelings are unrequited throughout more of the series. It's ridiculous and makes no sense.

Watch out, big spoilers ahead!

Even the manga knows how obvious it is that Raku likes Onodera. Marika was able to call them out on it in volume 22 change volume number to chapter number. Is there some reason why Marika’s able to notice this and not anyone else? Oh yeah Chitoge knew about it to. After Onodera confessed her feelings to Raku…’s unconscious body.

The teasing the manga does when it tries to get you to believe that something is important is obnoxious. So many times will the manga have nice big panels with a black bold font, zoomed in onto a character’s face. It becomes this stupid Boy Who Cried Wolf situation where when something noteworthy does end up happening, like towards the end, the stupid zoomy effects are ineffective.

It gets really frustrating how nothing happens, too. I mean, if you sat through the anime you’ve seen some nice story arcs but that’s about it. Lots of the story arcs are filler anyway. But if you’ve read the manga, then you’ve sat through dozens of chapters that meant absolutely nothing to the overall story. The series is honestly a long grind that doesn’t really pay off in the end.

Now when the series actually does decide to get things done, it’s usually related to the overall love story. Guess what? The love story isn’t all that great either. Look out, spoilers! Chitoge just decides to like Raku in chapter 51. No really, she literally thinks to herself that she likes Raku without any buildup. It felt like it was just thrown in there. If you want your characters to develop feelings for each other, there’s obviously going to have to be a part of the story where you find out that someone likes another character, but you can’t just throw it in willie nillie. It’s a big deal that Chitoge likes Raku now. The manga should at least act like it. Instead it felt like the author had forgotten to check off the “Chitoge likes Raku” box so he just threw it in real quick without putting any thought into it. There might as well have been a page in all black that said “Hey guys, Chitoge likes Raku.” because that’s just how effective this chapter was.

Then besides that, there’s really nothing special to the love story at all. Raku and Chitoge end up getting together in the end because they were truly in love the whole time. Onodera was just Raku’s crush, Chitoge was someone he deeply cared about. Wow haven’t ever seen that done in other anime like Toradora before. (For the record, Toradora’s amazing tho) The message is cliche.

Another thing that bugged me is how all the other girls ended up confessing their feelings to Raku toward the end, which is so pointless. It’s okay for the other girls to not end up with the main guy. He’s obviously just going to be with one girl in the end anyway. All of their confession scenes really just felt like a compromise between the reader and the storyline. If your favorite girl ends up not being chosen for being with Raku in the end, then hey, at least they worked up the courage to confess their feelings to him. So in a way, they’re kind of half-with Raku I guess.

The worst confession scene award has to go to Tsugumi, tbh. It’s insane how it’s even remotely supposed to come across as emotional or satisfying. She puts her hands over Raku’s ears so that he can’t hear a word she’s saying. She proceeds to confess her feelings. Then for some reason she now feels satisfied with herself and like she can move on after getting this big secret off her chest. Um, what? He didn’t hear a thing you said. How are you supposed to feel better now after having nobody listen to any part of the confession you just made? That’s as secretive as telling yourself that you like Raku in your head.

These confessions are really all just fanservice, even Onodera’s. She just confesses her feelings at the end and Raku’s like “Alright, see ya! I like Chitoge more, though.” It’s crazy that even after 24 volumes that during this scene Raku just finds out that Onodera likes him.

So in all actuality, the series is really just a harem that tries too hard to make sure everyone reading is satisfied, even if their favorite girl didn’t end up with the main character. Toradora has unrequited love in it, but nobody complains about that.

I bet after everything I’ve said, some of you might be thinking I loathe Nisekoi, but that’s not the case. A common argument you’ll get if you put a negative opinion about something out for people to hear is “If you don’t like it then why do you watch/read/play/etc. It?” And to that I will give 2 answers when it comes to Nisekoi.

One reason is because of the potential it had. Such an cool premise is bound to get people interested. I mean, it was able to convince my 15-year-old brain that the series was good. With the premise Nisekoi has, there’s so much potential for what kinds of interesting situations can happen. Will Chitoge and Raku get so fed up with each other that they break up despite the pressure from their family? Will Onodera confess her feelings so that she and Raku somehow end up in a secret relationship? Will the girl Raku made a promise with be revealed soon? The locket is right on Raku’s neck and every single girl has a key that could potentially open it. This premise kept me very excited to continue reading, at least at the very beginning when things hadn’t gotten frustrating.

The second reason is that there really is some great character interaction to be found in Nisekoi. As annoying as the teasing can get, it’s still funny to see characters stumbling for ways to get out of situations that could potentially reveal details about their love lives. Seeing Onodera and Raku together was what I always looked the most forward to seeing. It reminded me and probably many other anime fans about their high school days when they would be super awkward around their crushes. The scenes with the two characters legitimately made me cringe and laugh. The author captures the essence of being a nervous high school kid really well. This made reading almost every volume bearable, and even occasionally enjoyable to read. That’s why I was actually a fan of Nisekoi at the beginning. The teasing hadn’t gotten to the point where it was happening for chapters on end. Sure it was definitely there in the beginning, but it hadn’t gotten old yet. Add to that the fun character interactions, despite some overused concepts like Marika always clinging way too hard to Raku, it was fun to read at first.

It’s hard to gauge how much I’d recommend Nisekoi to other people. For one, the character interaction is very fun to watch and can be relatable at times. The animation in the TV show is quite good as is the art in the manga. And even if the ending was cliche and had lots of fan pandering, I do feel like the manga wrapped up nicely. It feels complete. I mean, I should hope it feels complete considering it’s a simple love story longer than Monster.

On the other hand, there’s a lot of giant flaws with the series. The love story is no good, the plot is frustrating, even sacrificing character believability, and some ideas were used a bit too much.

So I’ll just say this. Nisekoi is a manga that’s too much of a time investment for such a predictable payoff. Going through chapters and chapters of filler is just a grind a lot of the time and it’s really frustrating. I did, however, enjoy reading watching characters being put in really awkward situations every night I read the manga.

So go ahead. Watch the first season of the anime and see how much you like it. Heck, even drop it if you’re not a fan. Hopefully this review will give you a guide on what to look out for and where you can find the good parts.

But before you do that, watch Toradora. Watch and read Kimi ni Todoke. Watch Clannad. Watch Your Lie in April. These are all romantic anime that I will always put above Nisekoi. Because, at least those series don’t feel like 25 volumes of filler designed to keep the author’s paycheck coming in every month.