Review of My Love Story!!

I'm just gonna come out and say it: If Ore Monogatari doesn't pull at your heart strings, you're dead inside. You're a shriveled up empty husk of a human being. This show had me smiling from ear to ear the whole way through. It's strawberry ice cream for the soul. It's cute with cute on top, sweet like honey and funny as shit. The story is super simple: A cute girl falls in love with a colossal ogre of a boy with a heart of gold. It's a bit like Shrek, except our ogre doesn't need to be changed by anyone. He doesn't start outbitter and withdrawn or has to go on a journey of self-discovery to re-connect with his humanity or whatever. Takeo, our protagonist, is simply just an all-round good guy whose beautiful soul is finally recognized by another beautiful soul and romance (and hilarity) ensues. It's not great literature or anything, but it's deeply pleasurable and entertaining to watch. And it's quite impossible not to fall in love with both Takeo and his girlfriend Yamato and wish them all the best.

My one criticism would be the last two episodes which try to pin a bit of drama (as far as you can even call it that) on the tail end of the show. It's generally a bad idea to introduce new characters late in a narrative and I think the last two episodes of Ore Monogatari suffers for it. Those two episodes could have been better spent on resolving Sunakawa's (Takeo's best friend) character and find some sort of satisfying ending for him as well as a deepening of the relationship between Takeo and Rinko that suggests their future together.

But all in all, this is a great love story. People who complain about the simplicity of Ore Monogatari seem to forget that love stories are usually quite simple and aim to convey EMOTIONS rather than DRAMA. And that's the payoff here: Lots and lots of wonderful, lovely, sweet feels. If you're down and troubled on a rainy day, go ahead and binge this show. It's guaranteed to turn that frown upside down!