I already gave this show an 8/10: I've halved my review. Look, I might get a bit less agreement from others on this compared to my first review, but I don't think much to the show anymore.
As always with my reviews, HEAR ME OUT. Don't immediately dislike it if you like the show. As I said I have given it an 8 in the past, I understand where you're coming from if you enjoy it, I just don't have your view anymore and here's why.
Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian, or as I like to call it Vladmir-Sama: Love is War, is a romantic comedy, high-school slice of life anime. At first it creates an impression of being a simple monogamous easygoing show. We get introduced to Alya, who seems initially a really enjoyable character who is a good balance of being verbose and cutting while also being the adolescent mess we all were at her age. Alya is on the school council and is seen as the Ice Queen high achieving unapproachable and cunning... let me just sum it up: all this seems just like some lame rip of Kaguya from Love is War, or other similar trope "school council" characters we see so often in Japanese media. This isn't me saying Alya's personality is like Kaguya: quite the opposite, where she is very obviously not as refined and cold as she seems, and she is friendly to people at times, but she isn't the genius like Kaguya. Let me put it like this - where Kaguya Shinomiya is a good character because you see a perfect girl's flaws, Alya is a good character because she is a flawed person who strives for perfection.
But the show definitely struggles with originality in its setting and plot: like other Japanese media, we see the school council is powerful, well-respected and organised, and with this comes the power to disrupt lesson times for school politics and debate. How plausible. This is such a common trope that you can't knock it too much, but I dislike how this show approaches it in particular because it tries to make itself seem plausible, where similar school council shows like Classroom of the Elite are so unashamedly ridiculous that you have to slightly enjoy them no matter how cringeworthy they seem.
And this is my problem with Alya as a whole: it can start with some relatability but fast loses it. You get this cool dynamic of two people falling in love, and that's great, and that can hold even amidst the weird political drama undertones which the show seems to be taking far too seriously. But at the same time, it slips out of that essence of 2 people made for each other and deeply unable to reveal their honest feelings, and decides to make all the mistakes other romances make. Love triangles, for some reason the sister complex disease; unnecessary deviation from everything you love about such romance stories. I wanted to find a monogamous chemistry which was unique in this show, but instead I found the author seemed scared. Scared to progress things quickly at risk of ending the show so fast. Scared to not have a backup plot in case his characters weren't well written enough. And in some ways, I get this logic. By that, I mean the writing is a problem; the show really struggles to find a way to keep characters likeable. For some reason, everyone is so uncompromising, so focused on their goals and ideals, and while for a show like One Piece standing ground in the face of great adversity is a heroic and respected act, in a low stakes romantic comedy every character just ends up being insufferable. It starts around episode 6; every character begins to become so stuck in ideals, static and undeveloped, and you begin to feel the school council plots are holding things back. The protagonist feels like the Kirito of the debate world, an overpowered speaker who wins every debate, where Alya is useless and annoying. You spend episodes trying to redeem characters who alienate themselves completely from you at the moment they come into the show. You get random extra romance opportunities, some weird succession wealthy family nonsense, just so many things that are so completely unneeded for a show which didn't need all this. And it just makes the show detestably bad. A huge disappointment and disservice to the character schematics laid out so well in those first 3 or 4 episodes. And that really hurts me.
Production quality is obviously a marvel, and I can't discredit that. If we were off adaptation quality alone it would probably be higher because it's done a good job in many ways. Although some people claim the source material is far better on here and I've not read it so I don't know. Nevertheless, I disliked the plot to this show quite a bit because it lost its enjoyable qualities so fast. Hence I have to say:
This is not worth your time; it is a poorly written, shoddy and overly serious show which is needlessly plot heavy, even ignoring the added issues of fan service and completely delinquent aspects of the show. The show's tropes deteriorate rapidly, and feel as though they quickly shift from self aware mockery to the author self inserting fantasies about his characters into the show. The characters are static, the protagonist is stupidly handsome and popular for someone who's supposed to be a recluse, and no one who's as popular as him is playing gacha games.
4/10. This isn't worth your time and I refuse to change my mind.
