How can one love a romance anime if they don't like the main characters? Was that the question "Masamune-kun no Revenge" was trying to answer?
While I don't hate this anime by any means, the core of any romance or rom-com should be the leading man and lady (or variation thereupon) and the will of the viewer to see them be together. It might sound harsh, but I was almost rooting against either of them to find any sort of happiness as they're both rather miserable, dopey, and ridiculous teenagers caught up in their own vendettas. Our titular MC, Masamune Makabe, was rejected by Aki Adagaki when he was 10. Since then, he's improved himself from a fat, petulant jerk to a muscular, handsome young man pretending to not be a jerk. He's changed so much, that Aki doesn't even recognize him and he intends to use this to his advantage as his plan to win her heart and then break it has led up to this moment. He's really gonna go all-out like some half-baked Edmund Dantes over something that happened when he was 10? Okay.
What's more, Aki continues to reject every boy who courts her, earning her a reputation as "The Brutal Princess" for her harsh and public refusals of potential suitors. She is quite unlikable. Why doesn't Makabe just see himself as a victim of a woman who cannot be pleased and move on to the numbers of girls in his class swooning over him? Because this isn't supposed to be a harem anime. So, he's a shallow, one-track minded jerk, and she's an ice queen. And while they're not as awful as that on the whole, they still don't do enough for me to care about their destinies together. So, why did I keep watching?
Well, outside of being very patient, there was a great cavalcade of side characters to keep things going. It's a studio SILVER LINK. Production, so it's never going to be boring. This manga adaptation is saved by the side characters to the point I wish they were the main focus. Aki has a maid/handler who helps Masamune out for reasons that are altruistic, but she still does it in a very calculating fashion and she serves as a delightful foil for both Aki and Masamune. A third wheel is added into this love story in the second act in Neko Fujinomiya, who is head over heels for Masamune, and the two later share a very tender scene together. That scene was just about as romantic as it got and it quickly ended because Masamune is a dope blinded by his obsession over the tiniest beef with Aki. This kind of activity is borderline psychotic.
There are many more charming side characters that keep things going, but honestly, good fries don't save a lousy burger. There isn't a lot else to comment on, the intro/end credits music is about as stock as you can get for an anime of this time period. The English dub is something I can tell the cast had a lot of fun with, but the Japanese dub is more suitable for the story. I can't get over just how botched this whole thing felt, and maybe that's the point. Masamune's plot of "revenge" is about as poorly thought out and even more poorly executed outside of his physical transformation. The best revenge is living well and this anime is barely alive. 6/10, but closer to 5.5/10
Watch or don't. Cheers!
