User reviews

Overview Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian is a romantic comedy anime adapted from the Japanese light novel series by SunSunSun and illustrated by Momoco. It follows transfer student Alya, a poised half-Russian high schooler, and her nerdy classmate Kuze Masachika. Unknown to Alya, Kuze secretly understands the Russian phrases she teasingly uses to flirt with him, leading to a charming tale of hidden feelings and romantic misunderstandings. The anime is available for streaming on Crunchyroll.

Plot Summary The story revolves around the growing relationship between Alya and Masachika, set against the backdrop of high school life. It's a lighthearted yet layered exploration of adolescent emotions, self-esteem struggles, and miscommunication. Themes of family dynamics, particularly Kuze's backstory with his sister, add depth to the narrative.

While the premise is promising, the pacing is uneven, with critical backstory elements revealed too early in the series, sometimes through forced plot devices. These moments feel disconnected from the overarching tone, leaving viewers wondering about the anime's intended direction.

Strengths Animation: Doga Kobo's animation elevates the series with crisp visuals, vibrant colors, and fluid character movements. The subtle artistic touches breathe life into everyday high school settings.

Characters: Alya is a compelling mix of elegance and quirky charm, balancing her tsundere attitude with moments of vulnerability.

Masachika stands out as a relatable rom-com lead, complemented by the chaotic yet lovable energy of his little sister.

Supporting characters like Masha add layers of warmth and wit.

Voice Acting: Yuki's performance as Alya captures her multifaceted personality perfectly, while Sumippe's Russian pronunciation, though imperfect, delivers Alya's playful teasing with authenticity.

Weaknesses Pacing Issues: Episode three crams significant backstory into a brief span, creating a rushed feeling that undermines the emotional impact.

Underdeveloped Themes: Alya's "loner" persona and family struggles could have been explored more deeply to strengthen her character arc.

Plot Tension: While the miscommunication trope works as a central tension, some moments feel overly contrived, making the narrative lose momentum.

Themes and Depth The anime explores the complexities of adolescent relationships, including navigating self-esteem issues and fostering connections. Kuze's relationship with his sister introduces darker undertones rooted in their shared experience of parental divorce, adding a layer of intrigue. However, certain elements, like the borderline incestuous implications, may feel uncomfortable to some viewers.

Overall Impression Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian offers a delightful mix of humor, romance, and high school drama. While it stumbles with pacing and depth, the charming characters and gorgeous animation make it an enjoyable watch. Fans of rom-com anime will appreciate its playful approach and subtle emotional beats.

Verdict The first season intrigues with its unique premise and endearing character dynamics, but it leaves much to be desired in execution. A solid choice for rom-com enthusiasts, it sets the stage for a potentially stronger second season.

Rating: 7.5/10.

So, yeah... I decided to watch this anime because I was just browsing Crunchyroll, saw the poster and thought "Hmm... why not?". And honestly, I had a lot of fun watching the anime, and even though sometimes I feel like strangling the protagonist for his stupidity, the story is excellent, especially the "arc" of the battle for class presidency. But what impressed me the most, in fact, was the animation, which I found very beautiful and perfect for a comedy/romance anime. And yes, the title describes the entire anime, so make sure that when you tell someone what you're watching, call the anime Roshidere and not the embarrassing title they gave it. Watch it if you want, but you'll want an Alya for yourself and you'll be regretting that there's no such beauty, you can be sure.

No, this show is not as good for me to call it a miracle. It's a very nice romantic comedy with drama and anything that you'd expect from a typical coming of age anime.

What really flashed me here was the Russian language. You see, I grew up with either Russian movies or American movies where Russian is totally butchered and made fun of. Also, I know that the Japanese like other languages like English or German, but due to their very specific use of the Japanese language, they rarely pronounce anything correctly.

Imagine my surprise and joy when I heard real Russian in this anime! Sure, it's with a heavy accent and the main characters have a better pronunciation than the side characters, but still. There were longer parts where I did not even need to read the subtitles and I understood everything. Kudos to the voice actors!

It was worth it to hire a Belorussian teacher of the Russian language as an advisor. Everyone has done a great job and I am looking forward to the second season.

I'm used to the rom-com genre, and this one has a good start, but slowly falls off over the last 4 episodes

Putting aside some unnecessary fan service and the fact that they flirt with incest, the male protagonist starts acting very mature for his age and neutral towards a certain female, but in the end you see the opposite, so it seemed to me that they forced the usual unexpected romance to extend the anime for at least one more season (which is supported by the fact they avoided to touch the background of certain characters and instead focused on a random debate)

I'll watch the second season for the sake of closure, and I hope they don't take the typical direction (but probably they will if most of the fan base wants that in order to please them)

In my opinion, it is an interesting anime with an amazing story. It can be said that I was reading the manga before the anime was released, and the graphics and art of the manga were also interesting, and then I realized that the anime will be released.

I also noticed that it is going to be animated by a studio that animated Oshi no ko anime, and again this made me want to follow the anime more.

I hope the story will continue well and even a second or third season will be considered for this anime.

Cool comedy romance genre.

I would like to add that apart from the characters of the anime, the Voice actors of the characters are also interesting to me.

Really liked the scene where world war 3 breaks out and Alya gets drafted into the marines, my fav part was whenever she got captured by the chinese and get tortured and forced to sing chinese drill rap, another personal fav is whenever this one guy got ran over by a tank, my 3rd fav was DEFINITELY that time the Zimwalt got overrun and hijacked before blowing itself up with nuclear missiles, also 21 Savage was there featuring Eminem, for some reason ACDC had a few versus, Brian Johnson clutched up though, the song is they all recorded is called: Don't touch my pizza by zombycare, zombycare is the producer of the music video.

I'm a big fan of romcom genre in animes but, alya san and 90% of romcom anime have a unnecessary long story.

I love character development, but prolonging a lot only for earning more is annoying.

A story have beginning, development, critical Moments and ending... But current manga have a beginning a development, a longer unnecessary chapters, a critical and sometines a Bad ending or a Open ending.(Kanokari, domestic Kanojo...) I Likes alya san, but im afraid sunsun can waste the Potential of alya san.

I love alya san because masachika is a lazy but a smart Guy, and alya a smart Girl , i Hope they can stay together.

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.

"Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian" is a great example of how school romance anime can still feel fresh and enjoyable.

One of the highlights is the protagonist's sister, whose slightly provocative behavior is portrayed as a well-crafted character trait. She often breaks the fourth wall, speaking directly to us viewers, while the clueless protagonist remains completely unaware - which adds a fun layer of humor.

The real strength of the series, however, lies in the chemistry between Masachika and the top student Alya.

Alya's cold and often condescending attitude toward Masachika is portrayed brilliantly, and the German dub captures her tone perfectly.

This high school anime series is centred on Alisa Mikhailovna Kujou, known as Alya, a silver haired, half-Russian girl and Masachika Kuze, the boy who sits next to her. She acts as though she dislikes him but it appears she secretly likes him and occasionally makes flirtatious comments to him in Russian, not knowing he understands the language. He also secretly fancies her and is unsure what to make of the mixed messages. Later on the two run for the leadership of the student council.

I thought this was a decent enough addition the high school romance genre. Alya is a particularly interesting character thanks to her use of Russian. Other characters are more generic but still solid enough. Character designs are good and the animation is decent. I suspect now I've finished watching it will be forgotten, but to be fair that is true of most series unless they are truly special. Overall I'd not say it was a must watch but is worth checking out if you enjoy the genre; if we get a second season I'll certainly continue watching.

These comments are based on watching the series in Japanese with English subtitles.

Best romantic comedy anime want many episodes can't wait for seasons not 2 or 3 seasons it deserves tons of seasons best i think its ratings will mor than 10 anyone seeing this should definitely watch this anime and authors please continue manga and anime keep it on going don't end this anime bestest anime i have ever experienced feel good anime. And after watching this anime i have forget my stress and soo wholesome very very good anime should have watched in first place can't wait for seasons of this anime i am so grateful that i watched this and this is 10 out of 10 ratings anime you should watch.

(16+) A very funny series with a cast of likeable characters, some of them quite quirky. The animation is gorgeous, and the story is fast paced with a few little surprises thrown in for spice. One of the supporting characters is actually my favorite (Yuki) because some of her actions are quite unexpected. Some of her actions are a little risqué, but it's her overall quirkiness that is really endearing. This series pokes fun at itself and anime/manga in general, and it really works!

Check out my comprehensive list of Anime titles to find your next watch - just click my profile link at the bottom left of this review!

At first glance it looks like the most typical, generic, school romcom anime in a sea of modern, mass-produced, low-concept "kadokawa"-ish anime, and honestly you have to be lucky enough to come across it's most cutest scenes (funny or innuendo) to even be interested in watching it. However turns out its greatest strength is not what you'd expect.

Such is the case with "Alya Sometimes Hides her Feelings in Russian" which makes a point in showing how cute it can be a when a girl speaks "babyish Russian" to hide the horny stuff on her mind thinking no one would understand. The majority of the cast is just the most generic japanese anime school student council cast, with the exception of one spunky little sister.

There's no remarkable way to review this anime without mentioning the main character and his lil sis. They are what make the show stand out. Just remember the name Masachika & Yuki if you ever come around to see it. Its the Cutest, funniest, hottest sibling relationship you may see today.

And it's what truly keeps the show worth watching cause the babyish Russian speaking girl just isn't good enough on her own for a generic looking anime like this, that really drags and bores with its japanese elite school setting. 5:23pm.

Watched on: 15-17 May 2025

Having been released the preceding year, this anime gleams like a rare crystal amidst languishing railroad tracks: a superb amalgamation of romantic comedy and high school drama. With all honesty, it is a delightful mix of humor and sincere moments that took me by surprise with its charm.

Let me try to break it down - from the very first scene, we can see that the heroine Alya often flirts with the hero Masachika in Russian but that she is unaware of the fact that Masachika understands the Russian language perfectly well. The whole fun begins with Alya dropping casual romantic or emotional lines in Russian, and while she thinks that Masachika is unaware, he actually understands every single word.

Many times we viewers can pretty much guess what Alya is saying from her expressions. And yes - I, myself, would pause the episode and Google for the translations for words such as:

"Milashka," "Ya tee-BYA lyu-BLYU," "ty ta-kóy mí-lyy, glúpiy, moy mál-chik, slát-kiy" - and many more. Honestly, I feel so Milashka (cute) hearing these lines that I can't even describe it with words.

Masachika understood every one of those but never let Alya know that he did. That sort of secret romance and unspoken tension made this show downright enjoyable for me.

Besides their romance, the anime also covers various school activities and gently touches upon the intrigues of student politics, so not to say that Alya and Masachika are the only things going on.

In short - if you're into rom-coms, school dramas, or slice-of-life anime, then this is the one to give a try. No anime is perfect;

Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings exceeded expectations! Well-developed characters, balanced humor and heartache, and stunning animation.

Alya shines as the quirky, vulnerable princess. Masachika's complex past ripped my heart apart. Yuki's brother complex adds humor, while Maria's kindness makes her a favorite.

Character development is evenly paced; no one feels like a side character. Writing superbly balances humor and emotional depth.

Masachika's childhood history is tough to swallow, connected to a major plot point. Cliffhanger ending left me eager for Season 2!

Highlights: lovable characters, witty dialogue, poignant storytelling. Lowlights: some plot points feel rushed.

A must-watch for school rom-com fans! Comparable to "Toradora!" and "My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU."

Tokidoki Bosotto Russia-go de Dereru Tonari no Alya-san started out looking good; the first episodes promised something different and had me hooked. But after a while, everything fell apart. The story became boring and repetitive, as if they didn't know what to do with the potential it had at the beginning.

The episodes felt more and more repetitive, and what used to excite me started to become predictable. In the end, it ended up being a huge disappointment. What could have been a great series ended up being something that doesn't leave you wanting more. I dont recomend it to anyone looking for a roncom, this show is clearly not that.

Another interesting series from the summer of 2024.

A promising first episode with all the ingredients for success, a hilarious second episode and then the cold shower !

Episode 5 starts to show signs of running out of breath, already visible in episode 4.

The characters' development starts to slow down, and the personalities and feelings of the protagonists lack exploration.

The synopsis suggests something different : People expect more rejection from people perceived as superior. We need to go deeper instead of just scratching the surface.

The initial idea of a misunderstanding with language goes nowhere.

The ''twists and turns'' are abysmally flat.

There's potential in the male character, particularly with his memories... However, there are a few banalities and stereotypes: The guy is a larva, as is often the case. The girl is a potential tsundere... I hope this will change.

The animation is fluid and some of the shots are pleasing.

The second part will tip the series over to the right or wrong side of the road.

Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian is a charming romantic comedy about Alya, a high school girl with a secret: she expresses her true feelings in Russian, a language she's fluent in but others don't understand. The anime follows her interactions with her classmate, Kyou, who slowly begins to uncover her hidden emotions. The series combines humor, light-hearted romance, and cultural quirks, offering a unique twist with its use of language. While the pacing is relaxed, the characters' growth and sweet moments make it an enjoyable watch for fans of subtle, character-driven romance. I love tsundere tsundere cute anime.

Review of "Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings"

The series "Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings" captivates with its depth and sincerity. The story about the main character's struggles with expressing her emotions raises important themes of inner conflict and self-discovery. The acting is superb, especially Alya's performance, which perfectly conveys the nuances of her role.

The plot unfolds dynamically, keeping the viewer engaged, and each episode reveals new facets of the characters. I particularly enjoyed the atmosphere created by the excellent direction and beautiful music.

I hope the second season comes out soon!

The anime starts off great with likeable character personality traits, a bit of intrigue with relationships and chemistry, desirable circumstances, and mysterious background history. Typically I don't care much for anime that doesn't incorporate some sort of fictional aspect. However, I did find this one to be quite enjoyable. That is until I realized nothing happens throughout the entire second half. There is no big reveal, mystery solved, accomplishment of any sort, nor any real notable progression in the protagonists relationship with the heroine or general storyline. Can't see how or why this got good reviews with the entire second half amounting to nothing.

"Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings" is a captivating anime series that beautifully explores the complexities of emotions and the challenges of adolescence. The protagonist, Alya, is a relatable character who often struggles to express her true feelings, making her journey both poignant and inspiring. The animation is stunning, with vibrant colors and expressive character designs that enhance the storytelling.

The supporting characters are equally well-developed, each bringing their own struggles and dynamics to the narrative. The friendships and relationships portrayed are heartfelt and realistic, reflecting the ups and downs of real life. The show expertly balances moments of lightheartedness with deeper emotional themes, making it a truly engaging experience.

I find myself eagerly anticipating the second season, hoping to see how Alya's journey continues and how her relationships evolve. The first season left us with so many questions, and I can't wait for more character development and plot twists. Here's to hoping it comes out soon!