Alternative title(s): Ore o Suki nano wa Omae dake kayo
Light Novel Adaptation by Connect
Streaming on Crunchyroll

Premise

High school life is heating up for Amatsuyu “Joro” Kisaragi as not one, but TWO cute girls seem to be coming on to him. The situation is not quite that simple though, and adding a third girl makes things even more complicated.

Jel’s verdict: Sorry, I Don’t Love You Either

This episode sent me on a roller coaster ride of highs and lows that unfortunately left me straight up angry by the end. It started with the first third of the episode doing its best impersonation of a mid-2000’s visual novel adaptation, hitting all the predictable plot beats of your average anime romance story featuring your childhood friend and your cool senpai.

Hitting the first big twist (the girls are actually in love with the main guy’s friend) was refreshing and actually got my hopes up. It was even funny when they manage to repeat the exact same confession scene for each girl. In fact, that entire premise is a great way to flip the genre on its head and set a solid foundation for a good comedy. Suddenly, I was on board.

Then they blew it with the second twist. Turns out main dude was putting on an anime-protagonist-nice-guy act the whole time and is actually an insufferable piece of human garbage. My rage really built up as he switched to showing outright hatred for the girls he seemed to be friends with, spouting lines about how they misled his poor innocent heart or whatever by just being nice to him. You know, the kind of words that reinforce the idea that love is a transaction and sex can be purchased with kindness. Basically, incel talk. Yeah I said it, fight me.

I might almost be willing to tolerate this if the show outright condemned Joro for his attitude, and I’ll concede they do not necessarily want you to view him in the best light. But they don’t particularly judge him for it either, in fact they kind of reward him by throwing in another girl who LIKES his terrible attitude. I think the writer is going for some kind of message about us being the most attractive when we are just being ourselves, and yeah no that does not work. The real you can still be pretty ugly, and that’s the case here.

Part of me still feels like there is a small path to redemption for this show. If Joro actually learns from his experiences and grows as a character, this could be a really fresh take on the tired school romcom genre. Based on this episode though, I’d say there’s almost zero percent chance of that happening. It’s much more likely we’ll only remember Oresuki for its wasted potential, if we even remember it at all.