Anime First Impressions: Murai in Love – Review

At first glance, Murai in Love seems like a romantic comedy without any of the comedy, or even the romance for that matter. Instead, what could have been the start of a bizarre comedy of errors turns into something that ends up just being bizarre. The series’ titular teenage protagonist attempts to hook up with his teacher, Ms. Ayano Tanaka, right off the bat, donning the looks of the hunky guy from her favorite otome game. More than going to university, Murai has his eyes set on marrying Tanaka and making her his. He’s definitely hot for teacher, but we can’t crank out the Van Halen just yet on account of a lack of character development, chemistry, or any real sense of humor here.

The first episode wastes no time getting its premise across, but perhaps a bit too quickly. Murai’s reasons for being smitten go unchecked and just happen because the script says so and, hey, you gotta kick off the premise somehow, right? The problem with that is that without any proper rhyme or reason, Murai turns into a creep without any real dimension or depth. He plays the otome game to copy the traits of his ideal-i, and later in the second episode cosplays at a doujin convention in a vain attempt to impress Tanaka. Murai is a man who is too lost in his own game of desires for us to sympathize with, but even then there’s not much to his character outside of that one defining trait for the audience to harbor feelings of pity or antagonism towards.

Similarly, Tanaka herself is lacking in the character development department. What could have been an interesting predicament–that of her otome fiction bleeding into reality–could have been more interesting if she wasn’t written off as a standard otome otaku. When Murai dons the cosplay and confesses her love, she’s left with a confused look on her face that barely leaves her throughout the first three episodes. She isn’t so one-dimensional, since there are some hints
of potential character development later on down the road–she does meet up with Murai at a bathhouse in an attempt to understand Murai’s feelings, so we’ll see if that develops into anything. Murai has some supportive friends, and there’s a female mangaka-cosplay duo to be had, but so far they’ve lingered as background characters. However, the biggest thing to note here is the animation, which is earnestly flat and obviously low-budget. Much of this show’s runtime is dedicated to static, barely-animated figures who prance up and down the screen in a way that screams a lot of corners had to be cut here. This isn’t a bad thing–if South Park, A Town Called Panic, and Pop Team Epic teach us anything, it’s that there’s a lot of charm to be found in crude animation, and Murai in Love accomplishes this with its unique sense of oddball glee. I enjoyed the scene where Tanaka sees herself transforming into the Buddha, as well as all of the bits with the metaphorical woodcutter cutting into Tanaka’s nerves and anxiety. There’s something experimental in the way these scenes present themselves and it’s a joy to see the different directions they go down. But this is a novelty that starts to wear off after a while, and it can’t stop everything else from feeling flat.

While some of the gags provoke intrigue on the visual level, it never achieves anything on the visceral. I tried thinking that maybe that’s the point and there’s a strange sense of anti-humor being juxtaposed with experimental direction, and even then I’m unsure if it works. It seems like what is supposed to be taken as funny lines banked so hard on the animation to bring out the humor’s flavor, but it never really does.

This has left me split down the very middle. On one hand, the premise remains mostly unfleshed and, as a result, mostly unfunny and uninteresting. On the other, the presentation is absurdly experimental enough to stroke the pretentious side of me, even if it overstays its welcome. Murai in Love is leagues and leagues away from being one of the greats of the
season. But for better or worse, it may end up being one of the more interesting ones.