Can you have love without lies? Can you lie about being in love? It’s time we found out in this twelve-episode anime series reissued recently on blu-ray from our old friends at Sentai Filmworks.
In the not-too-distant future, Japan is suffering severely declining birth dates (a problem they are already facing today) to the point that the government has instituted a program that auto-assigns a spouse to you when you turn 16 years old. Yukari Nejima is a high schooler who has never given this system much thought but is madly in love with his classmate Misaki Takasaki who he’s known since they were kids. The very evening he chose to reveal his true feelings to her (which she reciprocates), he turns 16 and is approached by government workers with his officially assigned wife (after receiving a mysterious contradictory text), Ririna Sanada. Nejima is immediately heart-broken and after meeting Ririna, neither are terribly thrilled at the situation they find themselves in. When Ririna befriends Nejima’s crush Misaki though, the romantic at heart in her helps her decide that she must do all she can to bring them together. The only problem is that she and Nejima also start to develop feelings for one another along the way.
This rather complicated love triangle is based on a shoujo manga that seems to have some pretty die-hard fans. Particularly for those who gravitate to thick and juicy melodrama, there is much to like here, and from what I can tell, the series remains pretty faithful to the manga excepting a deviation in the ending (no spoilers though). Frankly, as for me, I’m not the biggest fan of soapy melodrama, but what intrigued me more here is the incredibly disturbing dystopian vision peeking out of the corners of this series. In addition to just the basic absurd premise of legally-mandated teen marriage, the government comes across as a sleazy, pervy old man, bending high schoolers to its will. We get many glimpses of this kind of lurid behavior like early on when the case workers assigned to Nejima and Ririna off-handedly mention how many of the teens paired up start having sex within a month (after all you’ll be married anyway, right?). This is also most notable in the episode about midway through the series where Nejima and Ririna attend a government-sponsored “lecture” that involves immediately passing out condoms (I thought they wanted to increase birth rates?) and then showing a room full of underage teens a sex education film that basically turns into a straight up porno after which they are immediately sent to a hotel room to spend the night together. What the ever-loving hell, government? Big Brother isn’t just watching you. They’re sitting in the corner jerking off while you do it.
The technical aspects are what we’ve come to expect from a newer series from Sentai, a very clean and crisp 1080p transfer coupled with a Japanese Stereo 2.0 track (no dub this time). A 5.1 mix isn’t really missed here since this is a primarily dialogue-driven show with little to no action. The extras are the usual OP and ED clean animations, some Sentai trailers and nothing else.
Well, this one is a bit tricky to recommend. For fans of frothy shojo romance and melodrama, you’ll find this right up your alley despite the extremely creepy political undertones. For fans of dystopian sci-fi, I think there’s an alternate version of this story that could take it in a more reactionary direction that could’ve been really interesting. Unfortunately, this show as-is just accepts the jacked up premise and moves on from there. Non-shoujo fans be warned. This may not be your cup o’ tea.