Hello everyone! In this lesson, we are gonna be talking about the romantic comedy style of anime with one of my favorite stories in this category which is Lovely Complex! Or also known as LovCom.
Ok, so first of all, this story is a shojo, shojo would be the opposite of a shounen which we discuss in Lesson 2. So, a shojo is a story targeted at girls having usually a girl or teenager as the main character and most commonly being romantic or romantic comedy type of stories.
So let's get into our story. Lovely Complex just as the name implies is a story where both our protagonists have a complex. Koizumi Risa is a high school student that is a bit too tall for a girl, at least in her surroundings, and our male protagonist Atsushi Otani is shorter than the average. The two of them are actually kind of similar in personality and they tend to make fun of each other or annoy each other regularly, especially referring to their height. So they are known as Alll Hansin Kiojin, a Japanese comical duo where one of them is tall and the other one is short. Since they have difficulties finding a couple due to their height issue, they decide to let their differences aside and cooperate with each other, because of this they start knowing each other better, and so they are gonna start getting closer, especially when Risa starts growing romantic feelings towards Otani.
Now in this story, as you might see, this story centers around two teenagers in their high school life, which is seen a lot in this category. Now, our story is actually pretty simple and in most cases, it might seem that the actual problem is not that big of a deal, but one of the things that I love the most about it is not only the romantic part but also the comedy. This story has one of the best comedy for me that I have seen, so is really easy to laugh almost every chapter. Also, the story is nice without heavy dramas but still with pretty romantic moments and warm moments and the story between our two protagonists is really nice and sweet. Another point to be noticed is that by the time I read this story most shojos the main characters start confessing their love or dating pretty much by the end while in this one we actually get to see them as strangers, friends, and as a couple as well. It is really cool to see both protagonists getting over their respective complex which gives us character development.
So, of course, we have more characters in the story may be like six or eight more characters that are important because they are friends, family, or somehow related to the main characters but talking just about our main characters I also have to say that here we do not have the opposite type of characters that complement each other rather they are really similar. Both of them are funny, extroverted, loud, and friendly. We also get to see their friends and their respective love relationships as well but of course, the main focus is on these two.
Now the manga was created by Aya Nakahara and was finished in 2006 and the animation was made by Toei Animation in 2007. I have to say that I loved both. The anime is 24 episodes and the manga of course is way longer since in the manga we do get to see their three years of high school together and beyond as it's normally done for most stories of this type. Both of them are great and the art style is really nice as well and well with pretty scenes and a lot of funny ones. And talking a little about the music, I think the songs go really well with the story, they have this happy and fun tune. I personally liked the second opening in terms of the visuals since they don't really show that many scenes from the anime, just a couple and they put them in a really nice and pretty way that gets more meaning after seeing the anime. And overall referring to the combination of a good song and nice visuals, I prefer the second ending which has a different art style like sketches type of images and the song Bon Bon by Hay! Say! which has more romantic feelings into it.
Ok, so this has been everything for today's lesson. I hope that you enjoyed it a lot and look forward to Lesson 7. Thank you for listening and talk to you later. Bye-bye!
