Nisekoi

Raku Ichijou, a first-year student at Bonyari High School, is the sole heir to an intimidating yakuza family. Ten years ago, Raku made a promise to his childhood friend. Now, all he has to go on is a pendant with a lock, which can only be unlocked with the key which the girl took with her when they parted.

Now, years later, Raku has grown into a typical teenager, and all he wants is to remain as uninvolved in his yakuza background as possible while spending his school days alongside his middle school crush Kosaki Onodera. However, when the American Bee Hive Gang invades his family's turf, Raku's idyllic romantic dreams are sent for a toss as he is dragged into a frustrating conflict: Raku is to pretend that he is in a romantic relationship with Chitoge Kirisaki, the beautiful daughter of the Bee Hive's chief, so as to reduce the friction between the two groups. Unfortunately, reality could not be farther from this whopping lie—Raku and Chitoge fall in hate at first sight, as the girl is convinced he is a pathetic pushover, and in Raku's eyes, Chitoge is about as attractive as a savage gorilla.

Nisekoi follows the daily antics of this mismatched couple who have been forced to get along for the sake of maintaining the city's peace. With many more girls popping up his life, all involved with Raku's past somehow, his search for the girl who holds his heart and his promise leads him in more unexpected directions than he expects.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kirisaki, Chitoge Main

Touyama, Nao Japanese

Onodera, Kosaki Main

Hanazawa, Kana Japanese

Ichijou, Raku Main

Uchiyama, Kouki Japanese

Tsugumi, Seishirou Supporting

Komatsu, Mikako Japanese

Tachibana, Marika Supporting

Asumi, Kana Japanese

Maiko, Shuu Supporting

Kaji, Yuuki Japanese

Miyamoto, Ruri Supporting

Uchiyama, Yumi Japanese

Sasaki, Ryuunosuke Supporting

Hiyama, Nobuyuki Japanese

Onodera, Nanako Supporting

Ohara, Sayaka Japanese

Ringheart, Claude Supporting

Koyasu, Takehito Japanese

Iwakami, Atsuhiro Producer

Kubota, Mitsutoshi Producer

Maruyama, Hiroo Producer

Kananiwa, Kozue Assistant Producer

Reviews

Sep 11, 2023

Peach_Main

Recommended

Super Mario Maker is now eight years old and what better way to commemorate it than to review the anime the video game advertised in the form of Event Courses, Nisekoi: False Love. It's really funny since "Nisekoi" literally means False Love so the full title would actually be False Love: False Love. As a matter of fact, if you type False Love into the search bar, your first search result will point towards this anime.

True to the title, this anime is all about the main character Raku Ichijo being placed in a fake relationship with a transfer student named Chitoge Kirisaki. This is to ... prevent an intense turf war between the Shuei Clan and the Beehive Gang as Raku and Chitoge's fathers are the leaders of each group respectively. The task is easier said than done since Raku and Chitoge got on negative terms with each other during the latter's first day in school beforehand. What makes faking the romantic relationship even harder is the fact that Raku has his eyes on another female student, Kosaki Onodera, who also has feelings for him. In fact, there is a strong possibility that Kosaki may be the girl holding the key to opening Raku's locket, the promise being to get married should they ever meet again to do so. Raku still remembers this promise from ten years ago.

Back when I first watched this anime in February 2016, I wasn't too fond of the romantic comedy genre. Before rewatching it again for this review, I only remembered getting annoyed at the "It's not what it looks like" cliche. I still don't really like it whenever it happened during my rewatch, but I soon realized it wasn't used as frequently as I thought it did. The anime knows how to avoid being repetitive... except with one character which I will get to.

While Raku and Chitoge do their best pretending to be a couple for the sake of maintaining the peace between their families, other characters got involved with each having their own goal.

First, we have Kosaki's best friend Ruri Miyamoto. Isn't it a coincidence that she shares the same last name as the creator of Mario? Ruri strongly believes that Raku's "relationship" with Chitoge cannot stop Kosaki from getting closer to him. She creates multiple opportunities for Kosaki to strengthen her ties with Raku, only for Kosaki to screw them up or something completely out control gets in the way.

Next, there is Seishiro Tsugumi, the adopted "son" of the Beehive Gang member, Claude. Claude is super overprotective of Chitoge and even suspects her relationship with Raku to be fake. Since he cannot always be watching them at school, he enrolls Seishiro to keep an eye on Raku in his place. Should Seishiro confirm the relationship to be fake, "he" will execute Raku on the spot with guns "he" apparently is allowed to carry around on campus and doesn't ever get arrested for firing them. You can thank the weird teacher Raku and his friends have.

Introduced way late into the anime is Marika Tachibana, a frail girl who claims to be the girl who made the promise with Raku ten years ago, even declaring herself as his fiance. Marika happens to be the daughter of the police commissioner, who also threatens to use deadly force on the Shuei Clan if Raku fails to keep her happy. This makes faking a relationship with Chitoge even more difficult for Raku than it already is. Plus, other boys in the class want to date Marika, so it's only natural they bullied Raku over her love for him.

These characters are very memorable, having their own personalities demonstrated with their actions in trying to put an end to Raku and Chitoge's romantic relationship. Although they ended up failing, they all became friends with each other as well as with the main characters. Oh yeah, Raku's friend since middle school Shu Maiko is also here. Shu is a guy with a very perverted mindset and he literally tries to obtain lewd photos of girls and he enjoys peeping. Shu's quirks were rather repetitive, it's safe to say he is a character I dislike.

There are a lot of songs to talk about here. There are two opening songs, Click and Step, both sung by ClariS. Of the two, I'd say I remember Click more, just because it played for the first fourteen episodes while Step played for the last six. The first opening sequence was very interesting as it updates twice throughout the anime. Initially, there is a section where Seishiro and Marika appear as silhouettes until after their introductions, in which their respective silhouette gets filled. I do have to point out that, the final version of the first opening sequence only showed up once, that being the final time Click plays on Episode 14, since as said earlier, Marika does not appear until Episode 13; That late into the show. I hold nothing against the second opening, but in my opinion, it would have been more beneficial to stick with the one opening at that point.

There are multiple ending songs used throughout the anime. Chitoge, Kosaki, Ruri, Seishiro, and Marika all have their own theme songs used as ending soundtracks. However, there are some differences between the original airing on TV and the DVD release when it comes to the endings. Ruri's theme originally didn't exist on TV; It was exclusive to the DVD version. The episodes each song played on were different too. I'm not going to go over all the details. You can look them up yourself. There is another DVD exclusive song made for the 18th and 19th episodes, which originally had Marika's theme, now moved to the 12th and 13th episodes. It's a good song, but my goodness the animation sequence for it... the studio Shaft really wanted their audience to know it's them. If you are very familiar with Shaft, then you are definitely aware of a certain series they created three years prior to making the anime adaptation of False Love, but that's a whole different review for another time.

Overall, this tale of fake love in order to prevent any turf wars that could result in several casualties and mass destruction is really good. It gets 8/10. Thank you Super Mario Maker for getting me to give this anime a try.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Jul 26, 2024

Enigma2025

Mixed Feelings

32 episodes later, just to realize that only half of the manga has been adapted. Well that's on me for not doing the research. Overall, season 1 is great, it's a good 8/10 with nice buildup and comedy. Season 2 starts great for the first 6 episodes and then nosedives to 3/10 in the last 6 episodes. I mean, who thought it would be a good idea to dedicate one of the last episodes to one of the girls losing weight and her frustration?
Anime hasn't been touched since 2015 so who knows if season 3 will ever arrive. You will be disappointed if you expected ... a cute romantic ending/confession, there is NONE of that in these 2 seasons. I'd say it's a nice harem if you want to read the continuation in manga, otherwise avoid if you are strictly anime only consumer.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Nov 25, 2023

BadGuyBoog

Not Recommended

I feel like I’ve seen this show before. Not like deja vu but more like everything is the exact same to every other rom com on this list. Every character I've seen before. Every plot point I've seen before. They just changed the packaging. That’s how I feel about most of these shows. Why is the mystery element ‘which one of these girls was my childhood friend?’ and why is this a common plotline? Who cares? That was when you were a child, even if it turns out to be a completely different girl it doesn’t fucking change your current feelings so I don’t know ... why they make such a big deal out of it. Also do you have fucking amnesia, how is your memory that fucking bad and specific to know you had a best friend who was important to you, but not who that was. At least with Quintessential Quintuplets it made sense. I guess if I had to point out a couple stand outs, I like the assassin girl but I wish she got to do more assassin stuff. The best friend just sort of messing with everyone made him my favorite character. I like how the tsundere just accepted her feelings. And yup that’s it. That’s all that’s different. If you’ve seen one of these shit shows you’ve basically seen them all. But hey, they’re strangely addicting and makes my monkey brain entertained for a few hours. The show is incomplete and I doubt they’ll ever complete it but I honestly could care less. For some reason the shots of the main character in the kitchen were fucking God Teir. Like they put way too much effort in those pointless scenes animation-wise. (That hot spring episode was fucking bullshit though)

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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