Make Heroine ga Oosugiru!

“If only she got over him… then maybe I could have a chance!” cries the light novel author as he writes his NTR doujin.

Nothing is special about Makeine. It’s the 10000th rendition of a cast of cute girls involved with some loser. But atleast there’s a twist this time: The girls get cucked hard out of their love interest. This is the only interesting thing about Makeine. Everything else sucks.

The main problem of Makeine is that, despite being subversive, it’s no different from the classic, and well-beloved, loser harem show. We have a blank self-insert and a bunch of cute girls involved with the main ... character for no good reason. It’s not special at all. No matter how much it wants to paint itself and its vapid cast of characters as special with manipulative presentation.

Makeine tries to sell its hollow characters by how much they appeal as your ideal waifu. While it walks through introducing our beloved heroines one by one, it’s so obvious that they’re crafted to appeal to specific sets of tastes. Every heroine embodies an exaggerated archetype. Every anime is guilty of this to a certain extent, but with Makeine one gets the sense that an entire character's selling point is that archetypal template. Think of Love Live: Every idol in that show is made to print money; they’re marketable waifu templates made to peddle to lonely otakus. Makeine is no different. This is the business model of anime after all.

And that is as far as the characterization for each heroine goes. They’re as blank as rocks and just do what you would expect them to do based on their archetype. See this super shy and socially awkward girl? At every interaction and scene, said character would play out that role to a tee. There’s very little deviation or any substance to be found with anyone in the show.

One of the worst parts of Makeine would have to be the protagonist. Somehow, out of all the cope anime I’ve seen, this is the worst self-insert. Not only is he devoid of ANY personality, he can easily be mistaken for an eunuch—a term for castrated males who are assigned subordinate roles; their emasculation makes them the perfect docile slave, to not only to rule over, but to ensure the safety of the women in a royal palace.

Seeing that as the lead character is excruciating. He gets dicked around by all the other characters. His role seems to only be a vehicle to get the other characters to do things – rather than being an actual character himself.

The mere existence of the protagonist is what causes a lot of my problems with Makeine. Remove him. He’s unneeded. Not only does he add nothing to the show, he changes the entire lens and the expectations going into it. It could just be a handful of cute girls and their failings with romance; instead – since there's some blank, hypogonadal self-insert of a main character – the anime turns into some perverse anti-harem.

We’re not watching cute girls failing at romance; we’re watching a twisted and backwards harem anime.

“Oh… but that’s the point! See? It’s subversive and self-aware!” – says imaginary Makeine defender.

I can entertain the idea that it’s doing something similar to School Days and that it’s taking the piss out of MY expectations going into it. But even taking that as true, it comes off as a half-assed attempt at it.

Sure, it’s playing on an expectation and being subversive, but it doesn’t do anything interesting with that apart from doing the subversion. Other than that, it’s a generic romcom that’s considerably more annoying to watch – precisely because it fails at meeting the expectation it created from being subversive. It just ends up playing out how any romcom would in an infuriating way.

The most annoying part about all of this is that Makeine expects the viewer to applaud it for doing something mildly subversive. It presents itself with an air of sentimentality and entitlement. After it has shown you its groundbreakingly creative premise, it thinks that it already has you emotionally invested. I’m groaning at all the contrived sentimental scenes, at the sappy piano track, and at all its attempts to convince me that it’s some serious, deep and emotional masterpiece—It’s not. It really isn’t.

Its vapid presentation isn’t a redeeming quality. The visuals are just an eye roll; they’re painfully inoffensive. Sure, it does everything right. One could say that it looks good. But I can’t help but feel nothing towards it all. It does all the trite modern techniques—all the right camera shots, all the right editing and directing—because that's the industry standard and the formula that guarantees success. There’s no life or creativity. There’s no original or exciting animation or directing that would even hint at a spark of vision. Think of anything made by Trigger or Gainax.

This is what good anime is supposed to be apparently. Just formulaic cash grabs and with an interesting twist as the selling point. That’s Makeine for you.

Anyway! This sucks. Dropped. 1/10.