Plot And “Plot” Abound In Midseason Review: Love Tyrant

Among other things, Love Tyrant has hit a beautiful stride where they seem to be bringing about a plot that is not completely pants on head status. Still of that caliber but not quite as bad. Episode 4 kicks off with an interesting bit of backstory where we see Akane’s family has something of a bad history as a troublemaker/dangerous (go figure) and Yuzu’s mother warned her of as much. We are also given a glimpse of some even more psychotic appearing pink haired girl who throws Yuzu’s doll into a piranha filled fountain, to be saved by an apathetic and deadpan appearing Akane. This interaction however, makes Yuzu imprint on her Onee-sama like a newborn duckling.

Enter Shikimi Shiramine, disguising super sadist extraordinaire who spends a good first half of an episode duping Guri and Seiji into thinking she wanted to be paired with a man she who’s name she didn’t know. So, of course Seiji goes off to try to find him in a creepy location and Guri gets ditched and informs Yuzu and Akane about this girl, to which Akane has the typical reaction of “time to shank a bitch” where “a bitch” means “everyone.” As Seiji begins to realize something’s awry, Guri name drops “Shikimi” and the sisters seemingly needlessly get concerned about Seiji and sprint off. In case the childhood flashback wasn’t enough to concern you we are gifted with a very erotic “enhanced interrogation” scene that gives you a new image of torture porn. Long story short, Seiji suffers and ends up dying.

Yup, I said dying and it’s not permanent, Seiji had his immortality temporarily revoked so that he could have a quick heart to heart with Guri’s dad, Mr. God. No joking around, Guri is the next in line to inherit the title of God. If you’ve seen episode one that should be an obviously terrifying idea. Kami-Sama imparts a bit of advice to help his daughter to become able to understand love, while Mr. Devil appears to basically explain how her chaotic nature is better suited to the Chaotic Evil spectrum vs Chaotic Good. With promises that they won’t directly interfere, Maoh and Kami send Seiji on his way and he is reincarnated, to which he sees a flustered Akane and Yuzu, the latter of which has been slowly developing Seiji fever of the Tsundere variant.

The following episode is borderline filler of a comical nature with no character generation or progression until the end of the episode. This cap off is an assessment of the very nature of Guri’s “Love” which is further enhanced through the utilization of some minor Maoh manipulation. She realizes while there are men out there who are nicer, more handsome, and overall less abrasive than Seiji, she still wants to hold hands with, eat with, and be lazy with Seiji. Additionally, the show starts to really lay on the plot in a play at making the events of the story actually have logic and sense (the success of which is still yet to be determined). It even begins to get kinda sappy and cute when we find the truth out about Akane’s family with her mother being a legitimate uncaring psychopath and Akane’s deep dark decent into falling in love with the barely-lovable idiot Seiji (read in Yuzu’s Tsundere voice). TL;DR we find out Akane’s mother is evidently part of the Zoldyck family from Hunter x Hunter and Seiji has to now embark on a quest to rescue Akane after a few unsuccessful assassination attempts because you know, immortality.

So to summarize this shorty of an article, Love Tyrant is still reigning high on my queue of shows to watch for the season. The animation quality still remains pretty damn good with the audio being that off but cheery music and the facial animations and vocal work sync perfectly for a vast amount of the show. All of this is banking on what I hope will be a great show ending but expecting a hilariously random ending. So go catch up and enjoy the show, and leave a comment and a like or Akane will be sad and have sad feels…