Welcome back to Animondo.
Fair warning...this one's going to deal with some topics that aren't exactly suited for polite conversation. I'm not going to go into detail if I can help it, but fair warning nonetheless.
My Mental Choices are Completely Interfering with my School Romantic Comedy has a silly title and an interesting enough concept. Amakusa Kanade, a male high school student, has an odd curse: Periodically - usually when it is most inconvenient and massively embarrassing for him - he'll have a vision of two choices that float before him in text form, like you might see in the interface of some video game or another. He has to pick one or the other - he doesn't get to walk away or refuse to choose, and the curse uses increasing physical pain to enforce this. Discovering that by fulfilling a series of "missions" in his daily life, he might be able to get rid of the curse, he sets about trying to perform those tasks the best he can.
I'm not particularly fond of this show, but I do want to take a little time to highlight some good points all the same. My Mental Choices has a little bit in the first episode that's quite fun where it presents a variety of famous historical people making choices that lead them to their great inventions or deeds (or in some cases, famous historical endings), all using the same sort of presentation that Kanade will see throughout the show. It's rapid-fire and pretty amusing, and they slip in some really quick gags that you have to be quick to spot (in particular, one person's choice turning out to be between his historical deed and "maybe go frolic with a dolphin?"). It's a cute bit.
I'm also going to take a moment to just say that there's some decent little character humor in the show...when they aren't making the sort of jokes I'll get into later, there's some clever points and some fun absurd sort of humor here. The show is not without good points...it's just that it's a lot of work to find them among the stuff that was keeping me constantly annoyed.
The big problem is that My Mental Choices is...let's generously say problematic. It's like they took all the bad stuff that you hear about from some anime - except, y'know, outright porn - and put it in one show and turned the dial to 11. Fanservice, jokes about certain parts of the anatomy, unlikely wardrobe malfunctions, strange anatomical proportions...all here, all front and center. Other shows sometimes wander into this territory, or get one or two of these things, or use them once or twice. And that's a black mark on those shows, and they would be stronger without it.
My Mental Choices makes that the focus.
...no, it's still not that bad.
Also, please don't get any ideas.
Whether its the jokes the characters are making, the situations they're finding themselves in, or the weird choices Kanade's curse comes up with, it always leads to this sort of thing, and it pretty well renders the show unwatchable if you're not someone who is particularly into that sort of humor.
It isn't even complex or clever about it. Just, whoops, we're making a joke about breasts now! Here we go! If the show's threatening to get interesting or try something that took more thought for a bit, you can be pretty sure that in about three seconds either someone's going to just crack an inappropriate joke or Kanade's choice curse is going to kick in and ask him to choose between two things that make him look like an utter pervert (or one thing that makes him look like an utter pervert and another that just obviously can't be chosen at all). It happens with such regularity and predictability that you can pretty much feel it coming...which would be a good thing if it was ever something complex or interesting, but it isn't. Anytime I felt like I was actually getting to settle in and enjoy a few moments of the show, either for some cleaner humor or some actual attempts to do something to develop the characters, I could sense it all about to come crashing down.
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| You don't get extra points for criticizing your own concept, show. |
There's potential here. There is. The concept could work for something more generally comedic - things that are embarrassing or weird but not, y'know...this. The show does do that sometimes - for instance, an early choice has Kanade just doing a headstand and shouting the name of his favorite historical figure, which makes him look weird, but (unless I've missed something, which is entirely possible) isn't particularly problematic. Or it could work by playing more with stuff that's actively impossible, like a few of the choices do suggest - things that change Kanade physically, for instance, or change the reality of the world (admittedly, when the show does that currently, it tends towards changes that are themselves questionable, but in this hypothetical situation it'd pick better there too). Instead, it dwells largely on making him do stupid and/or offensive and/or perverted things.
Basically, the show's set up to give the main character a bit of an out, a reason we wouldn't think of him as an utter jerk. The curse doesn't serve to set up interesting story elements - it serves to give the main character an excuse for the actions he takes. That's all. Kanade has to do this stuff, so it's not his fault, right? It's such a problem for him.
And look, I get it. I don't find it particularly interesting how it's done here, but I get it. The idea of someone who is constantly forced to choose between things that he doesn't like could be a compelling and/or comedic story. It just...isn't in this case. Again...here, it's just an excuse. It isn't a source of the story...it's an interruption.
The moments that My Mental Choices gets it right served more to make me sad than anything else. When a blessed joke landed that wasn't related to the certain parts of the anatomy, I got to see what the writing might've been capable of without all the inappropriate humor. It's not like it was the greatest comedy in anime in those moments, but it could be pretty good...and the thought that I was struggling through this show rather than enjoying an alternate universe where the actually funny stuff was the main focus just made it all the worse. It's not that the show lacks good comedy - there were several points where I found myself laughing. And it's not that it lacks nice character moments - there were a good number of points where I found myself interested in a development. It's just that those moments aren't in the majority - sadly, the show is capable of real comedy but chooses to grab for the low-hanging fruit most of the time.
What would've been so bad about doing this concept, and just...making it about embarrassing and nonsensical things instead? You could still get all the stuff about people thinking Kanade was weird. You just don't have to go where My Mental Choices goes. It adds nothing to the show.
So...I'm going to leave off there. I think I've made my point.
I tolerate a lot sometimes watching shows, anime or otherwise. Sometimes stuff bugs me, but just not enough to overwhelm my enjoyment of a show. Whether it's inappropriate humor, fanservice, gore, language, or anything else, we all have varying tolerance levels for it. Sometimes it's there but it doesn't ruin a show for us. Sometimes it's too much.
This was too much, at least in my book. Maybe someone else could watch this and find the rest of the humor worth it. Or heck, maybe I'm misreading things or getting too uptight, and someone could find how this is a brilliant satire of the very stuff I'm talking about. Maybe so.
All I can say is that for me, this went too far.
Dubbed or Subbed?: To the best of my knowledge, this show is only available subtitled. The subtitling work is perfectly fine, and character "voices" come through in it, so in the event you still want to check this show out after the above review, you shouldn't find that interfering with the experience, at least.
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| Next time, more of "wait, why is the main character stuck in a pig costume?" and less of the other stuff, please. |
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