The Story
Eita Kidou is a high school freshman who wants nothing to do with love or relationships. All he wants is to study and get a scholarship to a public medical school. Anything else is just a waste of time. But everything changes when the mysterious transfer student Masuzu Natsukawa confesses her feelings for him. Only to reveal that she’s not interested in him at all, she just needs someone to pose as her fake boyfriend and keep all the other boys from bothering her. She chooses Eita because she knows he shares her views about love, and she can trust him. The fact that she has some blackmail material on him doesn’t hurt.
The Review
This show reminds me a lot of the manga Nisekoi, except that where Nisekoi is a fast paced comedy with some of the best comedic facial expressions, Oreshura is a much slower burn, with no actual comedy until the very end.
While the blackmail was unexpected, and adds a fun twist to the setting, I can’t really say this will be a series I feel worth continuing. From what I’ve seen of the plot summaries of future episodes, it looks like the majority of this series is going to be a harem love story. And while this first episode doesn’t have anything going against it, besides the slow pacing, I can’t say I’m interested in what happens next mostly because I’m not interested in harem romances.
That being said, the characters are interesting enough. Eita is just enough of an antisocial jerk that seeing him in his current predicament is amusing. Masuzu and Chiwa Harusaki—Eita’s childhood friend—both fill the typical tropes for girls in this kind of series. I wouldn’t consider that a bad thing, but for anyone that is tired of the same old tropes I can’t really recommend this series based on the characters. Eita is definitely a bit more interesting than your average harem focus, but not so much to the extent that I’m willing to spend much more time on him.
The truth of the matter is that I, and many others I am sure, don’t have much time to spend on leisure. And when it comes to choosing shows to watch from a new season, then without knowing what the show is about we don’t have anything to go on besides the first episode. And in this case I don’t think Oreshura will see me returning.
While the ending twist was interesting and amusing, the general pace and tone of the episode put me off. If the rest of the series proceeds at a faster pace, I might come back. But if the overal tone reflects that of the majority of this first episode, then I can’t say I’ll have anything else to say about this series. It’s worth a look, and not a bad product, but not something that you haven’t seen before.
The Grade
If you liked my review, Watch the Episode Here!