You know, there is a raging debate going on these days about when a title screen appears in a show. The majority opinion is that the title should show up first. Usually right after the opening, sometimes after the fifteen minute, highly detailed, basically repeating the last episode in full recap that follows the opening. Now, that style may be so unbelievably popular that the common anime viewer could be forgiven for thinking it was the only one, but a powerful second option exists. Powerful enough to make up for the drastic difference in numbers even. This option is of course the “title screen at the end” one. I know I hide it pretty well, but I have to admit, I’m a huge “title screen at the end” fan. There is just so much potential with it. It can add an exclamation onto the end of the chapter by dropping a title that summarizes it succinctly. It can contextualize the dramatic conclusion to an intense episode. And, most importantly, it can be fucking hilarious when it’s just some stupidly funny joke title or used as a punch line for a bit at the very end of the episode. For real though, end the show with “When You Stare into a Losing Heroine, the Losing Heroine Stares Back into You”, fucking hilarious. Seeing “Let Any One of You Who Has Never Been Dumped Be the First to Throw a Stone at the Losing Heroine” at the end of a very emotional episode had me in tears laughing. And who could forget the classic episode title, “Consider Your Teacher a Stain on the Ceiling or Something, and Please Continue”. My personal favorite has to be “Am I Really Just Some Unseasoned Rando Who Drops in for the Last Episode with the Losing Heroine?”. It really is the little things that make my day sometimes.
The finer details were quite the strength for Makeine across the whole season. It was filled with small details and cleverly hidden jokes that were as funny as they were subtle. Picture that classic dramatic scene of two people standing outside having a tough conversation as one of them stares off into the distance smoking a cigarette. Then they turn around during the conversation and sneak a quick chomp out of the cig. And then at the end of the scene they still puff out some smoke like it’s the real thing. The comedy in Makeine is built on layers of scenes like this and is honestly fantastic. That it was in the running for making me laugh the hardest in a season with some great comedy anime really says something. Well, I think it does anyways and that’s what counts the most around here.
They kind of nailed the rom side of the romcom for me too. It took an out of the box approach to the romance where most of it was framed in an outside looking in sort of perspective. Nukumizu spends the whole show observing romantic disasters happen around him and, while he jumps in to help his friends, the titular losing heroines, push through their problems, romance is rarely on his mind. He even frequently tries to avoid it. Now, now, don’t worry too much, he does make his way towards the usual romcom protagonist track eventually but even as just a starting point it was refreshing and really fun to see a different angle on the genre.
If you couldn’t tell I could go on forever about this show. I didn’t even get a chance to talk about the amazing disaster that is the main cast or the great supporting characters and how well they were used throughout the show. Sure, I could have spent my time writing about that instead of the title screen but that’s hardly a relevant point. Of course I liked it. Obviously, you should go watch it. Anyone who struggled to divine that from the above paragraphs is in desperate need of a reading comprehension test. Hurry up and get to it.