12 Days of Xmas – Day 1: LoveCom’s Surprise Trap

December 14, 2007 in Specials by Tom Langston (calaggie) | 3 comments

For the first day of my twelve-part series of anime-related things that affected me in 2007, I’m writing about something that I saw as a part of a regular anime club screening involving Lovely Complex.

Earlier this quarter my local anime club started watching Lovely Complex, a high-school comedy featuring a tall girl, Risa, and a short guy, Otani. About a month ago we saw episode 4 and were introduced to a new character, Seiko Kotobuki, whom Otani saves from a big dog on campus. She instantly falls in love with him and he in turn tries to act the “cool guy” role. Risa becomes depressed because she just found out she grew 2cm (making her height 172cm) and seeing Otani and Seiko hitting it off doesn’t help her mood.

In the next episode Risa, her friend Nobuko, and Seiko are watching the basketball team practice when Otani stubs his index finger. Seiko takes him to the infirmary while some of his teammates remember that Seiko is a name she uses to trick people, information that makes Risa run to the medical office in time to see Seiko taking off her shirt and revealing her flat chest. It turns out that Seiko’s real first name is Seishiro and he thinks he should have been born a girl. The reveal moment left me and my club laughing and OMG’ing for about a minute and I was glad that I hadn’t watched ahead because I would have missed out on the shared reaction.

Otani’s face is PURE WIN.

Otani is initially down after realizing that he kissed a dude, avoiding contact with Seiko, but he eventually comes to be fine with it, making sure to tell Seiko that it would be difficult to become Seiko’s boyfriend. Another time Risa stands up for Seiko against some girls who had previously said Risa was too tall to be in love with someone. Finally, the cheer teams decide to have the guys wear “cheer girl” uniforms and the girls don black gakuran uniforms.

Overall, I thought the minor arc handled the subject of assuming another gender pretty well and Seiko has appeared occasionally in the episodes after her debut. Also, I have come to like Lovely Complex for the angry interactions between Risa and Otani and for the visual style that makes it seem less like an shoujo romantic comedy (at least not as much as Bokura ga Ita) even though Risa is clearly the protagonist driving the story.