Hooray, (or, perhaps, hooboy) another stupid rom-com, and this one is more inane than its predecessors, but it is executed in a rather charming way. Although the title is “Love Tyrant “ (“Ren’ai Bōkun”, also known as “The Very Lovely Tyrant of Love”), it could also be called “Kiss Note” and there are a ton of references made in that direction. Dang, her notebook looks like that of its cousin. Oh, down to the story…..

The Kiss Note is a powerful notebook that makes anyone who has their name written together instantly fall in love if they kiss each other, regardless of any circumstances. Yes, that does include gender, age, overall relationships and whatnot. This belongs to, not a Shinigami but an angel named Guri (her to the left, preparing to do herself in most amusingly) whose job as Cupid is to create couples.

However, she accidentally writes down Aino Seiji (Mr. Shocked; what is that t-shirt?), a regular high school student, and unless he kisses someone, Guri will die. She convinces Seiji to go kiss his crush, Hiyama Akane, the school’s popular girl, who turns out to harbor even stronger feelings for him, bordering on obsessive and psychotic. Adding to this convoluted mess is Yuzu Kichougasaki, who is Akane’s half-sister and holds feelings for BOTH Seiji and Akane, plus the ever confusing, ever destructive Shikimi Shiramine (a cousin to Akane and Yuzu) whose main job is to mess things up, via trying to steal Seiji away from everyone else.

Eventually, Akane and Seiji come together, but not before Guri decides that she likes Seiji as well. Now, Seiji is in a terrible situation, and not merely because of this harem comedy gone berserk. How can he choose who is best for him and not be killed in the process? (Akane wields some serious cutlery, a pair of kukri blades; Guri has one up there). The series depicts the misadventures of trying to have people fall in love with each other and how the overall events of things go wrong.

The plot shows up in the last four episodes, when it gets ‘serious’, but it’s nothing that horrible and it can be overcome if we are honest with our feelings. It’s just that the original ideas from the first episodes kind of fell to one side and it got to a point where Guri was a bit too unfocused. There needs to be some caliber of growth and Guri just never displayed it (or perhaps never had it to begin with). Plus, some of these love pentagrams got muddled, so a lot of the humor was diffused and it got into the abuse comedy that sometimes befall these shows. Ain’t nothing funnier than a football in the groin (or something along those lines).

The series is much like love: sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t and there you go. Ahh, yes, the question of binging. It just may come off as too much all at once. On the one hand, you need that immediacy to make farce work. On the other hand, you may feel whip-sawed about as you are not given a proper amount of time to rest and recover. I will give it a mixed approach. I guess you can always cut back if you find it is more than you may have bargained for.

On a scale of 1 to 10:

Artwork           8 (Gets really bizarre)
Plot                  8 (A rather cute idea)
Pacing              7 (Slowly picks up steam)
Effectiveness   7 (Not enough is explained)
Conclusion       7 (It reaches a ‘coupler point’, but hasn’t ended)
Fan Service      2 (A similar show would be “Okamisan”)
Bingeability     7 (Go at your own pace)

Overall            7 (Guri’s a bit too flighty)

And remember, it’s first run until you’ve seen it. Shall I write down your name?