Kanade has a problem. He used to be a normal kid. He was even somewhat popular. But then all of a sudden he encountered ‘absolute choice’, a system where he suddenly and randomly is given a choice between various options, and he must do one of those options, no matter how much he may hate them and how weird they may be. “ERABE!” This results in him being one of the ‘fail five’ at his school, alongside his friends Ouka, the daughter of a former idol who was now married to the CEO of a major corporation, and Furano, a girl that appears ice cold, but is actually one of the weirdest tsunderes ever. Lastly, he’s under the limited guidance of his teacher Utage, who had gone through the same trials with choices that Kanade was doing, but had a mental block placed on her afterwards that prevents her from revealing everything. Eventually, one of his choices results in a girl falling from the sky, who is supposed to be the key to helping him get rid of his problem, but she gets amnesia and is completely useless. He then gets a phone call from god, telling him that he must complete missions, and that if he doesn’t he’ll never get rid of ‘absolute choice’, and that he was sorry about it but that he had just taken over as god after the previous one had quit due to various circumstances so he would have to deal with it. Hence Kanade begins his quest to complete a bizarre set of missions just as strange as ‘absolute choice’.
***
The choice mechanic is pretty interesting and was used well. Add in the larger system with missions, changing gods, etc. and the story in a broader sense was very good. However, ultimately this leads to this adaptation being lackluster. I really liked the story, and was invested in where it was going. As the anime is more plot focused and has more depth than the standard harem rom-com, their is a desire to the point of it being an expectation that there will be better care taken in regard to the story. This unfortunately wasn’t the case, and the plot was structured in such a way that absolutely nothing was resolved in the anime, and it just cut off randomly at a point that really didn’t fit as an ending. I get that there are limitations in terms of following the plot from the novels and hence I’m certainly not blaming this entirely on the anime studio, but I still believe they could have handled this better than they did. Beyond that, there were some other issues I had with the plot. Mainly the memory loss mechanic was too liberally used which led to too many events being shrugged off. But overall the plot was still pretty good.
As for the main characters, that also is an area NouCome excels. Kanade is pretty generic, but he’s put in bizarre situation constantly, so how he acts is still incredibly interesting. Rather, because he’s so generic, how he acts as pretty much the complete opposite is what makes him interesting. Chocolat is completely useless other than being cute, but that in itself makes her charming. She also has her flip side which is pretty much the complete opposite, the contrast of which helps both sides stand out strongly. Furano too pretends to be one way, but is really the opposite, and is constantly beating herself up over it, which is tsudere but a bit further than most so its interesting. Last but certainly not least in that she’s my favorite, is Ouka, who is always incredibly cheerful and uncaring of the norms of society, but has a loving side to her as well. As for the side characters, there were none that really stood out to me. Most of them were likable enough, such as the teacher Utage, the president Seira, and Ouka’s friend Konagi, but they didn’t really stand out to me. As for the ‘imouto’ Yuragi and ‘silicon’ Ayame, I wasn’t much of a fan at all.
The comedy of the anime ties in very well to the plot and is on point. Furthermore, it was certainly dirtier than most other similar anime, though obviously there are major exceptions, so it gets points for being different. The art was decent enough for the most part. The OP/ED were pretty good though the OP had to grow on me. The after ED mechanic of showing what the plot would have been if Kanade had made different choices was nice, though I think they should have been more consistent with it. The interviews with Afilia as previews were also a nice touch. The theme played for choices worked well and was somewhat iconic. The rest of the soundtrack was lackluster to fine.
Overall a great story with a very strong cast of main characters that’s heavily hampered by the limitations in adaptation that cuts off too early and leaves a sense of dissatisfaction.
7/10
There likely won’t be a sequel, and the novels aren’t translated into English and likely won’t be, and hence if I want to know what happens for the rest of the plot I’ll have to learn Japanese. Welp.
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