By Dustin Cabeal

At first glance, Tsuredure Children seems like a redundant rom-com with the same lovey-dovey theme running through every tale. Tsuredure Children is quite brilliant in that it takes what anime does extremely well, shallow relationships and makes them hilarious and quite deep.

That’s right, Tsuredure Children is a total swerve.

By the time you think you have an idea of what the show is going to be like, you’re completely taken in by the relationships that you’re exploring. What is also remarkable about this is that even though they’re all love stories between different characters, they’re all completely different. Love is the only overlap, but it was just brilliant to see so many styles of relationships represented and never once have them fall into the same path.

The story, as you may be wondering, follows several students at the same school. Nearly all of the episodes keep them divided as we get to know their personal relationships. As I’ve said there’s a range of relationships, some are still being teased, some falter due to shines, while others find themselves on different pages.

For instance, a boy confesses to a girl he likes, and she completely misunderstands because her friend likes the boy and thinks so little of herself that he must be teasing her; to cover his embarrassment of her not getting the point he lets it slide. They continue this back and forth until he gives up on her, but at that point, she takes an interest in him. She’s just so dense that she doesn’t even know she’s in love with him.

Another fun relationship is between a couple that’s been dating for a year, but completely unbeknownst to the guy. Their jokey humor covers up a lot of their deeper feelings, but as the series progresses you see how much deeper all of this affecting both of them forcing them to break up… a couple of times.

The strangest, most dysfunctional relationship is the cutest at times. The student council president takes an interest in a delinquent that he considers trying too hard at the role of the delinquent. His approach is inappropriate at times, soliciting her for sex to which she eventually declines. Still, he looks past what her reputation is and brings out her true personality and they strangely better each other, but mostly herself. She decides to study hard and get into the same school as him and when she thinks that it’s pointless and that everyone will laugh at her efforts her classmates and teacher believe in her as well which moves her to tears.

The relationships seem simple at first because they’re all anime tropes. It’s just a collection of love tropes, but after a few times with the characters, it’s amazing how deep they’re relationships become and involved the viewer becomes with them. It’s not strange to end up rooting for all them.

What makes this even better is that it is fucking hilarious. The episodes are broken into thirds, so they follow three sets of characters and each third has at least one hilarious gag. Frankly, you can listen to my podcast to get some examples of the humor because re-writing them here would just be a joke killer. It was surprising, to say the least, how damn funny this show ended up being.

The animation is also quite beautiful because it’s going for that overly beautiful look that other rom-coms have. It matches that style perfectly with beautiful backgrounds and settings. At times the world does feel void of human life, but that’s the vast majority of anime in general, so it’s a minor gripe. There are only two characters that look quite similar, but their voice acting is very distinct.

Speaking of which, the acting is solid. Each character is believable; the voices are all distinct to the point that you can recognize them just by hearing them. There was only a couple of actors that sounded familiar, but for the most part, it was a strong cast of actors for both the men and women.

If you’re not into love stories or lack a sense of humor, perhaps Tsuredure Children isn’t for you, but you’re probably wrong. With all facets of entertainment from anime, to Hollywood movies, there’s one thing that all love stories do, and that’s following the chase of love. Tsuredure Children does just that, but over and over with different characters. It’s amazing in what it accomplishes, but also in that it’s damn good at it too.

Score: 5/5

Tsuredure Children – Season 1
Creator: Toshiya Wakabayashi
Director: Hiraku Kaneko
Writer: Tatsuhiko Urahata
Studio: Studio Gokumi