Say I Love You. (Sukitte Ii na yo.) First Impressions--That's One Way to Scare Off Stalkers

I wasn't expecting to like this episode as much as I did.

A/N: Part of Organization Anti-Social Geniuses' Fall Evaluation

 
To be honest, this was the shoujo series that I had the most concerns about before seeing it. The previous works by the mangaka and where they were serialized are questionable at best, and what I was hearing about the premise flat-out confused me; who would like someone after they kicked you? However, the first episode left me pleasantly surprised. There are some random parts that bug me here and there, but this has the potential to be a solid romance.

 
The premise reminds me a lot of another personal favorite of mine, Kimi ni Todoke, in how it's about a girl who's been ostracized by her classmates for no good reason and catches the attention of Nice Popular Guy. However, unlike Sawako, Mei isn't blissfully unaware of the petty high school drama going on around her and has decided that if having friends means that they'll double-cross you, she'd rather not have any friends at all. Nice Popular Guy comes into the picture when she accidentally kicks him instead of the guy who was trying to look up her skirt. The guy gets a lot of bonus points from me for calling out his friend on his creepy behavior and coming to help her out when she gets a stalker, but there's a thin line here between "Wow, what a nice guy! So romantic!" and "That's right girls! If you have no friends and low self-esteem, the one surefire way to validate your existence is to get a guy!" Right now this show is on the correct side of the line for me, and with any luck it won't cross it.

 
As for the animation, there are a couple of really pretty shots, but since most of this takes place inside a generic-looking school, there aren't a ton of opportunities to use them. The character designs are solid (although the half-short half-long hairstyle on the male lead perplexes me) and I didn't catch any blatant mistakes or off-model moments. The only animation that I didn't like was the CG effect at the very end, since the lip-sync looked weird because Mei never closed her mouth. Overall, I'm impressed since I went into it with low expectations. I hope it doesn't give me any reason to lower them again.

Images from Crunchyroll.com.