Love Flops
Five love confessions, one fateful morning.
Love Flops is an original anime from Japan, produced by Kadokawa Corporation and animated by Passione under director Nobuyoshi Nagayama. Its plot centers on a high school boy whose routine is disrupted after a chance meeting with five girls during his morning commute. The show ran on AT-X and other channels from October to December 2022. Sentai Filmworks later secured the rights for English-speaking audiences.
Quick Facts
- Genre
- Harem
- Romantic comedy
- Science fiction
- Creator
- Love Flops Project
Facts from the source article.
Characters
Asahi Kashiwagi is a high school boy who receives five love confessions on the first day of school after watching a fortune telling program on television. It is later revealed that he was recruited for a virtual reality program to experience a computer-generated world with simulated characters. Aoi Izumisawa, a Japanese student and classmate, wears glasses and has a bright, cheerful personality; she is a talented cook for her housemates. She is later revealed to be a simulated character and the first among the artificial intelligence girls created, making her the most similar to the AI girls' base, Asahi's childhood friend Ai Izawa. Amelia Irving, an American student and classmate, is always seen wearing headphones with cat ears and wants to improve her Japanese by studying kanji; she is later revealed to be a simulated character and a magical girl. A shy Bulgarian student and classmate is actually a cross-dressing girl forced to live as a boy by her late father; she is later revealed to be a simulated character and a magical girl. Bai Mongfa, the class's teacher from China, has a relationship with her students like an older sister and a clumsy personality at home; she is a former tai chi assassin of an underground organization with the codename 'Bloody Tiger', and is later revealed to be a simulated character. Karin Istel, a self-conscious German student and classmate, works as a model whose billboards are common in Tokyo; she becomes a magical girl after an encounter with an alien familiar, and is later revealed to be a simulated character. Yoshio Ijūin, Asahi's classmate and self-proclaimed best friend from a rich family that owns a beach house, is later revealed to be a simulated character and an alter-ego of scientist Yoshino Feynman. Loverin is a rabbit-shaped alarm clock that speaks to Asahi and the others, with a screen displaying time and other information. Ai Izawa, Asahi's childhood friend, died from a brain tumor two years before Asahi entered the VR program; her consciousness formed the basis of a new AI model, and her memories were implanted into the five simulated characters created by international VR companies.
Media
The manga adaptation, with art by Ryūdai Ishizaka, ran in Hakusensha's Young Animal magazine from June 24, 2022, to July 28, 2023. Its first collected volume hit shelves on September 29, 2022. The original anime, a production of Kadokawa Corporation and animated by Passione, was first revealed on March 25, 2022. Nobuyoshi Nagayama directed the series, with Midori Yui and Fujiaki Asari serving as assistant directors. Ryō Yasumoto handled the scripts, Kazuyuki Ueda designed the characters and also acted as chief animation director, and Kenichiro Suehiro composed the music. The show aired on AT-X and other channels from October 12 to December 28, 2022. Konomi Suzuki sang the opening theme, "Love? Reason why!!". The first ending theme, "Flop Around", was performed by Miku Itō, Ayana Taketatsu, Rie Takahashi, Hisako Kanemoto, and Marika Kōno. Itō also performed the second ending theme, "Lost in the white", and the episode 12 insert song, "With You". Kadokawa released the episodes across two Blu-ray box sets, on January 25 and March 24, 2023. In North America, the British Isles, and Australia, Sentai Filmworks holds the license, streaming the series on Hidive. An English dub, produced by Sentai Studios with John Swasey as ADR director, debuted on November 28, 2023, and came out on a Blu-ray set on January 16, 2024.
Reception
The first episode of Love Flops was met with negative reactions from Anime News Network's critics during the Fall 2022 previews. James Beckett argued the show failed to balance absurd humor with genuine emotion the way Wet Hot American Summer did, describing its premise as lacking "clever commentary," "subversion of expectations," or "anything else of merit or interest." Richard Eisenbeis noted the series did not fully explore its deconstruction of the lucky pervert trope in romantic comedies, and while he acknowledged a "compelling mystery" about whether Asahi's world was a dream or virtual reality, he concluded that "it's not enough to bring me back for week two—and neither is anything else in the show for that matter." Nicholas Dupree was put off by what he called an "escalation of bad taste" after the episode stretched the first two minutes of A Sister's All You Need into a longer scene, stating that "if somebody wanted to make a parody of lazy dating sim games and the ridiculously contrived ways they deliver cheap fanservice of flat characters to an increasingly desensitized audience, it would certainly look like Love Flops." Julian Malerman of THEM Anime Reviews heavily criticized the series for not fully embracing its "wildly trashy premise" and ecchi harem clichés in the first half, and for failing to achieve the "genre subversion or satire" of Doki Doki Literature Club in the second half. He called it "a case study in misplaced writing priorities" best recommended to "the morbidly curious and, preferably, thoroughly inebriated."
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