Season aired: Spring 2024
Number of episodes: 12
Watched on: Crunchyroll
Translated by: ?
Genres: Drama, Romance
Thoughts: A Condition Called Love was one of my most anticipated anime of the spring season. Based on an award-winning manga, the series follows Hotaru, a girl who’s never experienced love and is in fact frightened by it, as she receives an unexpected confession from Hananoi, one of the most popular yet enigmatic boys at her school. The series features a strong story, and I can understand why this series has won awards. Unfortunately, the horrible production of the series completely killed any momentum for the emotional parts to hit.
Hananoi’s characterization immediately caught my attention in the first episode. He is a boy so starved of affection and love that he is willing to give up pieces of himself in order to become desirable in the eyes of his crush. Usually, these behaviors are more often associated with girls – in real life and characters. Typically portrayed as the “sexual” girl in class, they’re characterized as girls willing to change themselves – including providing sex – if it means guaranteeing the love they hope to find in a relationship. Hananoi shares these same characteristics, but instead of sex, he applies it more to physical appearances and habits. When Hotaru casually says she prefers short hair, Hananoi immediately cuts his long hair off. When Hotaru refers to his earrings as “unusual,” he immediately stops wearing them. It’s important to find these insecurities portrayed regardless of gender, and I immediately understood why this series won awards just from that alone.
Unfortunately, no matter how good the writing, the production haunted it at every turn. Emotional moments that otherwise would’ve given me the feels instead made me laugh because the characters’ eyes were cross-eyed. A romantic moment that leads to Hotaru patting Hananoi on the head is ruined when Hananoi turns around with a face full of blush — appearing so disheveled in design that he looks like a completely different character. Even shoujo bubbles, a visual representation of butterflies, look like horrible filters that blur the scene rather than enhance the emotions.
In the beginning, the transgressions could be ignored. The first few episodes made an effort to change facial expressions with their eyes aligned properly, and even injected proper lighting to convey the importance of a scene, even if the animation was not at its best. However, it grew progressively worse. By the last few episodes, I could see production copy and paste the exact same face over the characters several times throughout episodes no matter what the story was trying to portray: sadness, shock, or love. A Condition Called Love sadly became a testament to the medium. No matter how strong of a story one might have to tell, there is a line where it can no longer cover for bad visual quality.
Due to the trainwreck of its technical aspects, other issues stood out even more. The soundtrack, for example, sounds like a rehash of the Fruits Basket soundtrack – especially during the romantic scenes. While drawing inspiration from other works is acceptable, writing melodies that evoke such a strong association with another anime really speaks to the unoriginality of the music.
I also found Kana Hanazawa and Chiaki Kobayashi, both talented voice actors, lackluster in the whole affair. Their voices no longer matched the faces shown on screen as the series continued and the chemistry between the characters often sounded forced, leaving me to question the veracity of the love shared between them as their relationship further deepened in the story. Kana Hanazawa, especially, sounded very one-note to Hotaru’s character. Whether she was surprised, sad, or confused, the voice was just high-pitched and sweet with no subtleties to the feelings Hotaru claimed to feel. This combination of mishaps disconnected me from the story, the relationships, and the themes. By the last episode, I didn’t even care about Hananoi’s character development – an element that I was most interested in at the beginning.
The failure of A Condition Called Love’s anime adaptation feels especially acute because of the source material it adapts. The anime industry only recognized an untapped market among women and girls in the past year, and has started adapting stories aimed at them. Unfortunately, when the production values are this horrendous, it dissuades the very market from engaging with it. Even I wished to stop watching and considered reading the manga instead.
A Condition Called Love is a series that should’ve appealed to me. There’s a girl who struggles with the idea of love – something I personally struggled with growing up. There’s a boy with a characterization rarely portrayed in media. Together, through their relationship, they grow to confront their fears and embrace more of who they are at heart. I only wish that the animation matched the moving themes of the story.
Rating
Plot: 6 (Multiplier 3)
Characters: 6 (Multiplier 3)
Art/Animation: 3 (Multiplier 2)
Voice acting: 5
Soundtrack: 5
FINAL SCORE: 52
