{"id":90372,"date":"2024-07-01T13:17:22","date_gmt":"2024-07-01T20:17:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anitrendz.net\/news\/?p=90372"},"modified":"2024-07-01T13:17:27","modified_gmt":"2024-07-01T20:17:27","slug":"a-condition-called-love-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anitrendz.net\/news\/2024\/07\/01\/a-condition-called-love-review\/","title":{"rendered":"REVIEW: A Condition Called Love Ruined By Horrible Production Values"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Season aired<\/b>: Spring 2024<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Number of episodes<\/b>: 12<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Watched on: <\/b>Crunchyroll<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Translated by: <\/b>?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Genres<\/b>: Drama, Romance<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Thoughts<\/b>: <\/span>A Condition Called Love <\/span><\/i>was one of my most anticipated anime of the spring season. Based on an award-winning manga, the series follows Hotaru, a girl who\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Complicated Hananoi<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Hananoi\u2019s 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 \u2013 in real life and characters. Typically portrayed as the \u201csexual\u201d girl in class, they\u2019re characterized as girls willing to change themselves \u2013 including providing sex \u2013 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 \u201cunusual,\u201d he immediately stops wearing them. It\u2019s important to find these insecurities portrayed regardless of gender, and I immediately understood why this series won awards just from that alone.<\/span><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, no matter how good the writing, the production haunted it at every turn. Emotional moments that otherwise would\u2019ve given me the feels instead made me laugh because the characters\u2019 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 \u2014 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
This looks like a different character<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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. <\/span>A Condition Called Love <\/span><\/i>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.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Due to the trainwreck of its technical aspects, other issues stood out even more. The soundtrack, for example, sounds like a rehash of the <\/span>Fruits Basket <\/span><\/i>soundtrack \u2013 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.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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\u2019t even care about Hananoi\u2019s character development \u2013 an element that I was most interested in at the beginning.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
One of the better episodes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The failure of <\/span>A Condition Called Love<\/span><\/i>\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

A Condition Called Love <\/span><\/i>is a series that should\u2019ve appealed to me. There\u2019s a girl who struggles with the idea of love \u2013 something I personally struggled with growing up. There\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Rating<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Plot: 6 (Multiplier 3)<\/span><\/p>\n

Characters: 6 (Multiplier 3)<\/span><\/p>\n

Art\/Animation: 3 (Multiplier 2)<\/span><\/p>\n

Voice acting: 5<\/span><\/p>\n

Soundtrack: 5<\/span><\/p>\n

FINAL SCORE: 52<\/i><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s never experienced love and is in fact frightened by it, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":90373,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[7050,136,5448],"class_list":["post-90372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anime","tag-a-condition-called-love","tag-final-impressions","tag-gracie-reviews"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/anitrendz.net\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Love-ep7-scaled-e1719864657202.jpg?fit=1514%2C844&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8n4QV-nvC","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anitrendz.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90372"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anitrendz.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anitrendz.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anitrendz.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anitrendz.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90372"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/anitrendz.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90375,"href":"https:\/\/anitrendz.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90372\/revisions\/90375"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anitrendz.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anitrendz.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anitrendz.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anitrendz.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}