Anime Review: First Love Monster/Hatsukoi Monster

I open by saying I stumbled onto First Love Monster on Crunchyroll. I was in the mood for a straightforward, fluffy romance and the preview image promised just that. A handful of good looking guys, a cute girl in a school uniform and a shota (a cute, young boy, typically found in fairly girlish clothing). It had the same feels of Kaichou wa Maid-sama at first glance.

Then I started watching it. I also tweeted once I'd finished it. It's a sweet and concise opinion of the whole show:

I have never said "what the fuck did I just watch" so much as when I finished First Love Monster. Holy crap 😱

— Sarah Smith (@WhenSarahSmilez) March 29, 2017

Mhmm. Cute and straightforward, it was not. Creepy, perverted and random are closer adjectives. Nevertheless, it does have some merits. Intentional or not, First Love Monster addresses some very real world issues, and does them subtly enough that it has you judging yourself continuously each episode.


SPOILER ALERT. Well. I suppose it's not a spoiler. It's the whole premise of the show. But I didn't read up on First Love Monster before I watched it so it was a surprise to me. Fifteen year old Kaho decides to leave her well-off family home and live a normal life. She falls in love with a handsome twenty-something looking boy called Kanade after he saves her. Then he tells her he's in 5th grade. Yup. 10 years old.

Apart from being hellishly disturbed by the idea of the attractive six-foot tall 10 year old, I had to give the writers of the show their due. The setup is fantastic. The beginning plays out as a typical rom-com romance - girl is saved by guy, she falls in love, asks him out, he says no and she pines after him. By which point, the audience has also grown very attached to the guy. He's already come across as sweet, caring and pretty much anything you could want in a guy.

Then after Kaho and Kanade get together, BAM. His age is dropped on everyone. And it's creepy. And it's wrong. You're attracted to him already because he shows brilliant boyfriend traits, but then you're repulsed because although he looks twenty, he's ten. And nine times out of ten he acts his age, along side his two other friends who are also freakishly older looking.

First Love Monster is random and a little bit gross. There's a lot of line and age blurring, there are creepy guys with shota-fetishes, obsessive stalkers and an overbearing brother who bottles up his sibling's bathwater because their essence is in it.

At the same time, knowingly or not, First Love Monster really addresses the issue of the sexualisation of children perfectly. They even manage it covertly. As I said before, the audience is pulled in to fawn over Kanade from the very beginning. However, as soon as we are given his age, there's an automatic rejection to him, but as the episodes go on, even as his behaviour stays that of a ten year old, his older appearance and his occasional adult-like actions cause the audience to still fawn.

It references the over-sexualisation of children through how they dress and look. The children in the spotlights are made to look appealing. Take, for example, young teenagers on instagram. They are dolled up in barely any clothing with makeup so heavy that it adds almost five years on them. They aren't something we should be fawning over. They are children. And that, I believe, is what First Love Monster tries to address.

Sure, Kanade is attractive. He's meant to be to make the point. But he constantly acts like a child because he is a child. He has no emotional depth to him and has no reaction to walking in on Kota when she's in her underwear, and this upsets her greatly. Because he's only a child no matter how old he might seem. Really, I say hats off to the writers again.

The characters are loveable for the most part, in a non-romantic way. The main few are childish and adorable as Kota tries to make Kanade see that having a girlfriend is not the same as a female friend, and as the others begin to experience their first loves. I particularly like Taga - a college freshmen who pretty much hates everyone and isn't afraid to say it.

His character is well displayed. Much of his personality comes through in his actions as opposed to what he actually says, and it's characters with hidden depths like these that I love the most. I wouldn't say he's a softy, but he's definitely not the straight-out arsehole that he first appears as.

Finally, I do wish the series had a better ending to what it has been given. I'm unsure if there will be a second season but I highly doubt it. The ending is left ambiguously with really none of the issues brought up earlier in the series wrapped up at all. The pile of issues just grows; it's almost bittersweet. Kota wills Kanade to grow up emotionally so he can be the prince charming she imagines in her head, but really we all see that he doesn't learn and it may be year before he hits maturity, leaving Kota with many years of heartache ahead.

The more I think about it, the more I think First Love Monster has more going for it than what's on the surface so I've got to say I appreciate it more than it's constant stream of childish penis-jokes and perverted adults. Yet, it's still ridiculous. It's got potential though. If it's going to go for a second season, I hope it covers more ground than the first. Maybe even skip a few (maybe a decade) years so we can see how the relationship turned out.