Too Many Losing Heroines!, also known as Makeine takes a different perspective on the usual romantic-comedy story. In a normal shonen romantic-comedy (Notice that young men, the main audience of shonen, also enjoy romance), the male protagonist is the one involved in the romance triangles, squares, and dodecahedrons in the case of harem stories. When the protagonist acknowledges one of the female leads’ feelings for him–which happens less often than it should–all the rest are left behind. Makeine picks up all of these losing heroines and explores the stories of their heartbreaks and recoveries. Expect some spoilers!
Enter Kazuhiko Nukumizu, a self-proclaimed background character who befriends and attracts these losing heroines. Nukumizu is an apt surname with his name meaning “warm, gentle water,” a description of his character and interests. One day, he’s hanging out reading a romantic comedy light novel, his favorite genre, when he sees popular-girl Anna Yanami confess her feelings to her childhood friend. She’s rejected and notices that he saw everything. Desperate for comfort and to vent, she gushes her entire love story and frustration to Kazuhiko while ordering a bottomless-heartbroken-teen-girl-stomach amount of food which Kazuhiko foots the bill for. Anna starts paying him back by making bento lunches which they eat together on a school stairway away from their classmates. Kazuhiko, before Anna crashes into his life anyway, keeps apart from everyone in his grade, with one of his greatest interests is knowing which facet offers the best drinking water throughout the school day. But he’s also empathetic and wants to help Anna and the other girls recover from their heartbreaks.
Makeine divides into separate story segments which focus on each losing heroine’s story. Each of the heroine’s stories tangle as they befriend each other thanks to their common friendship with Kazuhiko. None of their failed love stories end in a definitive way, which is realistic. Heartbreak doesn’t just go away. People learn to live with it over time. Anna’s story acts as an undercurrent that runs throughout the series, providing the fodder for the show’s visual gags. Kazuhiko develops a genuine friendship with each of the heroines with the hints of a romantic relationship with Chika Komari, who shares his interest in light novels and tap water quality. Each girl hits on a romantic story trope.
Anna’s story hits the childhood friend trope. Her childhood friend Sosuke Hakamada has feelings for Anna’s social rival Karen Himemiya. Karen’s kindness and desire to be Anna’s friend too stretches out Anna’s emotional pain, as they often invite her to join them on their outings. Anna becomes the third wheel during each of these outings, which she then tells Kazuhiko all about during lunch. My description makes all of this sound dry, but these events teem with perfectly punctuated visual gags. Anna is the most expressive of the losing heroines, and she is wonderfully animated with great facial expressions. Anna’s love for food provides another source for long-running jokes, which thankfully don’t wear themselves out as most long-running jokes do. Food becomes a part of Anna’s character expression. Sosuke and Karen’s interactions with Kazuhiko and Anna run all the way through the final episode.
Lemon Yakishio fits the athletic girl trope who is also in love with her childhood friend Mitsuki Ayano, who already has a girlfriend, Chihaya Asagumo. Lemon hits the “he doesn’t see me as a girl” trope, but it turns out Mitsuki did have feelings for her when they were younger. Lemon’s more masculine character type plays into a stereotypical scenario where she and Kazuhiko are locked in an equipment shed during the summer. As heat exhaustion melts their minds, Lemon strips, revealing her tan lines and lean muscles to Kazuhiko. Kazuhiko manages to find a cooling spray, and Lemon in her heat-addled haze, strips off even her sports bra. Their homeroom teacher discovers them in the typical accidental body tangle. Lemon doesn’t remember the event. Later during the cultural festival story beat, Kazuhiko calls out Lemon’s mummy costume for being too skimpy and noticing she wasn’t wearing anything underneath it. All of this is played off as comedic and shows Lemon’s lack of body awareness even as she frets about not being feminine enough. Kazuhiko, to his credit during the costume scene, is looking out for her as a friend and isn’t too fazed after the shed (see the pun?) incident. Lemon manages to remain good friends with Mitsuki and Chihaya. She also becomes Kazuhiko’s “wingman” with Chika Komari.
Chika hits the mousy, quiet literature girl character type. She hides her eyes beneath her bangs and struggles to talk with others. She has a long-lasting crush with her senpai and president of the lit club, Shintaro Tamaki. Shintaro treats her as a younger sister and is oblivious to her feelings. He and lit-club vice president Koto Tsukinoki have been friends since childhood. But he’s a bit dense and so misunderstands Koto’s previous kokuhaku. But he and Koto, thanks to Chika’s confession during a lit-club outing, resolve the misunderstanding and admit their mutual feelings for each other. This pushes Chika into Kazuhiko’s heartbreak crew. Chika becomes comfortable speaking with Anna, Lemon, and Kazuhiko. She develops the habit of fiercely saying “shi,” or “die” or “drop dead,” to Kazuhiko at just the right time for jokes. Her ferocity contrasts against her soft-spoken nature. Chika develops more-than-friends feelings for Kazuhiko. Anna and Lemon encourage her, sometimes shoving her to speak with Kazuhiko. Kazuhiko, for his part, starts to develop feelings toward her too, but he’s sensitive to her newly broken heart so doesn’t push those feelings onto her. After all, he doesn’t want to be the rebound guy!
Makeine has more visual flare than you’d expect for a silly rom-com. At times, it indulges cinematic camera work and detailed animations. And then the animators contrast these movie-level scenes with silly, exaggerated expressions. Usually from Anna. The show offers a surprising visual treat which it leverages for its visual gags. Those gags have great timing. The animation is fun and emphasizes the story’s heart. Makeine doesn’t try to vary the rom-com tropes.The character personalities, however, refresh the character templates. Changing character templates and twisting tropes has become a template and a trope itself! Playing the template straight but with heart and humor as Makiene does brings life to long-worn story beats. Of course, Makiene’s twist comes from taking the losing heroines’ perspective and that of the guy friend. The story revels in how straight it plays everything and the silliness of it while not diminishing the real pain heartbreak brings. The story handles the ache of first heartbreak well, speaking to teens who haven’t yet experienced it and those of us who have experienced multiple heartbreaks. Kazuhiko is a decent protagonist. He isn’t perfect; he misunderstands Chika’s feelings and her desire to push herself to grow. Because of their similarities he makes the mistake of believing she’s like him when she’s a different person. To his credit, he apologizes and mends their relationship when he realizes this, deepening it a bit more in the process. Kazuhiko remains ready to change his thinking when mistakes are brought to his attention.
Anna’s expressiveness and personality makes the show. She becomes Kazuhiko’s best friend, and, while the story leaves a little romance open between them, works at pushing Kazuhiko and Chika together in her silly, clumsy way. While the high-school rom-com is a tired genre, stories like Too Many Losing Heroines! shows the genre can still be fun. It can even feel fresh without deviating far from the tropes just by exploring the template from the perspective of a different character. In this case, Kazuhiko is the friend-zoned character on the edges of the usual protagonist’s awareness. As usual with anime, if Makeine proves successful, other stories with a similar schtick will appear. Some of these will be good; most of them will be meh, and some will be bad. Makeine isn’t a harem. It’s a friendship story. But expect knockoffs to have a Kazuhiko-style character collecting a harem of “losing heroines” who fawn over him as they rebound.
If you enjoy rom-coms and enjoy surprisingly good animation and scene composition, give Too Many Losing Heroines! a watch. It has heart, decently paced character arcs, and good gags. The jokes don’t become annoying or repetitive as so many anime jokes do. Kazuhiko doesn’t become annoying because he isn’t dense as so many male leads are. He makes believable mistakes, but he’s reflective enough and open enough to correct his behavior. This story surprised me and made me realize, along with Kaguya-sama: Love is War, that the rom-com genre still has the potential to be good. Finding the gems among the drivel, however, still poses a challenge.
I want my own love dodecahedron 🤣
Sorry to spam your comments, but I didn’t want to keep commenting and blow up your Gushing one.
Have you done any pieces about anime’s fondness for Germany? I really love that subject because intercultural stuff is a favorite topic of mine.
Oh, just to save room and not post a bunch of different Qs, I know that you’ve covered the obvious lesson for otakus that anime does not actually represent Japanese culture, but by chance have you written anything recently about that- not a reprisal but a continuance on the subject? It seems like a perennial topic that would never cease to bring in new readers with new reflections.
Regarding anime vs real Japan, showing a family member Violet Evergarden made me realize how overly breathy and mawkish her English voice actor feels. It also made me aware of how much anime’s endless glottal closure grunting is such an immersion destroyer.
Women clasp their hands in front of them or behind them; either position, oddly enough, can maximize the boobage, which further takes me out of immersion because it feels so gratuitous. (HOWEVER, is hand clasping like that a typical way for women to comport themselves in Japanese culture?).
There are several other prominent things I think anime can help demonstrate to people unfamiliar with Japanese culture, such as why expression of emotion is so overblown in anime, and by contrast, how often stone-faced protagonists are the Straight Man pressed on all sides by over the top circumstances and emotional people while trying to maintain whatever the Japanese word is for social order/decorum.
I haven’t written anything yet about anime’s love for Germany….or for the Catholic Church. The Japanese perspective on both of these, at least anime’s tropes surrounding them, are interesting, however. But both have been on my radar.
I haven’t directly continued the idea that anime is not Japanese culture. Although, I have touched on it here and there. I may create a list of “animisms” which otaku think are a part of Japan but are exaggerated or not a thing at all. I need to think on this.
Anime’s verbal ticks and overblown expression of emotion appears in Japanese drama as well, especially some of the older dramas I’ve seen. It resembles the over-the-top, for my Western sensibilities, acting of Indian and some Mexican cinema. It’s akin to theater in a lot of ways, and I suspect its a legacy of noh and, especially, kabuki.
I find the mature verses cute voice differences interesting. Many female voice actors twill cutesy for characters which don’t seem to warrant it. There might be some cultural and personal differences here. I prefer many modern English dubs because they curb the saccharine cute tones. High-pitch sounds can be painful for me, and some Japanese female voice overs border on that. I prefer softer, lower-toned female voices because of my hearing damage.
I can’t say such hand clasping is typical, but it is individual. I’ve known many women who unconsciously stand in the same way, both small-chested and large. It can be a discrete way to hug oneself when you have anxiety. But anime characters usually do it because of the bust-boosting ability such a pose has.