In addition to the aforementioned predictability and the tedious characters, something which I will get onto later, the show ruins most of its emotional scenes with its incessant drive to patronise the viewer by having characters voice their thoughts and feelings in a manner more suited to an infant's puppet show than what is ostensibly a series aimed at relatively mature individuals. The anime's experiments in sentimentality are equally clumsy and ill-advised. If this show had canned laughter, I probably wouldn't be sane enough to write this. The only real way to tell that a scene was supposed to be funny is the occasional sweat drops which materialise on the back of characters' heads. Although there are a couple of rowdy characters in the mix, Ai Yori Aoshi's humour is executed with all the enthusiasm and wit of a chartered accountant with a gun pointed at his head. Instead, that crucial task is delegated to the many failed attempts at comedy, sentiment or anything which would have given the anime some measure of personality. This alone is not enough to render the series entirely without merit. Suffice to say that if you are unable to guess how things will turn out after watching just the first episode of this series, it will be because you set your sights too high and hoped for a surprise, a shock, a bombshell or any kind of diversion from the plot's unwaveringly linear course. However, Ai Yori Aoshi takes this a step further, practically redefining the the concept by stretching it to breaking point. Predictability will always be a calling card of the harem romance, as much a part of its makeup as colorful hair, cute girls and awkward situations. After all, if you put one male character in a house with a bunch of quirky females and layer it with a simple romance plot, what can possibly go wrong? To this last question, rhetorical though it may have been, Ai Yori Aoshi provides a comprehensive - if excruciatingly overlong - answer. StoryThe reason why certain premises are recycled and re-worked time and again without so much as a twist is a pretty simple one - you don't mess with success.
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