The Ikeda Lab puts on a cosplay experience at their campus festival. Ayame meets Haru, Shinya’s tutoring student.
Proof 10 – “Science-types Fell in Love, So They Tried Having a Campus Festival”
Hmm.
Science Fell in Love ❤️ stresses the power of positive reinforcement for self-improvement. Haru’s father, an eminent mathematics professor, loses patience with his daughter’s poor test scores and calls her “stupid” to her face. While Shinya, Haru’s tutor, loses patience with her work ethic and calls her “stupid” to her face too. But there’s a difference in tone between how the two men speak to the gyaru high school student. Shinya explains to Professor Kagurano how the Pygmalion Effect in psychology can help Haru increase her grades.
The Pygmalion reference in the psychology concept is not to the Greek myth of Pygmalion falling in love with his sculpture of a beautiful woman. Instead, it’s about George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion. Popularized in the musical adaptation, My Fair Lady, the linguist Henry Higgins thinks he can turn the lower-class Eliza Doolittle into a higher-class lady. All by teaching her proper English and manners. Written in 1913, when eugenics was still a popular idea, the story explores whether a person inherits her “class” or she can learn the markers of high class.
In modern popular culture, high school settings have matched the Pygmalion plot. Except “high-class” became the popular crowd and “low-class” belonged to the outcasts and the socially awkward. The American film Can’t Buy Me Love cranked teenage angst to eleven as pop radio music played in the background. She’s All That did the same. The recent anime Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki also uses the high school setting but gives the Pygmalion plot an otaku twist. Tomozaki treats learning the markers and skills of being popular like an RPG video game, where he’s the player-character that needs to level up skills and complete quests. The producers of Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki have announced a sequel project to the anime’s first season. But we don’t know whether it’s an OVA, a movie, or a second season.
In Science Fell in Love ❤️, Professor Kagurano laments to Shinya about his “stupid” daughter’s lack of progress. Here we see proof of Shinya’s attitude toward Haru. He doesn’t insult her intelligence behind her back. Instead, he asks the professor, through examples of the Pygmalion Effect experiments, to change how he talks to Haru. Positive language and encouragement will make her feel smart. And her grades will improve too. For Shinya, Haru was only “stupid” because she was lazy and not working to her potential. He always treated her as a competent girl so she could feel smart when Haru solved physics problems. Shinya makes a good tutor!
Science Fell in Love ❤️ is having time management problems as it nears the end of the season. It’s using unrelated science experiment explanations to pad out the episode. In the first season, the science vignettes related directly to the love experiments and data collection Shinya and Ayame ran in the Ikeda Lab. In this episode, we saw a Nobel Prize winner explode basketballs and boulders as he explained the distance scale of the solar system. Why? It was a waste of time. The monkey-hunter problem barely fit into the show, but only because it was a physics problem Haru had to solve. Also, we needed context on why Shinya held up a stuffed monkey. The anime wants to stretch the events of the Mutsumi Festival to a cathartic conclusion for the season finale.
Heh.
Science Fell in Love ❤️ checks in with Haru, Shinya’s student. Both Haru’s father and Shinya agree – Haru is an idiot! Ah. Shinya knows the Mathematics Professor Kagurano from the university. Oho! Haru wants to hear about Shinya’s love problems! Shinya scolds Kagurano for speaking negatively about Haru’s progress. Praising her a little will help raise her confidence and grades. Haru overheard him. Kyun! Ikeda finally shows up in the eye-catch.
Yeah! Mutsumi Festival! Science Fell in Love ❤️ gives us Kotonoha in a maid outfit right away! Aw. She still feels awkward around Shinya after they argued about “normalcy.” The Ikeda Lab presents “Romance Research Cosplay Experience.” Hoho. Ena has cute friends from high school. They’re cosplayers! And twins! Kirari and Kirara Hoshikami sell clothes in their day jobs. Ha! Kosuke knows them as the famous KiraKira Sisters! Of course, they did a Rem and Ram cosplay shoot.
First things first for any cosplay experience – turn a guy into a girl! Don’t do it, Shinya! It’s a trap! Well, he can’t refuse Ayame. The ikemen of Science Fell in Love ❤️ becomes a cutie patootie! Kosuke can’t handle it, while Ayame declares yuri love for Shinya-chan. Shinya and Kosuke need to recover their hetero cards. The KiraKira Sisters proved their cosmetic skills.
I love how Haru has teeny-bopper theme music. Science Fell in Love ❤️ keeps making characters bump into each other. Will Ayame suffer jealous feelings for Haru? Nope. She wants to give Haru confidence in applying to college. Here we go! Aphrodisiac Research from Suiu! No! Mosaic censorship! Fun festival montage. Yay! Haru in a white lab coat and glasses! Aw. Ayame and Shinya inspired Haru to study harder.
Next time, someone gets married! I’m sure it’s a costume event.
Science Fell in Love, So I Tried to Prove It r=1-sinθ (Rikei ga Koi ni Ochita no de Shoumei shitemita. r=1-sinθ (Heart)) streams on Crunchyroll and VRV in Japanese audio and English subtitles.
