A 2D Otome Game Fujoshi Comedy! Is ‘Murai in Love’ Flat Enough?

The 2D vs. 3D debate among an anime’s characters is often a fun way to establish someone’s otaku pariah bona fides. A homeroom teacher, Ayano Tanaka, thought she would be safe from age-gap romantic troubles. Because she’s a fujoshi who only loves the 2D characters in her otome games! Murai in Love (Murai no Koi) shows how an ardent student, Murai, upends her carefully laid plans. How? After she rejects his marriage proposal through a career plan form, he shows up to school with a drastically different hairstyle. And the worst thing? He looks like Tanaka-Sensei’s current 2D crush stepped out of her game into 3D life. How can she separate her 2D private life from IRL entanglements now?

The premise of Murai in Love is ripe for otaku references and social commentary on the intersection of subcultures with the harsh enforcement of class hierarchy in high school. The manga source employed surreal gags and shojo manga comedy formulas to smack belly laughs out of its niche otaku market. But how does a production committee adapt that zany energy to 30 frames per second in the modern digital streaming environment? Unfortunately, Murai in Love chose the cheap path of J.C.Staff’s pan-and-scan motion comic style. We should not express surprise for two reasons.

All Laughing, No Waiting for Murai in Love

First, two streaming services in the North American market have already delivered the first four episodes ahead of the October 6th Japanese broadcast premiere date. And it’s not Netflix! Hulu and Disney Plus started streaming the Murai in Love anime weekly on September 4th. The good news is that it’s weekly instead of the binge-dump Netflix has been doing. The anime’s production committee could have chosen the cutting-edge compositing and CG effects GoHands used for The Masterful Cat Is Depressed Again Today. However, the quick and dirty path for American markets ensures the anime suffers no production delays.

Unfortunately, Murai in Love suffers the same adaptation choices J.C.Staff had made for another popular comedy manga: The Way of the Househusband. The team inside J.C.Staff that uses manga covers and panels for storyboards (look at the second season of One Punch Man) employed the same adaptation techniques to Murai in Love as it did for Food Wars! and A Certain Magical Index.

You can read my recommendation reviews of the first season of The Way of the Househusband for my issues with J.C.Staff here and here.

Internal Screaming Intensifies!

Second, the anime employs superior sound mastering for voice acting. The pan-and-scan crew of J.C.Staff does one thing right to keep an audience’s attention — grab them by the earlobes! Motion comics and radio shows for characters have been a staple for promoting manga in Japan. Check out how active the YouTube channel for Days with My Stepsister was before its summer anime adaptation. Murai in Love similarly makes up for its weak animation through compelling performances from its actors.

Voice actress Youko Hikasa (this busy lady provides three additional roles this fall: Pitohui from Gun Gale Online, Towa Amane from Shangri-La Frontier, and Freya from DanMachi) captures the internal high-energy voice of a fujoshi waiting for the school day to end so she can goon to her 2D boyfriend at home. The sound effects for all the otaku cultural references match Tanaka-Sensei’s range from monotone reactions to high-frequency squealing.

This age-gap rom-com is not a visual treat. But can you still enjoy Murai in Love? Yes! Read below for three more reasons.

Murai in Love Has Comedy for Otaku and Fujoshi

Do you like watching VTubers? If so, you will recognize that most of the chat’s vocabulary comes from how otaku expressed adoration for real idols before they became virtual and how fujoshi shipped any male characters who made eye contact with each other. Our subculture is vast, adaptable, and malleable! Murai in Love throws referential humor at the screen for all eras of manga, anime, and gaming fans. In the first episode alone, I saw references to Dragon Ball, visual novels on the Sony PSP, and 8-bit fighting games.

A Loveable Supporting Cast

The lead character, Murai (Kengo Takanashi brings his hentai anime chops to this role as he did for Koutarou Kuroda from Joshi Luck!), has a healthy social life. He has two best friends and a pair of twins who act as his fan club. His best buds are an artist and a playboy in Murai in Love. So, seeing their academically oriented friend learn about romance gave them a sense of relief. Murai’s fan club members (who liked his previous look as an emo bassist) include a cosplayer and a doujin artist. These four friends will be the source of many jokes with otaku themes.

The Springtime of Youth Suffers from Romantic Hay Fever in Murai in Love

What if your love rival were a 2D fictional character? Hitotose is the mercurial ninja character in the game Tanaka-Sensei loves so much. He is so different from Murai that he needs a different voice actor. Nobunaga Shimazaki knows how to play a harem king (Ritsuka Fujimaru from Fate Grand Order and Shidou Itsuka from Date A Live) in just about every anime he stars in, so it’s a meta joke that he plays Tanaka-Sensei’s 2D ninja dreamboat. As the season develops, Murai’s childhood friend returns to his city, humorously complicating the romantic calculations.

Murai in Love (Murai no Koi) streams in North America at Hulu and Disney Plus. The first episode in Japan premieres in October, following the regular seasonal broadcasts.

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Thank you for reading this post about Murai in Love. Will you still watch after seeing how 2D the animation is for this 2D subject matter? I recommend it for relaxing downtime and nerdy jokes about otaku and fujoshi. Is that enough for you? Let us know in the comments below!

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