Try Being Yourself in Science Fell in Love ❤️, Episode 12 [END]

Shikijou abducted Kotonoha after she rejected him. Shinya comes to rescue her through the power of Science.

Proof 12 – “I Tried to Prove That You Are Fine. Just as You Are.”

Feh!

What happened to my nerdy romantic comedy in Science Fell in Love ❤️? We should have bright colors, lively music, and a fluffy atmosphere. The dark psychodrama in an abandoned warehouse is not what I signed up for. It’s not clear whether there was a body count for this episode. That’s too far.

The dark tone wrestled with its comedic premise too. A running joke in Science Fell in Love is how Shinya and Ayame carry around laptops to explain things to normies. But running a PowerPoint presentation to distract heathens in the middle of an assault suspends disbelief too high. The episode expects us to believe that men dressed as deadbeats are college students who are intelligent enough to pay attention to a slide projector. Again, too much.

The light tone of Science Fell in Love ❤️ makes us not take cartoon violence seriously. Injuries are for laughs and are not meant to be permanently disfiguring. Kotonoha’s past with Takahashi already struck a discordant note. Then it took us into bondage, the threat of sexual violence and grievous bodily harm, if not outright murder. The warehouse scene did not fit within the borders of the anime.

Lastly, the psychopathic abduction scenario was not a fun way to invite Kotonoha into Shinya’s harem. Opening the harem route should be a joyous and sexy occasion for Science Fell in Love ❤️. Kicks to the head and Tasers puncturing a face should be nowhere near shapely tights-covered legs. Playful bondage should come after the girls’ consent to sexy times. Romantic comedies should be vanilla hentai, not in the mind-break, NTR, or BDSM genres. Kotonoha’s path to acknowledging her feelings for Shinya was a failure in plot development.

Heh.

“Viewer discretion is advised” is not what I wanted to see in the Science Fell in Love ❤️ season finale. Kotonoha worried so much about appearing “normal,” but Shikijou took that concern to the extreme. Shikijou thought he could follow the rules of a dating sim game and get a girlfriend. That’s not normal! Ugh, just as I thought. Shikijou’s professor is at the festival to tell the audience that the college kid obsessed with “normal” things isn’t normal. At all. Here it comes! Flip that psycho! My nerdy romantic comedy ran off the rails. These two emotionally fractured college students will not end up laughing together. Oh, no. Shikijou turned the romcom festival arc into a dark, bondage, mind-break doujin.

Ugh, again. Those creepy smiling delinquents from the last episode are in an abandoned warehouse with Shikijou. And they tied up Kotonoha! There went any hope of a vanilla hentai story. Was this the only way for Science Fell in Love ❤️ to display Kotonoha’s tights-covered legs? Uh oh. This curly-haired dude wasn’t one of the three toughs we saw earlier. He jumped the line in front of Shikijou! Ouch. Kotonoha still has a fight in her. Ack. So does Shikijou! It’s okay. That’s someone else’s blood on Kotonoha’s face. It’s not alright for that guy on the floor, though. Shikijou’s cute smile does not fit the violent circumstances. It’s not normal! How do these college kids stay in school? Hasn’t someone reported their assaults and battery already? Meh. This is a dark doujin setting, so we should adjust our plot development and characterization expectations.

Kotonoha should have listened to Shinya. If she had tried being herself and not worried about being “normal,” she wouldn’t have forced herself to date Shikijou. Wait, wait, wait. Shikijou casually mentioned he ended up in an orphanage after he had talked about his abusive father. What can we infer from that? Anyway, who cares about Shikijou’s violent past? He has a violent present and hurts a girl in a comedy anime. That makes him the villain and calls for permanent banishment from the Science Fell in Love universe. This scene is tone-deaf, using explanatory background music as Shikijou walks through his delusional dating rules.

Oh, I don’t like Kotonoha’s apology for everything. She’s still fragile. But she accepted that she’s not “normal.” Kotonoha rejected Shikijou again. She has reasons. Good ones! They all involve complaining about Shinya. Aha. And, uh oh! When did Shinya deny Kotonoha? Did Science Fell in Love show that? Shinya found Ayame first and insisted Kotonoha stop worrying about appearances. Shikijou didn’t want to hear a second rejection. He needs to resort to rougher persuasion.

The white knight appears! What are his sword and armor? Science, of course! And a portable projector and PowerPoint presentation. Science Fell in Love ❤️ made my suspension of disbelief fall through the floor. I can believe Shinya using his love mood equation to find secluded buildings. But why would guys about to rip off a girl’s clothes stand around watching Shinya shout at them? Haha! The real Kotonoha is her DNA sequence! So, those weird scenes of Shinya talking to Chris and Ayame were about planning an intervention for Kotonoha. Shinya needed to tell Kotonoha to be her genuine self in his odd science-type way.

Wait, there’s more! Shinya collected testimonials too! Takahashi-sensei claimed that he would have accidentally groped Kotonoha if she hadn’t flipped him. Uh, what would she have done if he did squeeze her? Ena hits the target for the Ikeda Lab. One of the themes of Science Fell in Love ❤️ is that no one is “normal.” Kotonoha fits right in. Finally. The delinquents had enough of the Kotonoha Intervention Presentation. Whoa. Shinya came packing more Science. Dangerous chemicals! Run away! Or not. Shinya bluffed them all. He needed to distract them long enough for the police to catch them. Uh oh. Shinya will make Kotonoha fall in love with him for real.

Epilogue time for Science Fell in Love ❤️. Ayame is okay with researching harem love, but does Ayame love Kotonoha more than Kotonoha loves Shinya? They need more research! Kosuke realized Aika-chan wasn’t his number one anymore. Will Ena also go for the harem route? Rikekuma wears the equation for the heart symbol in polar coordinates to end the season.

Final Thoughts.

The first six episodes of Science Fell in Love ❤️ were a worthy sequel to the first season. Shinya and Ayame’s relationship began when they both broke through their egos and admitted their feelings for each other. The problem for Ayame was how she knew that she and Shinya had the most fun with each other as they did research together. If they became an established couple, what would these science-types do for dates instead? Of course, the solution to that problem is to make a new question. It’s an apt metaphor for enduring love. There’s always something new to discover about one’s beloved because people aren’t static. And they can share their discoveries with each other. It would have been a perfect ending to a second season. Unfortunately, that was the halfway point for Science Fell in Love ❤️.

The second half of the season suffered from how tight the plot development of the first half was. It never decided which new couple to focus on. If it had, the necessary character development and foreshadowing would have been present as Shinya and Ayame competed with Chris and Suiu for love power. There could have been enough material for Ena and Kosuke if Yamamoto had come into the story earlier. The dramatic psychopathology in the Kotonoha and Shinya plot would not have been as jarring. Science Fell in Love is supposed to be a comedy, not a coming-of-age drama like Domestic na Kanojo or HigeHiro.

Personally, as a former math and physics geek, I did not enjoy the growing concentration on sociology research. The Ikeda Lab is in the data sciences department, so the fun of math, statistics, and data analysis fell away as the reliance on small population surveys grew. In the second half of the Science Fell in Love ❤️ season, the dependency on sociology showed when their demonstration scenes did not involve the characters. I don’t watch episodic anime for generic random stick figures.

On a happy note, the anime continued to find ways to show its fanservice theme of legs in pantyhose. Science Fell in Love is about Science-types, so those people will be the indoor kind of women who wear “tights.” Even in the mind-break scenario of the season finale, the anime found a way to show that it was the nerdy version of Miru Tights.

What’s next for Science Fell in Love? The manga continues, but it may be another two years before a third anime season. The relationship progress looks like the besotted science-type couples will find their happy endings by then.

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.