I love this show! It was such a wonderful ensemble cast. Every supporting character was compelling to me! There are some very good friendship dynamics and the love pentagon was fraught with identity shenanigans and divorces and the issue of what it means to be a protagonist in your own life, and I loved it! So much is communicated via lingering, complicated gazes, which gets more and more intense as the love polygon grows new angles. The family stuff in here is also really good and brutal and perfect.

FANTASY WORLDBUILDING: Almost none!! God, it’s delightful. It’s just a regular world except there’s a magical unicorn and magic-level VR technology I guess?? There’s a point where they talk about mind-reading and I was like “oh finally some more magic” but no they just meant like understanding body language. Don’t worry about it!

GENDERS: It is by no means perfect, gender-wise, but the fact that it’s multilayered and complicated and messy is why I personally loved it a lot. There is the magical gender wish fulfillment stuff AND dysphoria stuff AND fear of telling your family about your identity stuff AND identities misaligning and aligning romantically, which might not be some people’s idea of a good time, but it is very much mine. I kept waiting for things to be magically fixed in a disappointing transphobic way, but I actually found the ending super fucking satisfying.

Things along the way were done thoughtfully, too. There are some shitty comments made by some characters, but it’s also in character for them to do that, people have arcs, etc etc. Love’s male actor does such a good job playing her, too. I love the way he carries himself as her. And his dumb ugly haircut she cares so much about keeping neat. It’s never played for laughs in the show’s universe OR for in a “haha here’s a guy playing a girl” way for the audience, which I was really happy about. There are some really chewy difficult moments in there, but it is REALLY consistent tonally about both “your body does not dictate your gender” AND “sometimes you want your body to reflect your gender.” And like I feel like those are baseline concepts, but often in gendery media you get “born in the wrong body” simplification and that’s it, which doesn’t resonate with me.

Like this isn’t a story about a transgender person. But the themes are in there, because obviously there are times when Love is not seen as a girl. I’m struggling to word it right without spoiling things so idk you just gotta take a leap of faith lmao, though ymmv. I both had a delightful time AND cried a lot about gender in a very personal way while watching, because it’s messy and hard and confusing but also my god...I want a magical gender unicorn. Obviously everyone’s trans feelings are different so it might not be for everyone, but I just really loved it.

In a broader sense, I also really liked how “this is how boys/girls act” was played on throughout the show, too. There are some things that are lined up as “girl stuff” that Love really fucks up, and a male character ends up with as his arc, for example. Also I kept thinking they were taking some Pickup Artist elective class but magical boy school just teaches them how to drink respect women juice instead???? Idk man, I love this fantasyland.

OVERALL: I loved the romance plot, each individual character’s arc, I loved some tropes showing up that I can’t say bc it’s spoilers, I loved what it had to say about the Self. I loved the family stuff. I loved the bonkers setup/world.

I also think the best available fansubs are the thaibl92 ones