Review: What I liked about A Condition Called Love, Ep 1 and what I didn’t

The new romance anime A Condition Called Love streamed its first episode on Thursday.

As someone who has read the Megumi Morino manga series the anime is based on three times, I shouldn’t even have to say A Condition Called Love has been in my Top 5 anime to watch since it was announced last June.

Now it’s here and, yes, overall, I am thrilled with how it turned out.

But, like any anime you have waited for for a while, there are always things you love and things you think, “Ah, but I wish they hadn’t done that”.

Here, then is what I liked about A Condition Called Love, Episode 1 and then… what I didn’t.

What I liked about the first episode of A Condition Called Love

The characters: Eat Fish Studio in conjunction with the director, the writer and the two main voice actors have done an excellent job creating the personalities of Hotaru and Hananoi.

Hotaru, quite a plain girl and emotionally young for her age, comes off right from the first scenes as a nice girl who, even if you find it frustrating she has trouble properly feeling things on more than a shallow level, you still like her.

As even if she struggles to understand her own emotions, she is always the person who is there for her friends and family as, at least, she seems to understand theirs.

Meanwhile, Hananoi, quirky, strange and a little too much is someone who, from those first scenes of him walking slowly out of the cafe with his head bent after he just got dumped, you immediately empathize with.

After all, he’s tall, good-looking, smart and a nice guy, but is also someone who doesn’t seem to get along well with people as most, just from his looks alone, expect him to be someone he’s not.

Plus, that desperation to be loved is likely to put off a more experienced person than Hotaru.

The art style: While some people are saying the art style is wishy-washy, I like its softness and dream-like quality.

It also makes the viewer feel like they alone are allowed into that world alongside Hotaru and Hananoi, as the two teenagers fall in love and learn what it’s like to care about another person more than almost anything else.

Sure, a more vibrant color palette could have been chosen but, for me, that would spoil the feel of the romance, which itself isn’t explosive, wildly passionate or shoved in your face, but instead is so quiet, sweet and clumsy it actually feels real.

The pacing: Again, while a couple of fans on social media have commented they felt the pacing of the first episode of A Condition Called Love was too fast, I disagree.

While the first season isn’t likely to tell the entire story of Hotaru and Hananoi (there are 14 manga volumes, so quite a lot of their story to tell), in my mind the first episode needed to be faster-paced to set up how the two met, how he asked her out, how she worried and struggled, and then how he won her over.

Besides, Hananoi getting Hotaru to go out with him isn’t the main story. Now that’s set up, we can get onto the main events starting in Episode 2.

The A Condition Called Love theme songs: Both the A Condition Called Love opening theme song — Kimi no Sei‘ (君のせい, ‘It’s Your Fault‘), performed by Japanese boy band Sexy Zone — and the ending theme —Every Second, performed by Mina Okabe (the Japanese version of her original 2021 song) are perfectly in keeping with the anime’s feel.

Sweet, cool and wholesome. And catchy. What more could you ask for?

A Condition Called Love is just super cute: Yep.

What I don’t like about the first episode of A Condition Called Love

Some of the voice acting: While the main leads — Chiaki Kobayashi who plays Hananoi, and Kana Hanazawa who is Hotaru — created real, believable people, several of the supporting VAs acting is a little over the top.

Yurika Kubo as Hotaru’s friend Asami Hibaki, for instance, is loud and shrill in almost every scene, with over-the-top acting that grates on your nerves. (Note: As new episodes were released, this stopped bothering me).

The same goes for some of the VAs playing minor background characters — too loud, too fake in their reactions to things.

Of course, you can’t tell if that’s the choice of the actors themselves or of the director (Tomoe Makino) but it pulls you out of the scenes they appear in to react poorly to their voices rather than positively to the plot.

And honestly, so far, that’s it for what I didn’t like about the first episode of A Condition Called Love.

The first episode was set up nicely, pulled you in from the first 30 seconds and is then paced so well, the whole 23 minutes shot by.

The writer (Hitomi Amemiya) has also done a wonderful job with appropriate and believable dialogue to create the wildly differing personalities of Hotaru and Hananoi who still manage to get along, so that they do feel like real people.

The animation is nicely done, the art style and character designs are lovely — especially Hotaru who could have had a character designer who made her “cuter” just to make her more appealing, but didn’t — the soundtrack is relaxing, and the cinematography is solid.

Everything about the anime’s first episode does the manga justice, and it ended at just the right spot.

Whether I will feel the same after Episode 1 who knows.

But, 23-minutes in at least, and A Condition Called Love, Episode 1 was a nice use of part of my Saturday, as well as the beginnings of a sweet culmination of my love for its source material.

I’ll bet mangaka Megumi Morino is pleased.

And that’s what I liked about A Condition Called Love, Episode 1, and what I didn’t.

Now watch the first episode of the new shoujo anime on Crunchyroll. It really is a lovely one.

 

About Michelle Topham

Brit-American journalist based in Austria,. Former radio DJ at 97X WOXY, and Founder/CEO of Leo Sigh. I've covered K-drama, K-pop, anime, and manga news for over a decade.