Have you heard of fake stories within a story? https://www..com/watch?v=4dGOfFbzvq4 Take the Home Alonehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HomeAlone franchise for example. Kevin McCallister spends his Winter holiday evenings watching the noir movie Angels with Filthy Soulshttps://www..com/watch?v=edK2aPewYHI. The fake film and its fake sequelhttps://www..com/watch?v=tWgCt5qFYI0 are really funny mafia parodies despite not originating from an actual movie Keep the change ya filthy animal is still an incredibly iconic movie line. Both of these sketches are short and sweet with each sitting at under 2 minutes. I call them fake stories because theyre clearly not meant to hold any narrative importance. The same goes for a sappy romance manga titled Go Sweet that Shirogane and the gang read in Love is Warhttps://anilist.co/anime/101921/KaguyasamawaKokurasetaiTensaitachinoRenaiZunousen/. All we know about the manga is that it resembles a bunch of common shoujo plotlines but to our characters its a bestselling series that made them tear up despite its generic tropes. Its just a fake story that allows the real story to create some hilarious parodies like when the author reimagines Love is War as a melodramatic shoujo ai. Much like our world it makes sense that fictional characters also have their own inuniverse version of television and books. These are usually jokes built on generalizations of the genre being made fun of be it grimy crime dramas or sappy YA romance. Im fond of fake stories but mostly because theyre fake. They arent meant to be taken seriously nor do they overstay their welcome. Kanojo no Kanojo is what happens when one of these shitposts gets dragged out for a miserable 12 episodes. This piece is spoilerfree TlDr below. Naoya gets the girl. Equal parts daft and earnest hes been pursuing his childhood friend Saki for years. In the first year of high school she accepts his feelings and the two start out on their adorkable relationship. Hes still as infatuated with his longtime crush as hes ever been shes smitten by his sheer earnestness. The pair share a funny chemistry thanks to comic misunderstandings and exaggerated declarations of love for one another. Itd be fun to see a story of these getting workedup over every tiny thing in their blossoming relationship. 100https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/766670782494408744/888418323006648350/pensive.png Kanokano is not that story. Heck just calling it a story at all would be a stretch. Out of the blue a bluehaired firstyear decides to ask MC out in typical anime fashion. A girl whom this guy has no prior knowledge of just shoots her shot. Sure she worked up the courage to confess for several months but what would he know. Hes content and attached to his first and only love. Naturally he says yes. 100https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/766670782494408744/888418324617236480/LoveTrain.png?width=1026height=740 A lovetrain if you will. What follows is an absolute trainwreck. Rather than find himself having to choose between one girl and the other MC decides to date both in a twotiming relationship. And as proof of his TRuE l0Ve he tells an enraged Saki of his horny intentions to start a highschool harem. Thats right he cucks both of his girlfriends openly. Now theres nothing wrong with adults consenting to an open courtship with more than two people but nothing about this weakwilled excuse of a MC screams loyal or mature given how quickly he fell headoverheels over a stranger he just met. And to top it all off the threesome moves into MCs home to live happily ever after unsupervised and underage. Kanokano is all about the resultant polygamy and the sheer idiocy that allowed it to occur. Before discussing this abominable harem we must direct our attention to our Harem Lord. Naoya Mukai is quite easily the worst lead character in all of fiction 100https://1.bp.blogspot.com/N3ClaatbWE/YOpkM5QNZQI/AAAAAAACNc8/icb4whbr08acv3c3bOp1lrthylXscXQCPcBGAsYHg/s1920/Kanojo2Bmo2BKanojo2B2BEpisode2B22B2BSaki2BSlaps2BNaoya.gif or at the very least the worst protagonist Ive had the displeasure of coming across thus far. In the past Ive been harsh towards male protagonists with zero personality but Id prefer any number of them over this mess of a character. I really wish I was merely drumming up exaggerated anger for the sake of publishing a heated review but he is genuinely revolting. At first glance Naoya appears to be a perpetual loser who demonstrates his undying love with big romantic gestures. But really the guy is a toxic manipulator who constantly gaslights those around him in order to fulfill his horny desires. He comically misunderstands the babes surrounding him and twists their words with an idiocy so unfiltered that girls end up secondguessing themselves. Naoya is what happens when you cross the Machiavellian tendencies of a GenZ Light Yagamihttps://anilist.co/character/80/LightYagami with the selfish pathetic guise of ToGs Rachelhttps://anilist.co/character/135466/Rachel. Selfdeprecation is often seen as a weakness or an undesirable flaw yet Naoya leans into his worthlessness so hard that it miraculously becomes a strength. He shamelessly proclaims hes a twotiming scum but only because he loves his girls both equally and endlessly. Suddenly his unfaithfulness is seen as a prized rarity and every female above the age of consent would throw themselves at him to be the sole recipient of such undying love. But surely sharing a chode amongst so many impressionable teenage girls is a hard task in more ways than one Getting into Naoyas bandwagon and pants becomes more difficult as the series progresses because he needs to stay faithful to the girls already attached to him. However MC playing hardtoget just ends up being an excuse for entertaining the humiliating advances of the chicks around him. Forget any notion of this series navigating a taboo polygamous relationship in Japan Kanokano is a show about a cult one where a serial manipulator unabashedly tricks the world into falling in love with him. The cult of Kanokano is repulsive but its hard to feel sorry for the victims dumb enough to fall for MCs schemes. 100https://9gagfun.9cache.com/photo/a1rYGGv460s.jpg As an abridged mockery of the harem trope each girl is defined primarily by their obsessive desires to win MCs heart. Character traits barely distinguish one empty husk of a character from the next these idiots may as well be interchangeable target practice for Cupids arrows. No one here is really in love with Naoya rather they crave only the idea of being the only one loved by him. Each girl steps outside of their comfort zones to outlove everyone else by catering to MCs fetishes. The end result? A clown fiesta of antics and grand gestures that rapidly decline in shock value. Forgoing sleep to profess love camping in the cold outdoors as a pickup strategy bribing lovers with gacha rolls getting aroused from NTR putting on roleplay clothes in order to sleep with MC and stripping down said clothes in order to sleep with MC you get the perverted picture. Its the kind of immature bullshittery thatll make any reasonable soul call for a parent if not for the fact that these parents are just as irredeemably shit as their insane offspring. Kanokano paints a nightmarish dystopia where society has regressed to the age of Neanderthals. Fathers and mothers dont just allow their little girls to play House with MC they encourage it praying that their respective child will be the one to claim Naoyas heart. This is a sick world so primitive that downbad daughters attempt to make Sir Nice Guy shoot babies into them while their irresponsible parents cheer their underage children on. 100https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/766670782494408744/888425057762832414/Inevitable.png?width=1439height=719 Id use the Time Stone to stop this show from happening. With a fervor not seen since Thanos quest to assemble the Infinity Gauntlethttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avengers:InfinityWar the nice guy Naoya hunts for babes to add to his trash waifu depository with each new insipid addition more helplessly inept than the next. Redhead tsun tiddies. Loli bait homemaker tiddies. Gyaru egirl streamer tiddies. The list may as well stretch on and on in turn tearing the fabric of realism as we know it. But lets not worry about fiction not being believable thats not even the worst of our problems. The biggest issue with Kanokano is that it obliterates the very idea of love. This harem gives up dignity in exchange for dick throwing themselves at a love as commonplace as it is disingenuous. Naoya could love anyone which is why love loses all meaning. The goal of sharing an inseparable bond with a significant other gets utterly destroyed with the addition of countless others. Love disappears because love means nothing when its freely handed out to every girl and my left foot. Romance is dead and Kanokano has dealt the finishing blow. This rancid experience does come with its bright spots. 100https://blog.tanuki.pl/wpcontent/uploads/2021/07/snapshot04.38.763.jpg Productionwise Kanokano benefits from a rather pleasant job. Its baffling that such a travesty would follow an otherwise successful streak for Tezuka Productionshttps://anilist.co/studio/200/TezukaProductions a studio fresh off works such as Dororohttps://anilist.co/anime/101347/Dororo/ and 2020s phenomenal Adachi to Shimamurahttps://anilist.co/review/8867. The latter shows chief director and art director bring the same quirky visual identity to Kanokano with a comicbook aesthetic and pastel colors. The series is also capable of nailing comedic timing and visual jokes that embrace the absurdity onscreen. Voice actors are the liferaft for the sinking ships of Kanokano. Lines are delivered and often shouted with the crazy conviction the script requires. These VAs absolutely sell their lines and do their utmost to elevate some incomprehensibly crap material. For all the garbage persistent throughout the series Kanokano at least executes its ideas relatively well. But if you ask me its a bit like polishing a turd. If you made it this far you may be wondering what my deal is. 100https://c.tenor.com/SwMgGqBirvcAAAAC/sakisakikanojomokanojo.gif Kanokano is clearly a show that isnt meant to be taken seriously so penning a roast about this steaming dumpster fire must be pointless. Well if youre looking for an exercise in futility look no further than Kanokano itself. The show is doing a parody by taking the tropes associated with the harem formula and expanding on them arriving in uncharted territory in the process. Kanokano is technically innovating here but perhaps there is a good reason for why writers dont take things this ridiculously far. By pushing the harem trope to its extreme limits Kanokano sacrifices all storytelling potential. Its nighimpossible to see the show as anything other than an overlylong joke because the show is so deliberately designed to be just that. Kanokano is not capable of grasping its own exercise in futility because its got its hands full groping its countless breasts instead. Lets not kid ourselves no one here is watching Kanokano because of a welldeveloped cast or cohesive narrative. No we watch Kanokano to laugh at how stupid it is. And honestly thats really sad. Kanokano just isnt the kind of parody worth a full 5hour runtime. All this colossal waste of space can offer are mindnumbing shenanigans. All this tasteless travesty can achieve is to rinseandrepeat its toxic cycle of gaslighting and selfvictimising. All this horrible harem can do is drown the audience out with noisy overthetop declarations of love that are as grand as they are empty. All this stupid series can muster is the vandalization of human romance by stripping the concept of all importance. Much like the love the Kanokano cult share all this story can amount to can be summed up in one word: Fake. Stories and entertainment have always been things that I enjoy. Ive appreciated some really complex profound works that stuck have with me. But Im not gonna sit here and pretend that I dont also treasure my fair share of simple pleasures comedies and shitposts from time to time. Across all these pieces of media Ive always felt that these things have added to my life in some way be it big or small. But Kanokano is the first time Ive encountered a show that takes away. Its a show so dumb that I almost feel dumber just by sitting through it. If youre genuinely excited by any of the topics Ive discussed so far I wont hinder you from welcoming this chronic brain rot with open arms. Comedy is as subjective as genres get and what failed for me might work wonders for you. My goal is simply to stay true to my personal experience and serve as a cautionary tale for those tempted to give Kanokano a fair shot. I find that the first episode kinda tells you everything you need to know with its stupid humor and absurd execution. Feel free to try out that episode out of morbid curiosity. Who knows Kanokano could fall squarely into So Bad Its Good territory. TlDr: 100https://i.kymcdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/022/951/eyJ1cmwiOiJodHRwczovL2Rpc2NvcmQuc3RvcmFnZS5nb29nbGVhcGlzLmNvbS9hdHRhY2htZW50cy8yNjgyNDI3Nzc2NTE4MDYyMTAvMzExOTY0NTQyNTM0MDI1MjE3LzB1WW1DSUIucG5nIn0.jpg A cult of teenage lovers was only ever gonna be watched one way as a joke. At the end of the day Kanokano is an admission of defeat. Any chance that its premise could be something more than merely a stale punchline is squashed by its dumb script and disgusting characters. Kanokano knows that it is fated to dig its own grave and challenges itself to see itself off all the way down to rockbottom. On that front Kanokano succeeds but the fact is pathetic and really sad. The shamelessness of the series can occasionally work in its favor aided by great voice acting and quirky visuals. There will definitely be an audience for Kanokano a harem parody thats wellaware of its worthlessness. For me the joke fizzled out within the first 5 minutes. 2/10 BEST GIRL: Thanks for reaching the end with me. This one was particularly fun to put together as if to numb the pain from sitting through this harrowing experience. I survived Kanokano. Now theres a neat idea for a shirt. If you happen to like my verbose rants feel free to check out my other reviewshttps://anilist.co/user/AnimeDweeb/reviews for seasons past and present. I also frequently post writeups under my list updates so definitely take a peek if youd like to see me mald over anime as they hit the airwaves. Peace